The grand hall receded behind them, its vastness swallowed by distance. Ahead, the corridors stretched on— branching into narrower paths like veins. Despite the hour, there was nothing gloomy about the place. Unlike the outside, where warped winds howled without restraint, the interior of the Tower was unnervingly quiet, sealed off from the world as if sound itself had learned obedience.
“From the outside, one’d never imagine it was this complex,” Neru said as she walked, unable to keep the note of frustration from her voice.
“And this is just the hall and reception quarters in this Level,” Elios replied evenly. “Level Four where we’re heading to is far more sophisticated.”
Neru tilted her head back, eyes tracing the distant ceiling far above.
“When you say Level Four,” she said, “you don’t mean the usual kind, do you? A few dozen stairs and we’re there?”
Elios let out a quiet breath that might have been a laugh.
“Of course not. ‘Level’ here doesn’t mean floors.” He kept walking as he spoke. “We won’t be taking the stairs at all. There’s a device built for transit. It’ll carry us to the Level we need far faster than walking ever could.”
Neru glanced sideways at him.
“Like… a mount?”
“No,” Elios said. “You’ll see.”
It didn’t take long for him to lead her to an ascension pillar—a monolithic slab of green stone, flat and wide enough for thirty people to stand upon. At its center was carved an ancient rune shaped like the character for Earth, surrounded by intricate sigils and interlocking Arcane circuits, so fine they were almost invisible to the naked eye.
Elios dragged a finger along one of those lines. Wherever his touch passed, the markings shimmered into life, glittering like scattered dust. When his finger came to rest at a precise point in the pattern, the stone platform stirred, then began to rise straight upward.
“This is called an ascension pillar,” he said. “It’ll take us straight to Level Four.”
Neru nodded slowly, looking down where they had just stood. “How can something this heavy fly so easily?”
“Not flying,” Elios corrected, shaking his head. “Floating. Pay attention—it’s about to accelerate. First-timers aren’t used to it.”
As if to underline his words, the platform shot abruptly. Neru instantly lowered her center of gravity—right foot sliding back, knee bending slightly into a grounded stance. Elios caught the posture out of the corner of his eye: a defensive stance often used by Frothena soldiers.
“Not bad,” she said. Her expression remained composed, but the excitement flickering in her eyes betrayed her. “Is there anywhere else on the continent that has something like this?”
Elios shrugged.
“This Tower alone has nearly twenty of them. And this is just the nearest one.” He paused. “The pillar at the Tower’s core is large enough to carry fifty people at once.”
“Twenty?” The doubt showed on Neru’s face.
“Thousands of people. Thirteen Levels,” Elios replied flatly. “Do you really think one platform would be enough?”
The stone platform slid past Level Two, and Elios lifted a hand, pointing as he continued his explanation.
“In that direction lies the Grand Library. You’ve likely heard of it.” His finger shifted. “And over there—the kitchens and communal halls. I don’t know how they manage it, but they even serve snow-mountain spirits from your homeland. You should give it a try in the future.”
Neru’s expression dimmed, just slightly. Her gaze drifted into empty space, as if the walls had fallen away. In a moment, she looked truly free.
“It’s been a long time since I last drank it,” she said. “But whatever they serve here—even if they follow the recipe, with the right ingredients—it can never be true Frothena snow-mountain wine.”
“Why not?” Elios asked. It was rare to see a woman talking about this.
“The Frothena drink it straight from fermenting sacks made of ox stomachs,” she replied evenly. “We drink it during winter nights atop white peaks, on horseback while herding goats across endless plains, or on the battlefield after licking blood from the edge of a blade. That’s what gives the wine its taste—its spirit. Not this. Small rooms with closed doors, wine poured politely into cups… how could that ever produce the same flavor?”
She has a point, but it seems this is more than just about liquor.
He shook his head lightly in disagreement.
“The Frothen are simply too accustomed to brutality to understand refinement.” The thought surfaced before he could stop it. “Is winter snow truly more beautiful than spring blossoms? Are a thousand miles of hooves more worldly than a single melody in a quiet alley? Strong wine in big gulps may stir fervor—but sipping slowly is what allows a soul to settle into themselves.”
“Snow-mountain wine isn’t only about flavor,” Neru said, shaking her head. Her tone was gentle, but unyielding. “It’s about tradition. The moment it stays here, it ceases to be snow-mountain wine.”
Elios studied her for a moment, then slowly shifted his stance on the rising platform until he was facing her fully. The hum of the pillar vibrated faintly beneath their feet.
“Tradition,” he said. “Always tradition. Even when it’s nothing more than an obstacle? Even when it’s the very thing steering your people into a dead end?” His voice hardened. “That same tradition kept Frothen from integrating with southern civilization, from sharing in humanity’s progress. It bred pointless hostility toward Veyra. You’re not ignorant, and you’re not shallow—so why stubbornly hold on to those old prejudices as if they were sacred?”
“Progress?” Neru echoed, with a hint of heat. “Prejudice?”
Her eyes shifted back to him at last.
“Aren’t you Veyrans the ones steeped in prejudice?” she asked sharply. “By what right do you judge Frothen? Aside from these conveniences you love to flaunt—what, exactly, do you have that makes you better than us?”
Without waiting for Elios to respond, she continued.
“I don’t know what they taught you here,” Neru said, her voice low and even, “but before Veyra ever became a kingdom, half of the southern lands belonged to Frothen. We were driven north, into cold and barren lands that never thaw. That ‘dead end’ you speak of—your people pushed us into it.” Her eyes hardened. “And even then, you didn’t stop. Do you dare claim Veyra has never cast its gaze toward the iron and copper of the northern mountains?”
Irritation flared in Elios’s chest. The woman dared to wield history against him.
“It’s true the Frothen Empire was once vast,” he shot back, “But, turn the pages properly. On what grounds do you blame Veyra for its collapse? That empire was a giant house built loosely from rotting planks—it was bound to fall. Tribal rule without centralized authority, territory expanded too fast to govern, failure to adapt both culturally and environmentally—those are what reduced it to its current state.” His tone sharpened. “I know your ancestors pride themselves on being conquerors. But ruling what you’ve taken is an entirely different matter.”
The green stone platform shuddered faintly, then slowed with an abrupt metallic groan.
Neru scoffed.
“And during all that, you southerners did nothing?” she said coldly. “Who sowed division among our tribes? Who poisoned our children with false promises? With lies? Your banner of ‘civilization’ is nothing but a trap. It took us decades to see it clearly.” She gestured faintly beneath her feet. “This ascension pillar is remarkable, I’ll grant that. But everything has its price, doesn’t it? I’d rather take the stairs.”
Elios frowned. It had been a long time since anyone matched him word for word.
“Lies? Humanity has grown strong because it learns to change, to adapt,” he pressed on. “Those who refuse to do that will be left behind. That’s the truth. At some point, your people wouldn’t even be counted among us, but something…Lesser.”
Those were harsh words, he knew. Cruel, even. And yet—with this woman—he found himself unwilling to stop.
“It’s already happening. You said you were a traveller, then you should’ve sensed it. The immediate feeling of not belonging once you announce your tribe. This world is so vast, yet for Frothena, it’s so limited. Is that what you want? After everything you’ve seen here, all these wonders?”
Despite the violent vibration beneath their feet, neither of them flinched. They stood locked in each other’s gaze until the platform came to a complete halt.
“Let me tell you what I see here,” Neru answered, and once more her eyes darkened—black as twin coals glistering beneath the dim lantern glow. “I see one man, at the very center of the world, carrying out a dangerous task that may affect the lives of millions. Yet the only one walking beside him at this moment—” she paused, letting the words settle, “—is me, who’s not even his friend.”
Her voice remained calm, but the final question cut deep.
“Still, you said my people are the outcasts?"
Words froze in Elios’s throat that instant — not just because Neru’s counter was hard to deny. It was also the fact that she seemed to care more than he had expected.
How ironic.
The Earth rune at the stoneslab’s center glowed softly, humming along like a wheezed exhale.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“It seems we arrived,” Neru said, breaking the silence.
Elios shook himself free from the tangle of thoughts and stepped off the stone platform, moving into the antechamber of Level Four to lead the way. Neru followed at an unhurried pace, her gaze sweeping the surroundings with caution. The corridor was paved entirely in white stone—walls, floor, columns—an unbroken pallor stretching in all directions.
As they advanced, the pillars lining both sides flared to life one after another, light blooming in their wake. After more than a hundred steps, they came to a halt before a massive door of solid stone, twice the height of a man. Its surface was carved with interlocking polygons, coiled together like a celestial formation frozen mid-calculation.
“The pattern on the ascension pillar wasn’t nearly this intricate,” Neru remarked.
Elios gave a small nod. He reached inside his coat and drew out a spherical green amulet, no larger than a lemon. Holding it aloft before the lantern, he adjusted its position until its shadow fell squarely across the stone’s surface.
The door flared with a brief flash of light, then began to open, grinding slowly inward.
“So it’s a key,” Neru said, nodding to herself. “No wonder you hid it until now. When you picked it from his desk, I thought it was some kind of authority token.”
“In the Tower, those two aren’t much different. This singular amulet is far more than a key—especially in the hands of Lord Viltar.”
Elios had no intention to explain everything to her, but since her observation skill was too keen, withholding anything else would just lead to miscommunication. He continued, his voice steady.
“There are a hundred transfer chambers in the Tower—like a hundred rivers of varying size, all feeding into a single endless sea. This place can be thought of as one of the oldest canals. It’s small, and it’s slow, but its inspection authority is unusually broad. We won’t overlook anything from here.”
The chamber was bigger than Elios recalled.
No vault. No shelves. Just stones, dark and smooth, laid in rows of tens neatly like a legion of soldiers. Pale lines were carved on them, thin as veins, glowing faintly in harmony like they shared the same heartbeat. At the center stood a big boulder, almost cubic, its surface alive with shifting runes.
“And how exactly do we search and verify things?” Neru asked, resting her chin on her hand. “You can’t just keep saying magic.”
Elios considered for a moment before answering.
“Watch what I do. You’ll understand soon enough. If anything doesn’t make sense, ask immediately.”
Neru glanced back at the stone door, caution returning in her voice.
“Why isn’t it closing? What if someone sees us?”
Elios shook his head and extinguished his lantern, setting it aside.
“It won’t matter. This channel is small enough that obstruction is common. Someone working through the night wouldn’t raise suspicion.” He gestured faintly toward the doorway. “As for the door—it’ll seal itself after a while, assuming nothing abnormal occurs.”
And like a cruel joke, no sooner had the words left his mouth than the anomaly revealed itself.
The light along the eastern row of stone pillars abruptly shifted hue, flickering as it pulsed inward toward the chamber’s heart. Elios stiffened at once. From familiarity, he recognized the signal for what it was—the Tower initiating an intake of new records.
Someone was already here.
Elios halted at the threshold. His hand lowered instinctively, close to his weapon but not touching it. Neru stopped behind him, not making a sound.
Following the light, they caught the silhouette behind a red stone pillar. The man wore Tower robes. Not a healer. Not an engineer. The silver stripes on the sleeves meant the right to be here. A high-ranked scholar, no less.
His back was turned. His hands moved with casual precision, brushing the surface of the pillar in practiced patterns. The symbols responded smoothly.
Things buried. Other things took their place.
Elios watched, and something inside him tightened.
A pile of records were in the process of being overwritten.
Yet no alarms. No resistance from the system.
This is the authority of an Elder, he realized. And what the hell was someone with that kind of privilege doing in a third-rated transfer room like this?
Only one possibility.
“What are you doing here, scholar?” Elios asked, approaching with his longest strides.
The man turned his head briefly to look—but his hands didn’t pause.
“Closing a matter,” he said evenly. “One that doesn’t concern you.”
Elios caught up to him with a wide smile, putting a hand on his shoulder. “It does, though.”
By reflex, the man’s attention tore away from the pillar and snapped onto Elios. He narrowed his eyes again and spoke sharply.
“I don’t care. Let go. I have work to do.”
“Not so fast,” Elios replied, his smile deepening even as his heart hammered against his ribs.
The man was, in truth, more entitled to question him in this situation than the other way around. Unless…
Elios pointed to the sigil on his chest, then hooked his thumb over his shoulder, toward Neru—who still stood some twenty paces back behind.
“Night-patrol,” he said lightly. “We just saw the gate open and a suspicious intruder slipping in here. Build, posture—looks a lot like you.”
As he spoke, Elios stole a glance at the sheaf of papers clutched in the scholar’s hand—freshly inked, still faintly warm, seemingly printed straight from the lattice.
Project Banshee.
Classified.
Failure.
Prototype Missing…
Just those few words on the first page were enough to send a chill crawling up Elios’s spine.
There was no doubt left. This man, like Elios himself, had chosen the night to strike first. Elios and Neru had anticipated an attempt to compromise evidence—but neither of them had expected it to happen this soon, or to this extreme. To permanently overwrite a record like this, the mastermind had to expose the abuse of their own authority, though just that alone meant little.
This scholar was not dumb. He reacted fast. His arm jerked violently, knocking Elios’s hand from his shoulder and shouting,
“Nonsense! I am senior scholar Elso Tuhn, in service to Elder Lynkahn. I have—”
He never finished the sentence.
Elios locked onto the man’s wrist, twisted it more than half a turn, and wrenched it behind his back. His other hand seized the scholar’s shoulder and drove him hard into the stone floor as Elios barked,
“Engage! The suspect is fighting back.”
Pain drained the color from the scholar’s face, stealing his voice. Neru understood instantly. She pulled her hood back up, hiding her hair, gave a brief nod, and surged forward. Together, they pinned the man’s remaining arm behind his back.
Elios leaned in and hissed under his breath to her ear,
“Hold him tight. Don’t let him reach for his token.”
Then he straightened and turned toward the red stone pillar, eyes scanning the cascading symbols.
Too late.
The overwrite was nearly complete. At this stage, the process could no longer be intervened in. Restoring what was being buried would take years—if it could be done at all. Time the truth would not survive.
He bent down and picked up the fallen documents, leafing through them quickly.
Useless.
Just some opening pages—enough to confirm the correct record. Nothing more. No one was foolish enough to leave behind a full copy of something they wished to destroy.
From the floor, the scholar snarled,
“You bastards. Let me go. I am a Senior Scholar. Assaulting me is a grave crime. One word from me and you’ll rot to bones in the Mud Cells.”
A flash of steel answered him.
A dagger slammed into the stone between his lips, buried nearly two inches deep. The blade slid perfectly into the narrow gap of his mouth, tight enough that a single twitch might have blood spilled.
Neru’s voice followed—soft, almost gentle, and cold enough to freeze blood.
“No word, then?” she said.
The scholar shrank down like a punctured bladder, his face drained to a sickly green. With the dagger’s edge still brushing his tongue, he didn’t dare force out a single breath.
Elios ran through the command chain again, fingers flying over invisible sequences, searching for a flaw. A violation. A misstep. Anything.
Even a delay would have been enough.
But of course, there was nothing.
Everything was perfectly compliant. Old records, deemed obsolete, were scheduled to be buried and overwritten by newer iterations. The Tower would not recognize this as sabotage, only as correction.
And there was no way to stop it.
Wait,
Sabotage?
Elios crouched and ripped the dagger free from the scholar’s mouth. The man’s head snapped back with a sharp crack as terror seized him.
“Talk,” Elios said coldly. “Where does this room draw its power from? How is it sustained? Five seconds.”
He flicked the dagger in his hand, the gesture unmistakable.
The scholar stammered, jerking his chin toward the largest stone mass at the center of the chamber.
“Th-that… that’s the energy core. It—it emits Arcane pulses for the entire sector…”
He tried to add more, but Elios brought the edge of his hand down hard against the back of the man’s neck. The scholar crumpled, unconscious, before his head hit the floor.
That was enough.
Now he needed to focus.
This is the worst possible option. Elios ground his teeth. If he followed through, his future within the Tower would likely be reduced to nothing— Lord Viltar’s protection or not. No one trusted a man willing to trample a dozen inviolable laws of the Tower under the banner of ‘I believe I’m right.’
He took half a step back.
The door behind them remained open. Withdrawal was still possible. He could turn away, close it, and report nothing. No one could prove they had ever been here. The Tower would remain clean. The faith would remain intact.
And yet…
The runes continued to glow.
The overwrite slowly marched to its termination.
Neru remained silent beside him.
She met his gaze, and for the first time, Elios saw himself in those blackness.
He inhaled deeply and stepped forward.
“Plan changes,” Elios said. “Prepare yourself.”
For what, he didn’t say. A bad night was all he could promise.
He stepped up to the towering blue-violet stone at the center of the chamber, a mass half the size of an elephant. No amount of physical strength would ever break something like this.
But he didn’t need strength.
He had knowledge. He understood how these things worked.
He drew out Viltar’s amulet and pressed it into a shallow indentation in the violet stone. A cascade of red glyphs surfaced across the crystal face. Elios set his finger against them and traced a command sequence.
Nothing happened.
Too much. Even for an Archon’s authority, this was still too reckless.
However—
He crouched again and dug into the scholar’s coat, producing a second amulet—dark as lacquered amber, set with a ruby core.
Knew you’d have it.
He placed both amulets against the stone and re-entered the sequence. This time, a hoarse voice rose from the crystal, blurred and rasping, like something speaking from the edge of death.
“Forceful shutdown of the node will impact the entire lattice and cause faults across all operational processes within this section. Positive?”
Elios’s mouth hung open. This thing speaks?
But there was no time for awe. He slammed his palm against the stone and twisted his fingers clockwise. The crystal shifted from violet to a deep rusted red, as if something molten were awakening within.
“Confirmed.”
Elios tore the amulets free and seized Neru’s hand. They ran.
Behind them, the red pillar convulsed. The glowing script fractured mid-sequence, its rhythm stuttering into silence as if the Tower itself had forgotten how to speak. For a single, harrowing breath, Elios allowed relief to touch him.
The stone door thundered shut.
A tremor rippled through the corridor, subtle yet immense, like a heartbeat stirring beneath layers of ancient rock. Then came the stillness, the one that loomed before the storm. Elios withdrew his hand and move it close his weapon.
One by one, the wall lights guttered out.
Not sudden. Not frantic. As if the darkness within the walls had just come to life and was now stretching out. It advanced without rush, swallowing brick and by brick, pillar by pillar.
Searching. Reaching. Engulfing.
The Tower had truely awakened.