Ashes Beneath Hollowspire - Part 7

They stood at the edge of the forest’s breathless hush, staring at the black glass spire on the cliff beyond. The tower rose like a needle from the land’s charred bones, fractured but whole, reflecting slivers of starlight in its broken surface. It was older than Hollowspire, older than the Flamecourt, older even than the songs Elira’s ancestors once wove into stone.

None of them spoke until the winds picked up again, swirling ash like memory in the air. The stillness hummed like a breath held too long.

Tovik broke the silence. “So. Anyone else feeling like the tower might offer complimentary soul-binding and a death hymn?”

“Elira,” Vaelin said, gaze fixed on the tower, his voice steady but quiet, “what do you feel?”

Elira’s eyes fluttered shut. The air around her shimmered faintly, and her breath came slower, deeper. The rhythm of the world seemed to pulse through her bones. Spellwaltz threads unfurled from her shoulders, delicate filaments of flame and music that danced in tune with the unseen melody. “It’s singing,” she said. “But only to me. And it remembers everything.”

She opened her eyes—no fear, only understanding. “It’s waiting for us.”

They crossed the blackened ridge, stepping over skeletal roots and long-dead glyphstones. Remnants of old warding sigils cracked underfoot like ancient ice. Half-buried totems marked the cliff’s ascent, burnt effigies of unknown gods, stitched with rusted chains and cinder-coins, their mouths sewn shut. The land had not simply been scorched. It had been silenced.

At the tower’s base stood a door of obsidian and bone, its surface etched with spiraling musical notations. There were no hinges, no lock, only rhythm. Elira raised her palm, and the sigils etched into her skin pulsed in resonance. A slow breath, a half-sung note. The melody found its match.

The tower recognized her.

“Only one of flame may pass first,” the voice intoned, not spoken aloud, but carved into thought, a resonance in the bones.

She stepped forward. The door melted into golden light.

Inside, the tower was a spiral of living memory. Walls shimmered with ghostlight, fragments of song suspended in fire and time. Echoes of spellwaltz arias drifted between columns of ash-glass and molten silver. The air held heat without burn, weight without gravity.

With each step, Elira felt her breath sync to the structure’s beat. The tower remembered every song her ancestors had sung, every betrayal etched into its foundation. It was built not from stone, but from the broken promises of a god.

Vaelin moved beside her, sword unsheathed but held in reverence, as if to defend her from echoes. Tovik trailed behind, one hand brushing the air, his posture tense beneath a facade of calm.

“So far, I give this haunted song-spire a strong seven out of ten,” he whispered. “Excellent ambiance. Mild existential dread. Bit low on seating.”

The stairwell led them to a final chamber, round, vast, open to the stars above. A halo of molten mirrors circled the room like silent observers. At its center floated a crystal heart, shattered, fractured, bound by threads of flickering flame.

A figure stood beside it.

She wore robes of charred silk, her frame ethereal and terrible. Her skin gleamed like obsidian stretched over coals. No eyes. No mouth. Just presence. Just song.

“I am the First Voice,” she intoned, her voice a harmony of thousands. “I sang the gods into flame and silence. I called the Remnant to cradle the world. And now you bring me the echo of my heart.”

Vaelin stepped forward, his voice low, steady. “You’re not whole.”

The First Voice inclined her head. “No god is, when the faithful forget.”

Elira stepped closer, the heat of the crystal pulling at her sigils. “The shard, it’s learning. It called to a child. It remembers us.”

The Voice smiled, somehow. “Because you changed the song. You made the waltz break its loop. You brought choice where there was only rhythm.”

The air grew dense. The mirrors shimmered.

“But unfinished hymns fester. The final note was always meant to be yours.”

The mirrors twisted.

Visions bled into view:

— Vaelin, a god-slayer veiled in silence, hands soaked in the blood of faith.

— Elira, crowned in flame, her voice a commandment carved into mountains.

— Tovik, masked and crowned, smiling down from a throne of lies and ash.

They stepped back, together. A breath. A beat.

“No,” Elira said.

She reached into the air and pulled the spellwaltz around them, notes flaring bright and wild, refracting across their limbs and hearts. “We finish the song our way.”

She sang.

It was not the Voice’s song. It was hers. Fire-woven, sigil-shaped, memory-laced. It held no command, only invitation. A chorus of three.

Vaelin moved with her rhythm, not as a soldier, but as a dancer of blades. His movements were fluid, a memory of the Remnant now reclaimed. Each step cut away illusion.

Tovik laughed as the tower writhed in resistance, hurling fragmented futures at them like broken oaths. “Oh, now we’re talking!” he shouted, flinging daggers dipped in trickster verse, unraveling memory with mischief.

The Voice shrieked, a song unraveling in dissonance. The heart pulsed wild. The tower trembled.

With one final note, Elira’s voice cracking but sure, they bound the crystal heart anew.

Not to flame. Not to command. Not to a god.

To choice.

The tower burst into firelight, not destruction, but rebirth. Walls sang with freedom. The Remnant’s pulse softened.

When they awoke, it was morning.

They were back in Hollowspire. No ash, no echoes. The town breathed. Wind stirred. Birds sang. Children laughed.

Tovik stretched and winced. “I swear, if we get called gods after this, I’m charging tribute.”

Vaelin, for once, laughed. “Make sure you accept goats.”

Elira smiled and reached out, taking both their hands.

“We didn’t destroy a god,” she said. “We reminded it that even fire must listen.”

And far below, where the tower once stood, the land whispered a new song.

One of flame.

One of memory.

One of choice.

One of them.