Caster’s boots echoed in the narrow corridor, though the sound felt almost swallowed by the Tower itself. The Forbidden Wing stretched ahead, a place no student or mage had wandered willingly for decades. Its doors weren’t sealed with polished wards or gleaming sigils; they were ignored. Neglect had woven them into obscurity, leaving only faint cracks and the occasional tremor of residual magic. Caster ran, each step measured yet frantic, aware that every motion left a trace behind him. Ash drifted in the air, lifted from the stone floor as though it anticipated him, and the faint scent of scorched parchment clung to the walls.He paused briefly beneath a broken archway. The corridor opened into a low-ceilinged hall. Here, the air shimmered with instability. Residual energy pulsed unpredictably. Lights in the torches overhead warped and twisted in mid-air, bending toward invisible currents, while the ash took on shapes, half-formed, flickering figures that rose and collapsed the i

Caster closed the heavy door behind him and let the click of the warding seal echo once in the silence. The Subterranean Archive above had grown still, the distant hum of the Tower’s upper rings barely audible. Here, in the neglected vault he had claimed for himself, the air smelled of scorched paper and the faint iron tang of old wards.Candles guttered along the stone shelves, their flames trembling against the draft from unseen cracks in the vault’s ceiling.He set the atlases on the broad stone table and spread them carefully, one atop another. Each parchment carried a history the Tower had tried to bury.Lines of leylines drawn by hands that had known what lay beneath the Tower. Nodes marked with glyphs that had been blacked out centuries ago. In the dim light, some of the ink had begun to flake, leaving small black islands that reminded him, faintly, of ash.Caster’s fingers hovered above a particularly old sheet, a hand-drawn map that smelled of resin and age. Unlike the of

The air at Erynd’s Crossing was dead. It did not move. It did not breathe.Caster Spellbound stood perfectly still. He looked at the black glass statues all around him. These were people once. Now, they were frozen in time. Their mouths were open in silent screams. Their arms reached out, begging for a mercy that never came. Caster felt a heavy weight in his chest. This place was a graveyard of bad choices.He looked down at the black stone platform in the center. The node. It was dark, but he could feel it watching him. It was a door that had been shut for a very long time.Crunch.The sound was sharp. It broke the deep silence.Caster did not jump. He did not turn around right away. He just slowly closed his eyes. The sound was a boot stepping on black glass soil. Someone had followed him."Do not move, Caster," a voice said.The voice was rough. It sounded tired, but very angry. It was a voice that had practiced giving orders, but right now, it was shaking.Caster turned his head,

Thrum.Thrum.Thrum.The sound came from deep under the black glass platform. It sounded like a giant heartbeat.Kael looked down in horror. The cracks in the black glass soil were starting to glow. But it was not Kael’s blue light. And it was not the bright, clean light of Tower magic.It was a sick, dark purple light. The color of a bruise."No," Kael whispered. He raised his staff. He tried to push his blue magic into the ground to stop the purple light. He chanted a binding spell. "By the rings of stone, by the iron will, stay silent. Stay dark."He pushed his staff against the black rock. A burst of blue energy hit the ground.The ground just ate it.The blue light vanished into the dark purple glow, swallowed completely. The floating tracker rings around Kael’s head suddenly stopped buzzing. They dropped out of the air and hit the ground with a soft clink. They were dead."Your magic will not work here," Caster said. He slowly backed away from the center platform. "This is old m

First, the light was backward. In the real world, the sun makes things bright, and shadows are dark. In the Ash Plane, the open air was completely pitch-black. But the shadows cast by giant, twisted rocks glowed with a sick, pale white light. The darkness was bright. The light was dark. It made Kael dizzy. He wanted to throw up.Second, there was the sky. Kael looked up through the tear, but there was no sky above. The sky was under their feet. Below the floating black rocks of the Ash Plane, there was a vast, endless gray ocean of clouds. The clouds looked like dirty wool. Giant storms of black lightning flashed upside down, shooting from the clouds up toward the rocks."What is this place?" Kael breathed. He took a tiny step forward, pulled by the strange sight."Do not move," Caster warned. "Do not even breathe too hard."But Kael could not stop looking. Then, Kael saw the embers. Floating in the dark, backward air of the Ash Plane were millions of tiny glowing specks. They looked