2025-06-01 12:43:13
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Chapter 173
The stormfront broke over the coast of Meridia just before dawn, draping the sky in a bruise colored shroud. Thunder rolled like ancient drums. And from the sea, they came.The Listeners. They rowed in perfect silence, their ships gliding across still water as if carried by thought alone. Dozens of them. Then hundreds. Bonewood oars dipped in tandem, creating no sound. Their faces were hidden beneath curved helms of stone, carved with open ears where mouths should have been. Blank, unblinking, unfeeling.The Tower had summoned its audience, and the world would never be the same.From a high perch on the cliffs above the beach, Mina crouched in silence. Her cloak, soaked with sea mist and rain, clung to her form like ivy. Behind her, Oliver stood, pale and shaking, still recovering from the strain of the Tower’s unraveling.“They're not human,” he whispered.“No,” Mina said. “They're not.”They watched the first boats touch sand. The Listeners didn’t speak. Didn’t gesture. Didn’t eve
Chapter 172
The sea hissed where the water met the obsidian roots of the new tower. Fog curled around its rising walls, woven with the scent of brine, ozone, and old death. From the cliffs of Orell’s Watch, one could see it looming—taller now than any lighthouse, its spiral frame stretching into the storm-choked sky.And it was still growing. Ships had turned away. Villages had gone silent. The tower gave off no light, no heat. But it sang.Low and endless. A note that vibrated in the bone more than the ear. A warning and a welcome, both at once, and in the frozen spray of dawn, Oliver watched it rise.The skiff he'd borrowed creaked as it struck the shallows. A storm rolled on the horizon, angry and gray, but Oliver didn’t flinch. His boots touched sand that hadn't seen sunlight in eons, and still he walked forward. Every part of him told him to run.His blood screamed. His heart thumped in erratic, arrhythmic pulses—sometimes syncing with the tower’s humming, sometimes not. Each misstep made
Chapter 171
Snow no longer fell on Highbarrow. It hung suspended in the air each flake caught in some strange stasis, like time itself hesitated around Oliver.He sat at the edge of the broken parapet, legs dangling over frostbitten stone, silver eyes tracking distant clouds. He hadn’t spoken in hours. Since the battle beneath the Whispering Deep, something in him had… shifted.He didn’t sleep. He didn’t blink as often. And when he breathed, the world seemed to breathe with him.Mina stood a few paces back, her arms crossed, watching.“How long’s he been like this?” Elias asked, approaching with a flask of steaming broth.“Since the throne,” she said. “He’s hearing things.”“Voices. Songs.” Elias frowned. “He’s not possessed. I checked.”Mina looked back at Oliver. “Then what is he?”Elias didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure anyone could.Later that day, in the central chamber of the old stronghold, Elias scraped the last of the golden dust from the shattered shard that had once powered the titan.He h
Chapter 170
Winter broke late that year. Snow, long absent from the southern ridges of Meridia, swept in on the second morning after the fall of Ascendancy One. Fine flakes drifted down through scorched branches, dressing the charred bones of the forest ridge in a shroud of white. The world looked peaceful again. But it was only an illusion.Beneath the ash, blood still steamed, and in Highbarrow’s war tent, the truth was heavier than frost.“Ascendancy Two?” Elias muttered, his breath fogging in the chill air. “Gods help us, we barely brought down the first.”He sat hunched over a half burned map, eyes red from lack of sleep. Glyphs danced at the edges of his parchment sigils he’d drawn to stabilize the torn magical field the Conductor had left behind. The pulse from the console hadn’t stopped. It had simply gone… deeper.“She called it a symphony,” Oliver said, pacing across the stone floor. “Not an army. Not a cult. A symphony.”“Which means someone else is playing now,” Mina added grimly.Th
Chapter 169
The red sky broke at dawn like the shattering of stained glass. From the battlements of Highbarrow, Oliver watched as streaks of fire painted the horizon. Pillars of smoke rose beyond the tree line wide and deliberate. Not the careless destruction of bandits or rogue beasts. These fires were signals. Tactics. A message.The enemy was coming, and they had already begun to burn the land.“They’re pushing from the east,” Elias said, his fingers wrapped tightly around a spyglass. “Fifteen hundred strong, maybe more. No banners. No horns. Just… silence.”“Mercenaries?” Mina asked from where she stood, arm still bound in slingcloth.Elias shook his head grimly. “Worse. Disciplined. Uniform. But not Imperial.”Oliver narrowed his eyes. “Then who?”“Ghosts,” muttered General Berra. She was a hawk faced woman in steel plated armor, her grey braid twisted like a rope. “Those aren’t soldiers. They’re revenants. Risen or reprogrammed. I’ve seen it before once, in the southern barrens. Kaelien
Chapter 168
The final door stood before them like a monument to all Kaelien had tried to forget.No lock. No keyhole. Just a smooth obsidian slab, ringed with runes that whispered as they moved. Ancient magic older than the Glacari, older than the Empire. A language forged in suffering.Oliver placed a hand on it. It pulsed with cold.Mina stepped beside him. “Are you ready?”“I don’t think it matters,” he replied. “It’s ready for us.”The door melted open not shattered, not pushed but surrendered, sliding into the floor like water freezing in reverse. Mist rolled out, thick with the scent of burnt steel and memory.Beyond it lay the heart of Kaelien’s secret. A forge, yes but not one made for steel.The room was circular, cut from volcanic stone veins that pulsed with unnatural heat. In its center rose a great crucible, not glowing with fire but swirling with aether blue, white, and gold. Ghostlight shimmered above it.Chains hung from the ceiling, some linked to iron masks, others to shattered
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