Awakener's Guide to Climbing the Tower

Warm rain touched Misha’s face.

She opened her eyes beneath a sky filled with pale blue clouds and immediately frowned. Rainwater slipped across her brow, caught briefly on her lashes, then ran cold along the side of her nose despite the strange warmth of the air.

"Where the hell am I?"

Her voice disappeared beneath the steady patter of rain.

Misha turned slowly, and noticed a city stretched around her, not one she recognized.

White stone buildings stretched along a broad avenue lined with flowering trees, while deep blue banners hung from balconies and towers, each bearing the same emblem: a white dove with its wings spread, carrying a small golden bell between its claws.

She had seen the emblem before. The same crest had been carved above the entrance of the Bell House.

Her hand moved instinctively toward the dagger at her hip, and felt nothing.

Glancing down, she saw no dagger and no cloak. She wore none of the equipment she had gone to sleep with.

She turned again, searching for an alley, a doorway, anything familiar enough to anchor herself.

Then she noticed the people.

Children chased one another through the rain without concern for getting soaked, splashing one another through the shallow puddles while an exhausted woman shouted after them from beneath a striped awning. Merchants scrambled to cover baskets of fruit and rolls of fabric before the rain became heavier. A butcher leaned halfway out of his shop to pull a wooden sign beneath shelter while still arguing with someone inside.

The city was alive.

Misha stood in the middle of the avenue while people passed around her without once looking at her.

A boy ran directly toward her, and before she could react, he passed through her. His laughing face blurred across her vision, and then he continued down the street without ever realizing she had been there.

Her gaze sharpened as she examined the street again. "Am I dreaming?"

She took a few steps toward the nearest house, that was when she noticed the pair of shoes.

There were pairs outside almost every doorway. Some had been left neatly beside doors, some were muddy boots, others embroidered slippers or small sandals that clearly belonged to children, but every pair faced normally toward the street.

Then the vision shifted, and the rain stopped.

"...Right. This is definitely a dream." Then she exhaled through her nose. "Fine. Show me whatever you’re trying to show me."

The dream answered with hoofbeats.

Misha stood on the same avenue beneath a clear afternoon sky, except a procession of mounted soldiers now approached the city gates. At their head rode a young man wearing armor beneath a blue cloak clasped with the white dove.

The Crowned Prince looked rather young, perhaps somewhere in his early twenties. His crimson hair had grown slightly too long during his journey, his face was sun-browned from weeks on the road, and exhaustion showed beneath his blue eyes, but he smiled when the city walls finally came into view.

"We are home," one of the soldiers behind him said, relief thick in his voice.

The gates stood open, and somehow, that was the first thing that felt wrong when they noticed it.

There were no guards waiting to announce the prince’s return, and no one crowding the road despite the afternoon hour. The avenue beyond the gate was completely empty.

One of the knights reached instinctively for his sword. "Where is everyone?"

Then, the Crown Prince looked toward the first house and saw two pairs of shoes sitting outside the door, upside down, their soles facing the sky.

His smile disappeared.

Misha followed his gaze farther down the street and felt something cold settle beneath her chest. Every home had done it, hundreds of shoes lined the empty avenue with their soles turned upward.

One of the prince’s men swallowed. "Your Highness..."

"How dare they disrespect Prince Russel like this?!" Another drew his sword, looking ready to cut down anyone who had insulted the person he served.

"We should drag them out and–"

"That’s enough." Russel’s voice cut through them before the threat could go any further. "Put the sword away. I have no need for you to spill blood over wounded pride."

"But..."

Russel remained silent, his fingers tightened around the reins until the leather creaked beneath his gloves.

He was angry, not at the insult, but at the wrongness of it.

The vision jumped again.

The palace gates slammed shut behind Russel and the handful of men who had followed him inside.

Misha saw steel before she understood what was happening.

The royal guards drew their weapons. The captain standing at the top of the palace steps was someone the Crown Prince knew because shock crossed his face before suspicion ever had the chance.

"Commander Nur?"

The older knight lowered his visor. "You should have not returned."

Russel stared at him in confusion. "My father sent me to negotiate the Jiapo border treaty."

"The King has no son."

That silenced the courtyard.

Russel’s men moved at once to protect their Prince.

Misha watched the memory fracture into violence: steel striking steel beneath blue banners, men who had once trained together trying to kill one another without hesitation.

Russel shouted names at them, demanded answers, even knocked one guard unconscious rather than killing him.

"Talven!" He blocked another strike.

The guard did not react to the name.

That was when Misha saw their faces properly. They had glassy eyes, relaxed mouth, and some were smiling faintly, almost peacefully.

She felt her skin prickle.

Angry men could be reasoned with eventually, terrified men could sometimes be controlled, but people trying to murder someone while looking content with their lives? That was someone else’s problem wearing human skin.

Russel saw it too, and his confusion disappeared first, then whatever hope remained that this was simply not betrayal.

"Fall back!"

The prince escaped through an old servant’s passage with fewer men than he had brought into the palace.

Only after sunset did they find the former royal adviser hiding inside an abandoned chapel beyond the city walls.

The old man was a mage named Uiylin Vsu, once his father’s closest counselor. His beard had grown unkempt, one hand was burned badly enough that the fingers no longer straightened properly, and every door and window around them had been covered in warding sigils.

When Russel demanded to know what had happened, Uiylin did not soften the answer. "Your father married again."

Russel stared at him. "My mother has been dead less than two months."

"I attempted to stop it, Your Grace." Uiylin raised his ruined hand. "This is what remained of the attempt."

The prince’s anger disappeared. "What happened?"

The adviser lowered his head. "That woman... she is not human."

Misha never heard the entire explanation since the dream gave her fragments of it.

One word appeared again and again in whispers between Uiylin and Russel, and that was Qorcavane.

It was a creature from beyond the western mountains, beautiful only because it wore beauty like clothing. Uiylin explained that killing the human-shaped body would accomplish nothing because Qorcavane did not keep its heart inside the flesh it showed the world.

"It hides the heart somewhere else," Uiylin told him. "In a place where she was born."

Russel sat opposite beneath the ruined chapel window. "Where?"

Uiylin hesitated, before he continued, "The Hollowood of Nareth."

Even the soldiers reacted to the name. One man made a warding sign against evil, while another quietly muttered that humans who entered Nareth never returned.

Russel clasped his hands together. He knew exactly what waited for him if he went there, but knowing the danger did not change what needed to be done.

"How do I get inside?"

===

Nareth did not welcome humans.

Misha understood that before anyone explained it.

The trees themselves seemed to lean toward warmth. Creatures with an extra limb followed footsteps from beneath the roots, and flowers opened when blood passed nearby.

Russel knew he had to enter it alone, and Misha saw how he did it.

His hands narrowed into paws, and his body shrinking beneath red fur. Where the prince had stood moments earlier, a fox with two tails shook rain from its coat.

One of his knights stared, openly unsettled. "I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this, Your Highness."

The knight beside him snorted, more amused than disturbed. "Then keep staring until you do."

Then, the memory changed.

That same knight died screaming beneath something that crawled.

Russel’s men had entered Nareth with him because none of them were willing to leave him unguarded once things turned dangerous. They knew exactly how much of a risk they were taking, but they followed anyway, choosing to stay at his side rather than let him face whatever waited inside alone.

One by one, they died holding monsters away from the path Russel needed to follow.

The last who died was the knight who said he could never get used seeing the prince transform into a fox.

Misha had never learned his name. She only saw him standing across a narrow stone bridge, shield broken in half and blood running beneath his armor while Russel–back in his human form–held a wooden cage against his chest.

Inside the cage, a green-and-gold parrot screamed. It was not like a bird, but more like a woman.

The dying knight looked over his shoulder. "Go... Go home, Your Grace..."

Then, the knight struck his sword against the bridge. "Go home!"