I spent the night on a rooftop in the Ashfields.
Not my first choice. Not even my third. But asking random climbers where the cheap accommodations were had led to a boarding house that wanted fifteen Ash per night and I had zero Ash total. So. Roof it was.
The building I'd picked was short and squat with a flat top that smelled like tar paper and old rain. Someone had left a broken chair up here at some point. I dragged it against the low wall that kept drunk climbers from rolling off the edge and used it as a pillow.
Uncomfortable didn't begin to cover it.
But I'd slept in worse. The group home when I was twelve had bunks with springs that poked through the mattress in three places. This was just hard. Hard I could work with.
The two moons overhead stayed bright enough that closing my eyes felt like a suggestion rather than a command. I watched them for a while. Tried to figure out which one was real and which one was Tower bullshit. Gave up. Did my best to ignore the cold and the chair leg digging into my neck and the fact that tomorrow morning I'd be entering a place that killed people regularly.
Sleep found me eventually.
Didn't feel restful.
I woke up when the sky shifted from dark purple to lighter purple and the street noise below started picking up. Voices. Footsteps. The clang of metal on metal from somewhere that sounded like a forge. Morning in the Ashfields apparently started early and loud.
I sat up. Rolled my neck. Every muscle complained. The chair had left marks on the side of my face that I could feel without touching.
Great start.
The compass came out of my pocket without me thinking about it. Habit. The needle spun once, twice, then settled pointing toward the center of the city where the Grand Transporter sat. Not helpful. I already knew where I was going.
I climbed down from the roof using the same fire escape I'd climbed up and hit the street just as the first food stalls were opening. The smell of something fried and probably delicious hit me immediately.
My stomach made its opinion known.
I kept walking.
Cassia had said eight hundred hours. I didn't have a watch but the sky looked like early morning and I'd rather be early than late. Asking for directions seemed like the smart move except I didn't know who to ask or how to phrase the question without sounding like I had no idea what I was doing.
Which I didn't.
But admitting it felt dangerous.
An older guy with grey hair and a limp walked past carrying what looked like a bundle of leather straps. I stepped into his path. Not blocking him exactly. Just close enough that stopping was easier than going around.
"Need something?" His voice had gravel in it.
"Looking for the transporter access. The cheap one."
He snorted. "Alternate platform. Yeah. Keep walking that way until you hit the market row. Turn left at the stall selling boot repair. Can't miss it. Big door. Stairs going up. Takes a bit of work but nobody in the Ashfields is paying the Grand Transporter fees just to get to Floor One."
I didn't ask what the Grand Transporter fees were. Sounded expensive. "Thanks."
"Don't die on your first run." He limped past me. "Bad luck for the district."
The directions were good. I found the market row within five minutes and the boot repair stall was exactly where he said. The door next to it was twice the size of a normal door and looked older than the buildings around it. Wood that had seen decades of use. Brass handle worn smooth from thousands of hands.
I pulled it open.
Stairs.
Narrow. Steep. Lit by dim yellow lights that flickered every third step. The walls were close enough that my shoulders nearly brushed both sides. I climbed.
And climbed.
Fifty steps. A hundred. The muscles in my legs started complaining around step one-twenty. My F-rank Endurance wasn't doing me any favors.
The stairs opened into a landing.
Stone floor. High ceiling. And in the center, a platform identical to the Grand Transporter except smaller. Maybe fifty feet across instead of two hundred. The same white stone. The same faint glow underneath the surface that suggested something alive was paying attention.
A woman sat at a desk near the entrance. Middle-aged. Bored expression. She didn't look up from whatever she was reading. "Hundred Ash to use the platform. Payment up front."
"I don't have a hundred Ash yet."
Now she looked up. "Then you don't use the platform."
"I'm meeting someone. She's paying."
"Then wait over there until she shows up." She pointed to a bench against the wall. "Don't block the platform."
I sat.
The bench was as uncomfortable as the chair on the roof. Whoever designed Veilgate furniture had a grudge against spines.
Other climbers filtered in over the next twenty minutes. Most of them looked young. My age or close to it. Their gear was uniformly terrible. Leather armor with visible patches. Swords with nicks in the blade. One guy had a shield that was missing a chunk the size of my fist.
Level One climbers.
The ones who couldn't afford the Grand Transporter fees and had to use the budget option. The ones who were still figuring out if they'd survive long enough to make the Tower pay.
I was one of them now.
They paid the woman at the desk. Stepped onto the platform. Vanished in bursts of light that left afterimages.
I kept waiting.
Eight hundred hours came and went according to my best guess. The flow of climbers slowed. The woman at the desk yawned.
Cassia was late.
===
A/N:
Welcome to the end of the chapter, Chat. You want to see Nox rob the Tower blind and build his shadow army?
Then feed the algorithm.
Add this to your library, drop those Power Stones and Golden Tickets like Beast Cores, and flood the comments.
Every comment tells me to keep pushing the pace, and every Stone keeps the chapters flowing.
Don't be a lurker, let me know you're climbing with us!