POV - Serena
The High Spire always smelled like dust and old promises.
I felt it the moment I crossed the threshold, the air shifting as though the city itself had decided I no longer belonged to it. Blackthorn Row’s living magic peeled away layer by layer, replaced by something colder, heavier. This was not a place that breathed. It endured.
The doors sealed behind me with a sound like stone swallowing breath.
The High Spire Archives rose around me like a judgment already passed.
Spiraling tiers of marble and obsidian climbed impossibly high, shelves carved directly into the walls and stacked with grimoires bound in leather, bone, and materials that no longer existed in this world. Runes glowed faintly beneath the stone, pulsing in slow, watchful rhythms. Chains of light drifted bet
