Light dappled through the trees, dancing in cold, sharp points on polished breastplates. The twelve-soldier squad advanced, boots crushing through damp, root-tangled soil and rotting leaves with a steady, heavy swish-crunch. The air smelled of pine needles, wet earth, and the faint, sharp tang of metal oil.
Not long ago, a golden pulse had erupted from the deep wastes, sending a ripple of distortion through the entire northern reaches. The Sanctum had dispatched a team. I was the most junior soldier in it.
I could hear the faint rustle of robes beside me—four Grey Cloaks moved in silence near the middle of the column. Their hoods cast deep shadows, swallowing their faces. Only their hands were ever visible—pale, bloodless hands gripping strange implements or scrolls that occasionally slipped from their sleeves.
A routine 'field operation.' Orders came encrypted, direct from the Sanctum. Only the leading Grey Cloaks knew the full details. Our job was simple: guard, execute, clear obstacles if needed. The target was deep in the border forest—a site of 'significant heretical activity.' Such missions weren't rare. The woods were full of fools who rejected the Circuit, or madmen digging for dangerous knowledge in ancient ruins.
The column marched in silence. Only footsteps, the scrape of armor, the forest wind. The Grey Cloaks spoke not a word, not even to each other. They moved like puppets on precise strings. This absolute quiet was more unnerving than any hostility. I tightened my grip on the cold wood of my poleaxe, knuckles whitening.
Finally, the trees began to thin ahead. Harsh, unfiltered daylight flooded in. We reached the forest's edge.
Habit made me raise a hand to shield my eyes, squinting ahead to assess the terrain, to find the path—
And my breath, along with every coherent thought, froze solid.
Where rolling hills or distant mountains should have been…
A Tower stood.
A black monolith defying all sense of scale.
It didn't sit on the horizon. It violated perspective, erupting into the center of my vision as if thrust directly from the earth's heart—a frozen bolt of dark lightning aimed at the sky. Its surface was an absolute, light-devouring black, too smooth to be natural, seemingly etched with faint, shifting patterns I couldn't quite focus on. It was impossibly tall. I craned my neck back until it ached, but could not see its peak. It vanished into the low clouds, or into some nameless chaos beyond. Sunlight flowed over its impossible surface but did not illuminate it; instead, it was absorbed, twisted, forming a shimmering, wavering halo around the structure that made it even more alien.
No sound. No life. Just the silent, massive, oppressive black entity, planted between earth and sky, a cold declaration of its own existence.
"…Hisss."
My sharp intake of breath was loud in the dead quiet. I felt the squad's synchronized halt, the faint, chaotic clatter of armor. Shock and chill, like freezing water, drenched the shirt beneath my plate.
Then, the second Grey Cloak in line raised a hand.
The gesture was simple: halt.
The entire column stopped as if jerked by an unseen rein. We stood at the forest's edge, facing the vast, lifeless plain and the silent black titan beyond.
What happened next was even more unexpected.
Two of the Grey Cloaks—the ones at the rear—detached from the group. Like weightless grey ghosts, they veered not toward the Tower, but sideways, into the denser, more complex woodland. They moved with impossible speed, vanishing into the tree shadows within breaths, as if they'd never been there.
The Grey Cloak who had signaled the halt turned to the one remaining beside him. Their hoods leaned close, almost touching. A whisper, low as insect-hum, passed between them—in a twisted, guttural language I couldn't understand. I caught only broken hisses of air.
A nod from the listening figure.
Then, the first Grey Cloak moved. Without a glance back, without explanation, he began walking toward the daunting black Tower. His grey robes swayed in the plain's wind, his form insignificant as dust against that colossal darkness.
We were left—a squad of stunned Golden Guards, and the one remaining Grey Cloak.
He turned slowly to face us. Though I couldn't see his eyes, I felt a cold, assessing gaze sweep over our uncertain faces.
No explanation. No orders.
Only silence, and the soul-freezing pressure from the distant, silent Tower that seemed to connect to another world.
We stood our ground, weapons in hand, muscles locked beneath our armor. Ahead, the terrifying unknown. Behind, the forest that now seemed fragile. What was the mission? Where did the other two go? What would the one walking toward it face?
No one knew.
We were pawns, placed by an unseen hand on the edge of a vast, dangerous board. And at its center sat the light-eating, silent black spire.
A breeze whispered through the trees, carrying the scent of soil, decay, and new growth. It brushed my exposed neck and the back of my hands. The weather was… beautiful. Almost indecently so for an operation. Sunlight warmed my pauldrons, chasing the forest's chill. I drank in that moment of peace, guilty and greedy.
Long campaigns, patrols, suppressions, and encounters with unspeakable 'anomalies' had stretched my nerves like bowstrings. To just stand here, on guard, not slogging through muck or facing steel or worse… it felt like a stolen blessing. I subtly shifted my stance, easing the ache in my lower back. Just a little longer. Please.
Hm?
The air… felt drier. The distinctive damp of the forest edge was fading fast. My throat felt oddly tight. And a faint, static-like prickling crept over my exposed skin. The fine hairs on my arms stood on end.
"Weird," I muttered, touching my neck. It wasn't a danger sense. More like… the environment itself was shifting in some subtle way.
"ALERT! ALL UNITS—!"
A comrade's roar shattered the fragile peace.
I jerked toward the sound, my grip on my poleaxe instinctively tightening—and saw what turned our blood to ice.
The remaining Grey Cloak had raised his hands. Floating between his pale palms was a heavy, ancient-looking tome, its cover flowing with dull silver-grey light. Its pages turned on their own, rustling wildly, each flip distorting the light around it.
The shadow beneath the hood seemed to 'look' our way. There was no human feeling in that gaze. Only a cold, procedural finality.
"Huh?" My mind went blank. What… is he doing?
In that split second, the veterans reacted. Their faces twisted with a look I'd never seen—despair, fury, and grim acceptance.
"ANCHOR IT!!" someone shrieked.
"HOLD ON! IF YOU WANT TO LIVE, HOLD ON!" another voice cracked.
I stared, dumbfounded, as my comrades acted with drilled precision. They drove their poleaxes, mauls, and other heavy weapons hard into the ground, burying blades and heads deep in the dry soil, even shallow rock. They wrapped both hands around hafts and grips, knuckles bone-white, bodies crouched low as if trying to nail themselves to the earth.
What were they doing? What were they bracing against?!
The Grey Cloak's voice cut through the chaos—rasping, flat, the sound of a verdict being read:
"FIVE!"
"FOUR!"
A countdown. My heart plummeted like a stone. Only then, with those merciless numbers hanging in the air, did the shattered pieces slam together in my mind—
The Grey Cloaks' unnatural silence and separation…
The absolute secrecy of the mission…
This impossible, wrong black Tower…
And the vague records, the rumors, of how the Sanctum dealt with 'high-contamination,' 'uncontrolled exposure,' or 'zones requiring total purification'…
We weren't guards.
We were…
Markers?
Bait?
Or… contaminated units to be 'purified' along with everything else?
"NO…!" I understood. Terror, icy and complete, drowned me.
I should anchor my weapon! I should hold on! I should find cover! I should—
"THREE!"
"TWO!"
Too late. My poleaxe was still in my hands, pointed at nothing. My feet were rooted by shock. My eyes were locked on the Grey Cloak's back.
"ONE!"
"ZERO."
As the last syllable fell—
Time stretched, then shattered.
KRAKA-THOOM!!!!!!
No gathering clouds. No gathering lightning.
Several blinding, tree-trunk-thick bolts of pure white fury lanced down from the highest heavens—from the layer of law itself—with no warning whatsoever. They struck our position with pinpoint, annihilating accuracy.
Light consumed everything.
Sound shattered my ears.
Unimaginable heat and force enveloped my steel poleaxe, and the insignificant me holding it.
Pain? There was no clear pain.
Only boundless, burning white, and the sensation of my body vaporizing, dissolving into nothing.
My consciousness was ripped loose. In the final instant before total erasure, a flicker passed through—
The breeze… the scent of the forest… that stolen, precious, fleeting moment of peace…
Ah…
So…
This is how it ends.
A faint, porcelain-crackling sound drifted on the wind from the distant edge of the plain behind him, mixed with the lingering odor of scorched ozone, before being swallowed by the Tower's more stagnant, unnatural air.
Beneath the grey robe, the pale face showed no ripple of emotion. He didn't fully turn. Only a slight tilt of the head, two points of cold light in the hood's shadow sweeping over the area just scoured by blinding lightning—now holding only tendrils of black smoke and an absolute silence. A squad of Golden Guards had been there. Now, only ruins meeting 'decontamination protocol standards' remained, along with his cloaked colleague shielded within the energy ward.
His gaze, sharp as a probe, snapped back to its target—the silent, seemingly eternal black monolith.
The Tower still devoured light, its surface patterns flowing like slow liquid. But to the Grey Cloak's senses, it was different. Not in form, but in… aura. A faint disturbance. Like a slumbering leviathan, disturbed by distant thunder, unconsciously twitching an eyelid in its deepest dream.
Sufficient.
The Grey Cloak slowly raised a hand. The pale limb emerged from the wide sleeve, skin untouched by sun, joints distinct yet unnaturally rigid. His finger did not point at the Tower's base or a door. It aimed directly at a seemingly smooth, featureless area high on the Tower's flank.
His voice rang out. Not a proclamation, but a flat, clear recital—each syllable precisely calibrated, utterly devoid of human inflection. It was directed at the Tower, and at the silent plain under its dominion.
*"Log entry: Inquisitorial Tribunal, Composite Brigade, Special Counter-Thaumaturgy Unit 74, Executor. Acting under Chapter Three, Articles Nine and Twelve of the Border Pacification Accords, and the supplementary clauses of the Anomalous Contact Provisional Act, hereby files formal charges and declares sanction."*
His words carried in the thick air, generating a faint echo, as if the space itself was being forced to record them.
"First count: Within the treaty-designated 'Silence Buffer Zone,' repeated, unreported, and unjustified spellcasting has been detected originating from the Tower exterior. Cumulative energy perturbation levels exceed permissible thresholds. This constitutes persistent provocation and a contamination risk to the stabilized boundary."
"Second count:Suspected abduction and unlawful confinement of officially registered personnel of the Creed. This action constitutes a severe breach of fundamental personal safety protocols and the exemption rights of the Knowledge Sanctum."
He paused. His finger adjusted minutely, locking onto another 'invisible' point on the Tower.
"Third count: Littering of cigarette butts." He delivered this line with the same flat tone as the grave charges before it, the absurdity made colder by its absolute seriousness. "Trace analysis confirms residue energy signatures are a high-probability match to active sources within the Tower. Disposal occurred in a non-designated energy-waste processing area, violating Micro-Regulation Three of the Energy Waste and Hazardous Materials Management Code."
"Fourth count: Wanton slaughter of brethren. You are implicated in the recent, unprovoked, and non-escalatory lethal engagement against a sanctioned Golden Guard patrol unit, resulting in operational casualties. This violates the Low-Intensity Conflict Conduct Code and the most basic tenets of engagement ethics."
The list complete, his arm remained raised, steady, pointing.
"Sorcerer." He used the title, his tone unchanged. "The above actions constitute a systematic and malicious violation of the Border Pacification Accords and their subsidiary regulations. You have broken the fragile balance witnessed and maintained by the Sanctum… and the 'Tower.'"
He took a half-step forward. The dry earth did not stir. Even dust seemed to fear the cold, different order radiating from him.
"The party who unilaterally shreds the accords forfeits all protection under them. What awaits you is no longer negotiation. Or arbitration."
The shadow beneath his hood seemed to deepen. The twin points of light fixed on a specific part of the Tower.
"Only…" he intoned, each word a hammer-strike, "…Divine Retribution."
The sentence hung in the air, a cold edict.
The moment the final syllable fell—
The Black Tower breathed.
A pulse, ancient beyond comprehension, hummed up through the earth from its depths.
It sounded like… laughter.
*"Mission status update: Charges declared. Sanction protocol initialized. Hostile entity confirmed. Environmental parameters logged. Composite Brigade, Special Counter-Thaumaturgy Unit 74, Executor, entering Stage Two execution readiness."*
He lowered his pointing hand. His arms fell back into his sleeves. He stood, straight as a spear, on the barren plain, facing the immense Tower. He spoke no more. A statue of cold purpose, existing only to enact 'Divine Retribution.' Waiting. Or perhaps, propelling the coming storm.
And the black monolith, through all his cold, lengthy proclamation, remained silent. Only the dark patterns on its surface seemed to flow… a fraction faster. A silent scoff. Or something deeper, more immeasurable, stirring awake. The distorted halo of light around it shimmered more violently now.
Silence returned.
But it was a different silence—taut, thick with the scent of imminent ruin.