The sky over Asmora was the color of a fresh bruise, purple and heavy with the promise of more snow. But for the first time in generations, the villagers weren't looking at the clouds; they were looking at the hill. The Wizard's Tower didn't just sit there; it loomed, a jagged spike of impossible white marble and gold veins that looked like it had been dropped from a higher world into the muck of their own.
Alaric stood on the edge of the training grounds, his boots sinking into the churned-up earth. He was four years old, a fact his brain—the part that used to be James Silver—still struggled to reconcile with the weight of the sword at his hip. His new hair, that strange red-gold hue, whipped in the wind like a flickering flame. Beside him, Dawn was a silent shadow, her knuckles white as she gripped her meteoric staff.
"They're terrified, Alaric," Dawn whispered.
"Good," Alaric replied, though his voice lacked the coldness he'd intended. "Terror keeps them sharp. It's the awe I'm worried about. Awe makes people forget to duck."
Before them, the first forty recruits of the Starfall Order were lined up. These weren't knights. They were smiths with soot-stained skin, farmers with backs bowed by the plow, and a few wiry teenagers who had lost everything to the river. They looked ridiculous in the masterwork dwarven plate—the armor was too fine, too clean for the mud-caked reality of Asmora.
"Shields up!" the Gallant commander roared. His voice was a rasping saw against the wind.
The sound of forty dwarven shields interlocking was like a single, heavy hammer blow. Clack-shhh. The "Shield of Asmora" formation was something Alaric had pulled from the tactics book, a dwarven design for fighting in tunnels that worked just as well for holding a narrow village gate. It turned a group of terrified men into a solid wall of iron.
"This is a mistake," a voice rumbled behind them.
Alaric didn't have to turn to know it was the Theurge leader. She was staring at the tower, her eyes tracking the faint, shimmering ley-line energy that was currently being sucked into its core.
"The Mana Spike yesterday was like a flare in a dark room," she continued, her voice tight. "Every scryer in the Empire knows something happened here. The Palace doesn't like surprises, little prince. Especially not surprises that stand sixty feet tall and glow at night."
"Then we'll give them a story they can swallow," Alaric said, finally turning to face her. "My mother is already drafting the letters. An ancient ruin, unearthed by the floods. A gift from the ancestors to a struggling fief. Providential, really."
The Theurge leader scoffed. "And the hair? The fact that you and the Angelique girl are both walking around with the mana signature of Second Sphere mages at age four? You think the Inquisitors won't notice that?"
Alaric looked at the platinum ring on his finger. Alanor, he thought. Can the Tower hide us?
The tower does not just hide secrets, the archmage's voice echoed in his mind, dry and ancient. It eats them. As long as you stay within the shadow of these walls, your signatures will be muffled. But once the Inquisitor steps onto this soil, you'll have to be more than a mage. You'll have to be an actor.
As the morning wore on, the training intensified. The recruits weren't just learning to stand; they were learning to breathe together. Alaric watched them, his mind running through the logistics. They had the armor, they had the pikes, and they had the tower. But they lacked the one thing that truly made an army: a reason to die that wasn't just "the Prince told me to."
He walked toward the front line, his small stature making the armored men look like giants. He stopped in front of a man named Kael—a former carpenter whose hands were a map of scars.
"Why are you holding that shield, Kael?" Alaric asked.
The man blinked, looking down at the four-year-old with the fire-colored hair. "Because the Commander said to, My Lord."
"Wrong," Alaric said, his voice carrying across the quieted line. "You're holding it because behind you is the storehouse. Behind you is the Illyndor soil. If you drop that shield, the river takes the wheat. If the river takes the wheat, your daughter doesn't eat in February."
He pointed toward the hill. "The tower is a tool. The armor is a tool. But you? You're the foundation. The tower doesn't protect the village. You do."
A ripple of something—not quite hope, but a grim, shared understanding—moved through the line. They didn't see a child anymore. They saw the thing that had brought the marble out of the earth.
By midday, the first real challenge arrived. It wasn't an army, but a single rider on a horse white as bone, wearing the crimson tabard of the Imperial Inquisition.
The rider stopped at the half-finished palisade, his eyes taking in the Starfall recruits, the masterwork armor, and finally, the impossible tower on the hill. He didn't dismount. He simply sat there, a predator scenting the air.
Asimi stepped forward from the command tent, her silver hair shimmering. She didn't look like an exile; she looked like a queen waiting for a servant to apologize for being late.
"Welcome to Asmora," she said, her voice like silk over a blade. "I assume you're here about the archaeological discovery?"
The Inquisitor's gaze shifted to Alaric, who was standing a few paces behind his mother. He lingered on the red-gold hair, his eyes narrowing.
Alaric felt the Ninth Layer pulse—a low, rhythmic thrum from the tower that seemed to wrap around his senses. It was the "Safeguard." It didn't just hide his mana; it felt like it was projecting a layer of "normalcy" over the entire hill.
"Archaeological," the Inquisitor repeated, his voice raspy. "Is that what we're calling a Class-Five Mana Event these days, Empress-Consort?"
"In this province, we call it 'survival,'" Asimi replied.
Alaric gripped the hilt of Flametongue. He could feel the Second Sphere mana humming in his chest, eager to be used. Beside him, Dawn's hand was inches from her staff. They were four years old, facing a man who could have them executed for heresy with a stroke of a pen.
But as the Inquisitor looked at the Starfall Order—forty men in dwarven steel, pikes leveled, eyes filled with the grim resolve of people who had something to lose—he didn't reach for his seals. He looked at the tower, then back at the boy with the sunset hair.
"The Emperor will want a full report," the Inquisitor said, his horse shifting restlessly. "And a tithe of whatever was found in those vaults."
"Of course," Alaric said, stepping forward. He smiled, and for a second, the Inquisitor saw something in the boy's eyes that shouldn't have been there—a flicker of James Silver's tired, corporate cynicism. "We have several crates of... very interesting pottery waiting for you."
The Inquisitor stared at him for a long moment, then turned his horse around. He would be back, and he would bring more than a horse next time. But for today, the wall held.
As the rider disappeared into the treeline, Alaric let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. He looked up at the tower, then at his hands. The Starfall Order was born. The tower was awake. And the game had finally, truly, begun.