Ordinary lyrium has some sort of song of its own. I'm sure there is a codex where a Templar refers to this. It is certainly mentioned in the book Asunder. The same book also talks about the song coming up from the Deep Roads that Cole can hear; which could be the lyrium calling or an old god, who knows. Kieran is sensitive to many things. He can sense the magic in your blood if you are an elf. Poor kid, I think his grandma did him a favour taking the old god spirit/soul from him because the ordinary Kieran seems a nice, well adjusted lad and a credit to his Mum.
Dwarves can hear it too... But only underground dwarves. The "stone sense" that dwarves talk about is their lyrium sense, dwarves can literally hear lyrium like a spirit can. Oghren makes a comment when you go into the sacred ashes temple.
"The lyrium veins in these walls are richer and purer than any I've
sensed in a while. It's doing things... changing this temple and
everything in it."
He not only can sense it all around, but he can even sense the quality of it. Dwarves stone sense is a lyrium sense, and they use it to know where lyrium is and how quality it is and they use those senses to know the best places to mine. It's why only dwarves can lyrium mine as well as they do, other races have to go in blind, a dwarf can literally follow it through the walls and floor and ceiling and know exactly where it is and how good it is. They are walking lyrium detectors. Not to mention it isn't lethal to them.
Also, I knew lyrium was alive far before DAI came out. Look at this old post of mine from 2013.
Lyrium IS alive. It literally feeds on corpses, it's why Dwarves know their ancestors live on because they live on inside the lyrium that absorbed them. "Let the stone take you" is literal, it's asking the lyrium to absorb the body and essence of the body. Red lyrium is probably lyrium that is oldest and thus has had the most time to absorb the most life force, which would explain why it's further down than blue lyrium (typically older stuff is further down in archeology and paleontology) and is far more potent (and mentally lethal). Lyrium is alive and thinking, it's why it sings to people who can hear it like dwarves and fade spirits, it's why the Ancestors of Dwarves are considered still around, it's why lyrium protected Orzammar by guiding the Crosscut drifters to a large Darkspawn horse with its song and knowing they were following the sound. It's why the Gangue Shade exists, it's a literal infection or corruption that destroys lyrium and the Legion of the Dead is tasked with destroying it any time it starts to be too infectious. It's both scary in that it's a thinking organic matter that has a mind of its own and absorbs people and animals both but is also good because it actually does try to protect the dwarves in its own way, and does in fact have all the minds of all the dwarves who have ever died inside it adding to its own mind.
Lyrium is the blood and mind of the stone, fed with the lives of the people who die in the stone.
Although I got details about the red lyrium wrong, it does have to do with absorbing just like I thought... But it was WHAT is absorbed that causes the red kind, and the taint is what is being absorbed that causes it.
And what caused me to come up with this idea? The crosscut drifters, a group of illegal lyrium miners who were simply following their lyrium senses to high quality veins and mining them. But the lyrium used their own senses against them to actually guide them to a secret darkspawn attack that would have destroyed Orzammar.
"We found trouble all right. Rogan's lyrium vein led right to the flank of a darkspawn horde. From the look of their kit, the spawn were a week, maybe less, from breakthrough into that blasted new highway under Orzammar, and they'd be well behind any patrols. The Stone knew. She knew, and she drew her chosen with a promise of ore we could taste in our bones. if all goes well, losing this cavern will kill the darkspawn's taste for digging, and Orzammar will never know it was at risk. We'll be a distant tremor, a ripple in the royal fountain. The charges are laid. We know it will work and we know the cost. The Stone has shown us the way home.
--From the journal of Brunar, founding fellow, Crosscut Drifters."
So lyrium being alive was never an ass-pull, it's been hinted at quite strongly since the first game. The lyrium knew of those Darkspawn and used its song and the dwarves senses to guide them to it to warn them so they could do something about it. That is the actions of a thinking creature.
By the way, if you think of lyrium as the blood of the world then the taint and red lyrium is pretty much blood poisoning.
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