They left the ruins of the undead city behind them.
Aegiros, the Last Guardian, had knelt once more into the sand like a titan choosing slumber, buried once again beneath time. The siege worms lay broken, their bones scattered across the dunes like shattered monuments.
But the victory had cost them.
Callan hadn't slept in two days. The Heartflame inside him pulsed slow and cold, less like a fire and more like a waiting storm. The others were equally worn: Ren's arrows had run dry, Solenne's voice was hoarse from overchanting, and Seris had bled through her third bandage without complaint.
They crossed the desert in silence—until the sun failed to rise.
The Sky Refuses the Dawn
The first sign came at dusk, when the golden horizon froze.
Clouds stopped moving. The light dulled but never vanished. And when the stars should have emerged, they didn't.
Instead, a pale violet glow bled across the sky like bruised ink, and the shadows grew long and heavy.
Solenne raised her staff, muttering an incantation. "Something's… wrong with the cycle. The sun isn't setting. Or rising. It's stuck."
Callan scanned the horizon. "Magic?"
"No," she replied. "Worse. Ritual."
That's when they saw the tower.
In the distance—at the edge of sight—an impossible spire of black stone hovered inches above the desert floor. Upside down. Silent.
It was not built.
It was summoned.
The Tower in the Sky
They approached carefully. Every mile closer, the air thickened, time lagged, and colors bled wrong.
No footsteps marked the sand. No wind touched the skin.
As they drew near, Callan could see people—or what used to be people—circling the spire. Dozens of robed figures walked around it in slow orbit, heads tilted backward, eyes weeping black ichor.
Seris raised her dagger. "Cultists."
"No," Ren said grimly. "Sacrifices."
The tower pulsed with every heartbeat, drawing light from the world. The desert behind them was already dark.
Night was creeping outward from this place like a living plague.
If it reached civilization—it would never be day again.
Breaking the Eternal Dusk
Solenne studied the symbols swirling around the tower's base. "This isn't Voidfire. This is older. More primal. Someone's forcing the veil of dreams into the waking world."
Ren snorted. "Speak common."
"She means," Callan translated, "someone is merging nightmare and reality."
Seris whistled. "Neat. Horrifying. Let's burn it."
But it wasn't that simple.
The tower hovered above a mirrored disc etched into the ground. Its surface reflected not the sky—but a version of the land swallowed by endless night, filled with flickering shadows with too many limbs.
And it was pulling at them.
A portal to a realm that should never exist.
Solenne whispered, "We need to go inside."
Entering the Dreaming Tower
They stepped onto the mirrored disc.
Reality inverted.
Colors twisted, sound grew distant, and the laws of the world trembled. For a heartbeat, Callan stood alone in a city made of bones, hearing a child's laughter in reverse.
Then they were inside the tower.
Its walls were alive—pulsing veins of memory and fear. Stairs that bled. Windows that looked into other people's regrets.
Ren wiped a tear from his eye. "I just saw my brother die again. He's been dead twelve years."
Solenne trembled. "This place feeds on memory."
They pressed on.
Each level tested them.
At the first, Seris fought an illusion of herself—one who'd never lost her sister.
At the second, Solenne walked through a library of her failures, forced to relive every spell that had ever killed someone she tried to save.
At the third, Ren saw his childhood village again—only to watch it burn while he was frozen.
Callan's trial was at the summit.
And it was worse than all of them.
The Ashen Mirror
At the top of the tower, in a room with no doors, Callan found himself.
Not younger.
Not older.
Just… different.
This Callan wore armor of black fire and spoke with the voice of the Ashen General from his dreams.
"You never left the battlefield," the mirror said. "You just hid your sword."
Callan raised his hand. Fire sparked.
"So you're the version of me that didn't walk away?"
The mirror smiled. "I'm the one that won."
They clashed.
Flame against flame.
Memories against will.
Each blow was a lifetime. Each word a choice. The tower trembled with the weight of two souls tearing at one another.
And then—
Callan whispered something the mirror didn't expect.
"I regret."
The mirror hesitated.
Callan struck.
And the mirror shattered.
Shattering the Illusion
The moment the mirror broke, the tower cracked.
The sky outside screamed—the violet bruise above the world finally rupturing. The stars blinked in again, struggling like fish gasping for air.
Callan staggered out of the fading tower, dragging Solenne, Seris, and Ren behind him.
The disc crumbled.
The cultists disintegrated.
And the sun finally rose.
It was not warm. It was not golden.
But it was day.
And day meant hope.
The Things Yet to Come
They didn't speak for hours after they emerged.
Eventually, Ren broke the silence.
"That tower wasn't just a trap," he said. "It was… a test."
Solenne nodded. "Something out there is looking for Callan. Not to destroy him—but to claim him."
Seris threw a rock into the sand. "Let them try."
Callan looked toward the east, where a silver city shimmered at the horizon's edge—their next destination.
"The world isn't just waking," he said. "It's remembering."
He felt the Heartflame stir in agreement.
And far behind them, buried beneath the desert, a crack formed in the bones of something even older than flame.
Something that remembered his name.