The interior of the Obsidian Spire was not what Collins expected.It wasn’t a hall of darkness or a tomb of ash. It was alive.The walls pulsed faintly like veins carrying molten light, and every step they took echoed softly, like the tower was listening. The air was warm, humming with energy that prickled against their skin.Elyndra’s voice barely rose above a whisper. “It feels like we’re walking inside something that’s… breathing.”Collins nodded, scanning the glowing paths that wound upward and downward in endless spirals. “The Spire isn’t just stone. It’s a conduit — built to channel the Flame.”They descended deeper, guided by the pendant’s dim golden glow. As they moved, they began to hear faint murmurs — not words exactly, but memories. Fragments of laughter, crying, chanting. The tower held the echoes of everyone who had ever come here.“Your father,” Elyndra said after a while. “He came here once, didn’t he?”Collins’ gaze darkened. “Yes. With my mother. They thought they co

The wind that greeted Collins outside the Spire was not the same one that had brought him here.It was colder. Sharper.And laced with ash.The once-radiant plains of Lutherchris now stretched gray and cracked beneath a sky that bled crimson light. Rivers that once shimmered like glass now flowed thick with black water. The scent of burning earth hung heavy, as though the world itself had been scorched by a divine hand.Collins stepped forward, boots crunching against brittle soil. Every step sent faint ripples of gold from the sigil on his palm.The mark pulsed, almost as if it knew this place.Or feared it.He scanned the horizon. The cities he had known — the towers of Nareth, the silver bridges of Vallor — were now distant ruins swallowed by haze. What remained were shadows that moved even when the wind stood still.> You awakened it, a whisper slithered through his mind. Now the world remembers.He froze. The voice wasn’t his father’s — nor the ancient spirit of the Flame.It was