Book 1, Act 1, Chapter 7:

The Ascari Tower

Aris Ascarian watched with fury from the penultimate balcony of the Temporal Tower as a distant shape guided a volley of javelins down onto the Sixth Tier. Beside him, Prime Mystarch Kara Kazarian let out a low, trembling moan—a sound almost grotesque in its intimacy, as if the destruction elicited raw physical pleasure. Chills visibly coursed through her body as the violent concussions reached the First Tier and shook the tower upon which they perched.

She leaned heavily against the balustrade, her breathing labored and her cheeks flushed.

“Kara?” Aris asked, a chill running through him as he searched her flushed face. He knew her devotion to the weave bordered on fanatical, but this was visceral—unhinged. "Mystarch?" 

“Yes—,” she gasped, smoothing her robes with trembling fingers to regain a semblance of her usual poise. “Yes. I was merely... attempting to align with the magnetic weave and alter the projectiles' trajectories.”

The explanation satisfied the acting Arcanarch only because he desperately wished it to be true—he had been considering the same desperate measure. He chose to ignore the disturbing flush on her skin; channeling raw electro-magnetic force was notoriously volatile, and Kara had always possessed an unhinged devotion to the weave.

“I am worried, Kara. I fear they may strike the tower next,” Aris admitted, granting her a rare moment of vulnerability. His eyes remained fixated on the distant form of the Warlock. “Why did they not strike us first? At the tower?”

“I... I do not know,” Kara replied, her gaze lingering on the Sixth Tier with unreadable intensity. “I must descend to the obelisk. Perhaps I can realign its polarization. We need to be able to communicate.”

“Please,” Aris said, feeling utterly drained. “Go. Do what you must.”

Kara Kazarian took in the devastation once more, exhaled shakily, and slipped into the shadows of the tower.

Outside, a second volley arced high into the noon light, leaving picturesque trails of purplish-blue wisps across the sky. Aris felt a sickening drop in his gut as the electro-magnetic energy contorted once more, violently forcing the projectiles downward. Five javelins. Five cataclysmic impacts in rapid succession, originating from the northeast, miles beyond the perimeter walls.

Aris cursed under his breath. The useless Fourth Tier were likely plundering storefronts at this very moment, led by a commander far more conceited—and, given Amir's reach into every corner of Shrine and off-world—far more dangerous than Commander Ire.

Where in the hell is the Seventh? Damn you, Ire, you treasonous bastard...

Then came the answering glows. Spheres of crimson flame erupted across the sky as the Seventh Tier’s battle-mages finally engaged. It was a strategy Aris had practically begged Commander Ire to execute after the initial attack when the majority of the tier commanders were assembled in the Frulcrum. Ire had initially resisted, claiming his mages were required below to protect the thousands of inactive warlocks standing in silent, orderly rows within the caverns.

Ire’s earlier display had been pure grandstanding. It had taken Aris threatening the Arcanarch’s full authority—and Al-Dias drawing her bow in the Fulcrum, accusing Ire of secret pacts—to finally force his hand. 

Now, fireballs pursued the airborne construct in a deadly, magnificent light show above the swirling dust where Aris’s nephew, Madark, had likely just been crushed.

Aris gripped the balustrade, digging his fingers in until the lignin bit into his palms. The tension split the illustrati etchings on his forearms, darkening his blood-soaked bandages.

Through his viewing aperture, the distant Warlock vanished into thin air. Instant invisibility? Aris’s blood ran cold. If the construct flew undetected toward the Temporal Tower, it could guide javelins directly into its base, toppling both the spire and the obelisk. Should the obelisk fall, any who practiced the art of telemancy would be reduced to incoherent husks.

Panic gripped his chest until two bright detonations flared in mid-air. The battle-mages had caught it, piercing whatever glamour it employed. Multiple fiery spheres slammed into the construct, sending its smoking frame plummeting into the deep.

The Temporal Tower desperately needed battle-mages. Yet Aris knew no one from the Seventh would answer his call. The Third might offer token support—their skilled archers could fell a Warlock with enchanted bows—but that would require admitting them into the tower's most sacred levels. Regardless, the point was moot; the Third were currently reeling from their own ruin. The Perch, the proud symbol of their Tier, lay in crumbled heaps, mirroring the fate of their principal rivals in the Sixth.

A collective cheer echoed from the First Tier garrisons far below, but the triumph was short-lived. Rising from beyond the northern walls came the frantic, guttural howls of the Underkin. Driven mad by the din of destruction, the horde was gathering. The Second Tier Commander had drunk himself to his death on this, perhaps the second most relevant day in the city’s recent history.

Aris closed his aperture and tried to steady his racing thoughts. How are warlocks miles away manipulating the magnetic energies of the obelisk?

The agonizing realization hit him like a physical blow. Oh, you oblivious fool.

The warlocks weren't overpowering the obelisk from the outside; its power was being manipulated from within. He desperately prayed it were false, for the alternative meant the enemy was already inside the tower.

Aris bolted from the balcony, taking the stairs three at a time up into the central spire, sweeping down the grand hallway toward the Arcanum.

“Step aside, Vector!” Aris demanded, his breath ragged from the climb.

A senior Vector stepped into his path, broad shoulders blocking the archway and a hand resting firmly on the hilt of his weapon. “Apologies, Master Ascarian. I cannot.”

“We are under active siege—” Aris’s gaze fell to the guard’s hand.

“We are, sir. But times of crisis are precisely when protocol must hold firm.” The guard made a deliberately slow gesture, easing his hand away from his sidearm.

Aris glared at him, then paused. For the first time in years, he truly looked at the man guarding the Vectorium Arcanum. Though the guard had relaxed his posture, he showed no fear before Aris. The man outweighed Aris twice over and was clearly bred for martial conflict.

“Until you are formally elevated to Arcanarch, Master Ascarian, I cannot permit entry—not without a Timekeeper's blessing or one of their initiates.”

Aris drew a sharp breath, feeling a rare pang of humility. All the rules, the weight of ancient bureaucracy in the tower—it had all been designed to prevent any single entity from wielding absolute power, ensuring the Temporal Tower never mirrored the rigid, oppressive hierarchies of the Tiers below. Yet now, those same safeguards were a direct threat to their survival. As with any system, when enough brute force is brought to bear, even the oldest rules crack under the strain.

Aris weighed his options. He could conjure a kinetic wall to hurl this Vector aside with ease. But then what? The Antecedent—the designated heir to the Arcanarch’s mantle—assaulting the Vectori? How would the ancient, withered minds of the Temporal Council judge such treason once the dust settled? When this crisis ended—as all crises inevitably do—would he be cast down to a lesser rank for saving the very tower they sought to protect?

Disproportionate reactions always follow the breaking of law, he thought grimly.

He eyed the soldier again. The Vectori were well-fed and well-paid, yet routinely treated like fine furniture—or like the gargantuan, metallic constructs standing guard in the tower’s lower vaults. If those constructs are corrupted too... Aris forced the thought away. One crisis at a time, Aris. One crisis at a time.

“What is your name, Vector?”

“Captain Reveli Shrine, sir.”

“Shrine? A long climb for one of your bloodline, Captain,” Aris said. He saw the guard’s jaw tighten—a sharp reminder of a dead-end name—but Aris had no time for pleasantries. 

No matter, Aris thought. “Who commands your direct post?”

The Vector looked incredulous. “The Prime Mystarch, sir.”

“If I summon her here, will you yield to her authority?”

“Sir, only the Prime and the Timekeepers may unlock the seal—”

“Will you obey her commands? Your direct superior's order?” Aris snapped, his voice echoing off the vaulted lignin ceiling. “The Prime’s voice?”

“Without question, sir. But I cannot unlock the seal.”

Aris could, of course, unwind the magical lattice of the seal himself; that particular weave was intimately familiar to him. Whenever the chamber was unoccupied by the Timekeepers, it remained locked to prevent unauthorized access.

He tapped his gnarled bone staff against the living lignin floor, staring down the Vector, before spinning on his heel and marching to the inner balcony that spiraled around the massive, humming obelisk at the tower’s core.

“Mystarch!” Aris bellowed into the central void, his throat burning from the strain. Below, dozens of mystarchs paused in their frantic labor. “Kazarian! Someone fetch the Prime Mystarch to the upper balcony at once!”

He closed his eyes, leaning heavily against the balustrade. Only a few dozen feet away, the obelisk thrummed, emanating its strange, discordant frequency—like a song stripped of rhythm. Strain pulsed violently through the ley lines. Something was inside. He prayed it was merely the lingering spirit of his ancestor, but feared a far more sinister force had taken root. Built by Ascar Ascari himself, the ancient pillar served as the magical heartbeat of Shrine, magnifying every telemancer's reach across the Tiers and stars beyond. If the enemy had hijacked its frequency, the city was already lost.

Aris turned back toward the doors of the Vectorium Arcanum, which wrapped like a crown around the pinnacle of the Ascari Tower.

Things would need to change within these walls. A great many things. Never again would they be caught unawares. The decades of unregulated alignments and foreign agents moving freely through this realm were coming to an end. The Vectori would become his sword, the mystarchs his shield. The guards would no longer serve as ornamental sentries outside empty rooms.

Enough of this. Customs be damned.

Aris slammed the butt of his staff onto the lignin tiled floor with heavy finality and turned back to face the two Vectori. Captain Reveli had resumed his guard posture, but the color drained from his face as he read the cold resolve in Aris’s eyes. Behind the Antecedent, the central void flickered green as the distant obelisk discharge arcs of raw magnetic energy.

Aris was done waiting for the Prime Mystarch. The Timekeepers were likely sleeping—or dead, given the extreme age of their order. He needed no permissions. He needed entry into the Vectorium Arcanum’s upper chamber to confirm his dread: that the Temporal Tower had been the true target all along, struck from within long before the kinetic projectiles rained from the sky.

Aris began to advance. “Step aside, Vector.”

“We will not, sir.”

“Step aside, or you will wake up feeling like a much older man—with brittle bones and a shattered frame.”

The junior Vector looked to Captain Reveli, wincing visibly as the Antecedent closed the distance, his bone staff striking the floor harder with every stride.

The guard would not draw a blade; drawing steel against the Antecedent was absolute madness. But in an instant, a glowing blue conjuration materialized in front of Captain Reveli. Hexagonal and shimmering, interlocked with smaller geometric nodes and bounded by a golden lattice structure, it was the classical defensive barrier of the telemancers—a fundamental weave taught to any who could feel the magnetic currents of the universe. In novice hands, such barriers were mere concentrated light, easily breached with sufficient physical force.

But Aris Ascarian was the Antecedent for a reason. He had mastered the barrier. He had mastered the art of aligning remote points across the vast distances between stars. Where others raised light, Aris forged dense, impenetrable force.

He thrust his hand forward, driving his power hard into the construct, reshaping its flat face into a heavy, parabolic wedge. Knowing a pointed tip would compromise the barrier's structural integrity under extreme stress, he settled for a blunted ramming force and launched it forward. The construct slammed into the heavy brass doors, shattering them inward and sweeping both Vectori into the dark chamber beyond.

As the doors ruptured, Aris felt an ancient, familiar spark ignite within his blood. For a brief second, the obelisk’s true frequency resonated clearly before collapsing back into its muted, discordant hum.

The brief shift confirmed his absolute worst fear, sending a wave of dread sinking into his stomach.

“Stand up, Captain,” Aris commanded, stepping through the splintered threshold. “And follow me.”

He shoved down a pang of guilt at the sight of the junior Vector, who lay unconscious with a severe head wound from the concussive blast. There was no time for healing weaves. Fates be damned, the die was cast.

Aris ascended the spiral staircase, rounding the corner into the central chamber where, earlier that morning, the enemy's distant warlocks had thrown him against the tiled walls during his aperture ritual.

Before him, the apex of the Ascari Tower pierced the floor. White and gold columns of grown living lignin framed the perimeter, inset with plush crimson seating around the central depression. The pinnacle measured eighty feet across—a circular observatory open to the elements, crowned only by an ornate domed canopy and perimeter walls carved with precise stellar maps and inlaid gemstones.

Aris glanced at the fractured wall where his body had struck earlier, wincing at the ruined artwork. Fine functional history, marred beyond recognition. But that could be repaired. The sacrilege of this room being defiled by a potential foreign presence could not.

“I told you—” Captain Reveli wheezed, clutching his bruised ribs as he limped up behind him. “I told you it was empty. We secured the doors ourselves, Antecedent.”

“Silence,” Aris hissed, his eyes scanning the empty air of the room.

“You need to leave—”

“Right there. I see you now, you bastard,” Aris muttered.

The Captain blinked, looking around the vacant room in utter confusion. “Who—?”

Aris slammed the butt of his gnarled staff into the lignin floor. I look like Commander Ire, he thought wryly, recognizing that despite their vastly differing schools of magic, the ancient theatrics of manifesting power remained identical in many of the conjurings.

A violent pulse of kinetic energy erupted from the staff’s tip, sweeping outward across the chamber. Pillows were thrown aside and broken tile fragments lifted into the air, caught in a swirling, localized magnetic storm. As the light expanded, the flying debris struck an unseen mass, outlining the slim, feminine silhouette of a warlock, shimmering in mid-air.

The Warlock’s optical distortion field buckled and collapsed, revealing the enemy.

Captain Reveli stared, his jaw hanging slack as the shimmering optical field buckled, dissolved, and exposed the construct hidden within the chamber.

The localized tempest of debris slowed, its violent rotation hummed to a steady vibration, and the scattered tiles clattered harmlessly to the floor. The Warlock lowered its gaunt, metallic arms to its sides, subtly pivoting its frame to face Aris.

Instantly, the ambient pressure in the air shifted. Aris felt the ancient authority of the Ascari Tower surge back through his soles. The underlying frequency of the realm felt energized, recharged, and intensely alive—wholly new, yet fundamentally familiar. This entity had not merely breached the pinnacle; it had been actively tuning the city's pulse.

Aris took a deliberate step forward. The Warlock drifted backward in perfect parity, soundlessly maintaining the gap between them. Step for step, it glided above the floor. As Aris passed close to the central depression housing the tower's peak, the raw intensity of the site hit him. His inner sight flared open, exposing the magnetic spectrum: ley lines of brilliant force coalesced in exquisite, complex geometries. Never in his life had he seen the current move with such breathtaking clarity.

Where he had once seen absolute perfection, he now saw something far greater: pure, unadulterated order. The chaotic noise of the weave had dissolved into pure logic, mathematically elegant and incontrovertible.

For a terrifying moment, Aris wanted nothing more than to drop to his knees and bask in the obelisk's transformed state. But he dared not sever eye contact with the intruder. Silent, unnerving, and devoid of breath, the construct matched his every movement. It was a courtly, forced dance—two identically charged poles maintaining a rigid magnetic repulsion. Aris could feel the physical tension humming in the air between them, and he wondered if the mind behind the machine felt it as well.

Aris pressed his advantage, driving the procession outward until he stepped onto the open balcony circling the crown of the Temporal Tower. The Warlock hovered effortlessly off the ledge, suspended over a thirteen-hundred-foot drop to the First Tier plateau—and more than eight thousand feet above the endless green lowlands far below.

For an entity possessing effortless flight, the dizzying drop was meaningless.

Aris kept his gaze locked on the construct and began to trace the perimeter of the ring. There were no balustrades along the outer rim. The architects had explicitly discouraged anyone from treading upon this decorative mantle, for the crystalized lignin beneath their feet was virtually transparent, giving the illusion of walking on open air.

Antecedent and construct paced each other, circling in their silent, measured orbit.

“Reveli,” Aris said, striving to keep his voice steady and commanding.

Silence answered him.

“Reveli!” he commanded, far sharper this time.

“Aye, sir!” the captain rasped from the doorway, clutching his bruised ribs.

“Bar the heavy doors and tend to the vector I struck,” Aris ordered, never breaking his stare. “Permit no one to enter. That order is absolute.”

Captain Reveli hesitated, undoubtedly contemplating the wrath of the Prime Mystarch should she arrive to find herself locked out, but the absolute certainty in the Antecedent's tone brooked no debate. He offered no argument and limped down the spiral stairs, his heavy boots fading into the deep.

“Why?” Aris demanded the construct as they rounded the northern quarter of the crown. Beyond the edge lay the sweeping forests of the Second Tier's domain.

At this height, unimpeded by the walls of the tower, the guttural howls of the Underkin drifted up from below—a ravenous chorus begging for the sun to sink. One crisis at a time, Aris, he reminded himself, setting his teeth. One crisis at a time.

“Are you conscious?” Aris pressed, adjusting his grip on his bone staff. “Are you a sentient mind, or merely a vessel? Am I being watched through your eyes right now?”

The Warlock offered no answer, its blank metallic face reflecting the dying light as it mirrored his pace. They swept along the eastern flank, overlooking the vast, tiered expanse of the city unfolding like a stepped mountain beneath them.

“Whatever you did to the obelisk was extraordinary,” Aris admitted softly. “Truly remarkable. I see now why you refrained from destroying the tower outright—if that choice was even yours to make.”

He continued his march, the rhythmic thump of his staff echoing off the open canopy. He actively fought down the harrowing thought of the fragile lignin floor giving way beneath him, sending him plunging into the abyss. If he fell, what then? The Warlock would simply return to its work, callously dismissing the Antecedent as a minor, temporary distraction.

“You and your kin were utilizing the obelisk’s heightened resonance to guide those javelins, were you not? Using this powerful heart to target my city?”

A cold wave of anxiety washed over him. Had he committed a catastrophic error by sealing the room? Would Reveli hold the line if the Prime Mystarch demanded entry? If Aris perished up here, how long before anyone realized the construct was still manipulating the obelisk? How many more warlocks would descend from the clouds to guide absolute ruin down upon the Tiers?

Their slow, circular march brought them around the southern expanse, facing the endless sea beyond Shrine—a vast, volatile ocean stretching to the horizon.

“You hold a great many secrets, don't you?” Aris spat, his patience wearing thin. “Speak to me, damn you! Speak!”

The construct remained infuriatingly mute, maintaining its precise distance as they completed the full circuit, returning to their starting position. Aris halted. The sun had begun its final descent at his back, painting the western sky in bruised shades of violet and crimson. Below, the howls from the northern perimeter grew louder, swelling into an agonizing din.

“Damn you!” Aris hissed.

He rapidly weighed his options. Soon, his presence would be desperately required in the lower levels to support the defense against the gathering horde. He had never engaged the underkin, but knew their chaotic and violent nature well from the tomes and stories of the few survivors. Yet, with the obelisk freed from the Warlock's direct touch, the city's communication lattice should be restored. The Tiers could finally speak to one another again.

Perhaps his only duty here was to buy time—to stand as a wall and trust that the commanders below would do their duty. Commander Miron and Captain Lane were capable; they would break the enemy in the field if given the chance with their respectful forces. He simply needed to be patient.

Aris resumed his pacing. But as he stepped forward, he noticed a subtle shift: the Warlock was accelerating.

At first, the increase in speed was nearly imperceptible. But as Aris reached the northern overlook once more, the construct had pulled ahead, leading him by a full stride. Around the crown they moved, the construct setting a faster, unrelenting rhythm, forcing Aris to quicken his own steps just to keep pace.

Suddenly, the Warlock surged into a rapid orbit around the pivot point of the obelisk. Faster and faster it moved, traversing the darkening evening sky in a blur of violent motion. Its metallic arms raised in unison, and a cold dread seized Aris. This is it. Soon, he would hear that devastating, screaming rush of incoming projectiles tearing through the sky. Soon, those cataclysmic weapons would slam into the Temporal Tower, shattering the structure and demolishing the fragile obelisk anchored at its core. The spire would collapse, crushing thousands below and leaving the lower levels in ruin. Undetected and unopposed, the Underkin would swarm through the breach in an unstoppable infestation, their numbers growing with every life claimed as blood seeped into the ancient, living roots of the lignin network.

It would be the end of Shrine. The fall of a glorious, millennia-old civilization. The end of everything.

“No!” Aris roared in desperate fury as the construct sped into a blinding circle.

Yet the terrifying whistle of descending javelins never came. Instead, the construct began to weave a raw, volatile conjuration. A sphere of violet energy materialized between its outstretched gauntlets, humming with terrifying resonance as it drew power from the surrounding air. The orb expanded, blinding and volatile, swelling in power as the construct’s rotational speed increased.

At the final, breathless second, Aris summoned a barrier behind his back. The Warlock unleashed a beam of concentrated violet light that sheared clean through a lignin pillar and slammed into the conjured field. The collision detonated in a spectacular cascade of violet and cobalt sparks, cascading over the edge and cascading hundreds of feet down into the twilight.

The crystalized floor shattered beneath the thermal impact. As the deck melted away, Aris conjured a secondary barrier directly beneath his boots. Had his instincts faltered for even a fraction of a second, he would have plunged into the void. Leaping clear of the collapsing platform just in time, he landed heavily on lignin grown stone-like material as the entire western crescent of the crown melted away, raining glass-like slag down onto the lower tiers.

Chest heaving, Aris stared at his hands in disbelief. His gnarled bone staff glowed with a fierce, iridescent white light. Unconsciously, he had tapped directly into the obelisk’s reservoir, drawing upon its boundless current without even realizing it.

He scrambled back toward the center, positioning himself alongside the obelisk’s pinnacle. He prayed the entity would exercise caution with such destructive magic, reluctant to risk damaging the sacred pillar itself. But as he watched the construct, a sickening thought took root. What if it doesn't care? What if the invading force has no intention of keeping the obelisk intact?

Yet Shrine required it. The realm required it.

Aris bolted away from the pinnacle as the construct began gathering energy for a second assault. He considered running for the stairwell, but to where? On this open platform, the attack could come from any angle.

Not at any time, though.

Aris focused, recalling the precise rhythm of the first build-up. He calculated the charge time, counted the seconds, and gathered every ounce of magnetic energy he could muster. He knew when the strike would land, and he braced himself to meet it.

Then, the Warlock fired early.

It released the beam seconds ahead of the previous cadence. Aris reacted instantly, raising a shield, but the hastily formed barrier lacked the structural geometry to withstand the full force of the blast. The barrier spider-webbed with bright fractures under the initial impact. Aris desperately conjured a secondary barrier at his back just as his forward shield disintegrated into a thousand glittering shards.

The kinetic force slammed Aris violently backward against his rear barrier, preventing him from being hurled off the open spire, but the impact rattled his bones and shattered his breath.

The crown radiated a chaotic storm of blue and violet static. Magnetically charged particles burned brightly in the air, blinding him as his vision blurred into a smear of light and color. Severe trauma wracked his body; hot blood poured from his ears, staining his collar, and his legs buckled beneath him. His staff had been violently torn from his grip, coming to rest precariously near the dark, narrow fissure between the obelisk and the floor.

The Warlock ceased its movement for a brief, agonizing moment, hovering motionless in the air. It felt deliberate—an unyielding, silent mockery. Though its face remained a blank, expressionless mask of metal, its posture dripped with contempt.

Slowly, methodically, it began to charge a third blast.

Aris lunged across the floor, his fingers locking around the gnarled bone relic just as he cast a frail, trembling barrier before him.

A sharp, high-pitched screech suddenly tore through the air—a horrific, mechanical whine that vibrated through the lignin and echoed inside Aris's skull.

“What was that?” Aris rasped, his voice raw. “Speak, damn you!”

The high-pitched tone whined again, oscillating wildly in pitch as the construct accelerated back into its orbital arc. It moved with terrifying velocity, far faster than before. The violet sphere ignited with blinding brilliance, its hypnotic glare cutting through Aris’s failing vision. The construct moved so fast that it dissolved into a single, continuous ring of violet fire around the crown. It was everywhere at once.

He could not block this. The speed was too great, the energy density far exceeding the previous strikes.

Using his staff as a crutch, Aris forced himself up, refusing to meet his end on his knees.

“Damn you, devil!” Aris spat, wiping blood from his chin. “You wretched dog! Be damned to the abyss, and may your soul be dragged across Riven’s jagged coast for eternity!”

Drawing on the final embers of his strength, he funneled his remaining power into his battered body and his cracked bone staff. He conjured a small, fragile barrier behind him, facing west toward the distant plains where his ancestors had first set foot upon this world—where they had first gazed upon the majesty of Shrine. He kept his eyes locked forward, looking east toward the glowing lights of the city below.

“You wish to play games?” Aris growled, a dark smile breaking through the blood on his face. “If that’s what you desire? Then let’s play!”

The construct’s screeching charge reached a violent crescendo.

Aris summoned his final barrier—not before his chest, and not parallel to his body, but far beyond the edge of the crown, angled like a blade perpendicularly across the Warlock's orbital path.