Gray Spire rose before them like a threat the earth had decided to keep. From a distance, it was a black needle stabbing the sky, its window-slits narrow as blades, its base fused to bedrock in a way that made it seem less built than grown. Up close, it was worse: the stone itself seemed to hum, faint and sour, a resonance that made Lena’s crowns twitch uneasily above her head.
The road leading straight to the Spire was obvious, too obvious—wide enough for carts, guarded by walls etched with sigils that flickered like watchful eyes. The side-door Kest had spoken of, however, was another matter. It lay hidden in the seam between buttress and cliff, a place where erosion had worried at the rock for centuries. To an ordinary traveler it was nothing but a crack. To someone who had once carrie
