Lysane looked at him. Her dark eyes were full of a strange, deep sadness. "But what about tomorrow, Caster?" she asked. "The stars... you saw them. The universe is consequence. Even if the people run into the mountains... the Warden will just follow them. How do you fight the sky?""I don't know," Caster admitted. He looked at his own dirty hands. "I spent my whole life studying the deep earth. I never looked up. I was a fool.""We were all fools," Lysane said. She wrapped her arms around her knees, trying to stay warm in the freezing mountain air. "Archmage Vane thought he was a god. And now the real god is awake."They sat in silence for a few minutes.Above them, the brass telescope hummed a steady, deep tune. The dark magic continued to flow up and out, breaking into beautiful, deadly arcs of purple and gray light. The danger seemed to be passing.But a law of nature does not sleep. And a perfect machine does not like to be broken.Clank.The sound was small. It came from inside t

The glass and bronze lift moved down. It was leaving the clean, freezing air of the Sky Observatory. It was leaving the beautiful, indifferent stars. It was dropping back down into the dark, screaming world below.Caster Spellbound stood by the glass door. He looked down. The massive, thick cloud of dark gray ash rushed up to meet them. It looked like a boiling, dirty ocean. In a few seconds, the lift plunged right into the cloud.The bright starlight vanished. Everything outside the glass turned pitch black.Inside the lift, the only light came from the dark, glowing black veins on Caster’s arms. The closer they got to the earth, the harder his heart beat. The heavy, terrible pressure inside his blood was returning. The Ash Warden was waiting for him.Archmage Lysane stood behind him. She held the heavy Foundations book tightly against her chest. She watched the black veins glowing under Caster’s pale skin."How much time do we have?" Lysane asked. Her voice was very quiet in the sm

"It needs its vessel," Caster said. "It knows I am coming down. It knows I am heading for the Mana Core. If the Tower falls right now, I die under a million tons of white marble. The vessel gets crushed before the god can wear it."Lysane’s eyes widened. "The golems...""The golems are not hunters," Caster finished. "They are prison guards. They are sealing the exits so no one can escape. They are herding the survivors into the center of the Rings, keeping them trapped like cattle in a pen. And they are protecting the structural nodes to make sure the building stays standing just long enough for me to reach the basement."Lysane felt sick to her stomach. The intelligence of the dark god was terrifying. It was not a wild storm. It was a cold, calculating machine. It was preserving the stage for its own birth."It is cleaning the house for you," Lysane whispered."Yes," Caster said. He stood up. "Which means they will not kill me. They might even let me pass. We have to keep moving."Ca

The bright blue light spreading across the ceiling suddenly stopped. It did not fade away. It hit an invisible wall.In the center of the glowing blue crystal, right in the very middle of the pure light, a tiny black spot appeared.It looked like a drop of black ink falling into a glass of clean water.Vane frowned. He pushed his hands closer to the crystal, trying to force more blue magic into it. "Keep pushing!" he yelled to the others.But the black spot grew.It did not just grow; it spun. It spun exactly like the giant dark helix of ash wrapping around the Tower outside."Vane," Liora whispered, her voice shaking with pure terror. "The command phrases... they are changing."Vane looked down at the stone floor around the crystal.When they cast the spell, bright blue magical words had appeared on the floor. They were the Authority Sigils. They were the ancient words that proved the Archmages owned the Tower.But the bright blue letters were twisting.They were turning upside down.

The wind on the top of the mountain was like a freezing knife. It cut through clothes and bit into bare skin.Archmage Lysane pushed the heavy wooden doors of the Sky Observatory open. "Get inside! Quickly! Stay away from the edge!" she yelled.Little Finn and Elara ran past her, shivering violently. Behind them ran the older junior mages, holding onto each other to stay standing in the terrible wind. There were twenty children in total. They were the only survivors from the Great Hall.They ran onto the flat, dark blue stone platform of the Observatory. They huddled together underneath the giant, broken brass telescope. They looked up at the sky.The sky was a nightmare. The stars had shifted into the shape of a giant, dark void surrounded by a burning crown. The universe itself was watching them.Lysane dropped her heavy leather bag on the stone floor. She looked back toward the edge of the cliff.She had left Caster Spellbound at the broken stairs of the Tower. She had promised him