The Hollow Spire rose like a bone thrust through the heart of the world.
Its silhouette pierced the dawn, jagged and merciless, a tower carved from grief and held together by screams. Even from a distance, the magic clinging to it twisted the sky—making the clouds churn in slow, unnatural spirals. Lightning flickered without thunder. The earth beneath it pulsed like a slow, dying heart.
We stood on the final ridge before the descent into the Court’s last sanctuary.
Our army stretched behind us—shifters wrapped in the hues of stone and moss, witches cloaked in runes that pulsed with leyline heat, sky-riders perched atop beasts with wings of thunder. Ashbourne’s fractured alliances had become something else entirely.
A new realm.
And I was its fire.
“I hate that place,” Selene muttered
