The next morning, a pale sun rose over the Port City of Adwini, casting a brittle gold sheen across its high walls and moss-slick roofs. A creaking cart rolled out along the southern road, its wheels crunching over gravel still damp with salt from the night mist. Yvain held the reins up front, hunched slightly in a threadbare cloak, the hood drawn back to let the sea air comb through his hair. Celeste sat beneath the cart's canvas cover, one leg drawn to her chest, her gaze lingering on the receding spires of Adwini's harbor fortifications.
"Where to?" she asked, her voice low, not because she doubted his leadership, though she often did, but because she already knew the answer.
Yvain didn't look back. He tugged gently at the reins, watching the horse veer slightly along a bend. "The Hundred Towers, probably."
Celeste tilted her head, unimpressed. "Of course."
The Hundred Towers, so named not out of poetry but precision, jutted from the earth like a crown of spindled fingers. Each tower was a different height, built by a different thaumaturge or school, often in architectural defiance of the one beside it. As if the city had been born of a wager between mages: who could build higher, stranger, or more impossibly. Whatever the case, the city became the preeminent bastion of arcane knowledge in the known world. Even the Magisterium bowed to its libraries.
And nestled in the uppermost lattice of those towers dwelled Lissom Qen, the Living Grimoire, Fabric of the Message. Yvain had read of her in many tomes. He wasn't sure what he'd ask, not yet. But he knew he needed to stand in that presence.
"I'd rather go to Necropolis," Celeste said, folding her arms.
Yvain glanced back at her, brows raised. "It's across the Sea. We'll go from the Towers. It makes sense." A pause. "Besides, if there's anything left recorded about Derenthyr, it'll be there."
She looked past him, eyes narrowing as if she could already see the distant towers. "He hasn't been seen in sixty years."
"True," Yvain said softly.
Dragons had waned. Of that, there was no debate. In this age, dragonlords were nearly relics, myths who occasionally walked in flesh. The great House Dehmohseni had once boasted a brood that filled skies and scorched valleys. But time, treachery, and war had stripped them bare. By the fall of Babel, only three dragons remained. Two had perished in fire and ruin.
But Derenthyr had not.
Derenthyr the White was no mere firedrake, no engineered beast from the birthing pits of the Magisterium. He was an Elder Wyrm, the last in this age, a creature of centuries. He had borne many Dehmohseni lords on his back, the last of whom had been Yvain's grandfather.
After his death, Derenthyr vanished. Not even the razing of Babel, where the sky itself wept blood and towers turned to slag, had roused the wyrm.
"I suppose we'll need him," Celeste said after a long silence, "if we're to reclaim our birthright."
Yvain didn't reply immediately. His fingers loosened slightly on the reins. "Perhaps."
She looked at him, eyes narrowing. "You don't seek to claim him, do you?"
Yvain was just opening his mouth to reply when the horse gave a sudden snort and sidestepped. Up ahead, sprawled face-down in the dust like a discarded rag doll, lay a man. His arms were stretched out as if he'd tried to embrace the road itself. He murmured something into the earth, soft and slurred.
As the cart drew alongside him, the man stirred, wobbling to his knees. A battered lute was slung across his back, and from the bouquet wafting their way, it was clear he'd bathed in spirits rather than water.
"Fellow travelers!" he cried, staggering upright with the overacted flourish of a stage actor. "A moment of mercy! A ride, if you please! I offer no coin, no minted lies. But I can pay—oh yes—I can pay in song. Sweet music to soothe the weary soul and rouse the lazy sun!"
Yvain didn't break stride, flicking the reins to keep the horse moving. He didn't even look down. Celeste, however, pulled the canvas aside with mild amusement, one brow raised.
Unperturbed, the man fumbled for his lute and began strumming with surprising competence. His fingers found the strings as if they remembered better days, and he began to sing, an old country ballad about a lovelorn sailor and a river that never led home. His voice was raw but carried a mournful charm, cracked like old wine casks.
"Wait!" he shouted as they passed, jogging awkwardly to keep pace with the cart. "I can do more than sing, I swear it! I cook, I clean. I make a roast that'll make your mothers weep! Don't leave me to die in this gods-forsaken ditch!"
Yvain sighed. He glanced down into the rear of the cart at the travel packs Lome had arranged for them. It was mostly dried rootbread, flaked oats, and a few jars of pickled radish. Neither he nor Celeste could so much as boil an egg without risking combustion.
He tugged the reins, slowing the cart. "Get in, then!" he called.
With a victorious whoop, the man clambered aboard, nearly upending a barrel of water in the process.
"You have my thanks," the bard panted, adjusting his lute.
"It's not your thanks I need," Yvain said curtly.
"Ah. Music, then!" the bard said brightly, lifting the lute.
"Not that either."
The bard blinked, then glanced at the meager supplies and finally understood. "Oh."
Celeste burst into laughter, the sound clear and sudden like bells on a cold morning.
The bard flushed crimson but grinned through it. "Well, no one ever forgets their first taste of my pheasant roast, once we catch a pheasant, of course. I'm Mars," he added with a sweeping bow despite being seated. "Mars of Redmarsh. Bard, cook, occasional poet, and survivor of heartbreaks both romantic and culinary."
"Yvain," came the reply, quick and easy. "From Salem."
It wasn't true. But it didn't matter.
Mars turned toward Celeste with theatrical reverence. "And you, radiant lady of mystery?"
"Celeste," she replied simply, her smile still lingering.
"Well met, Celeste of—somewhere," Mars said, settling in. "May the road be kind, and the birds fat."
The journey to the Hundred Towers was proving longer than Yvain had expected. His plan had been simple, travel from town to town, taking rest and provisions as they went. But the plan quickly unraveled when, by nightfall of the first day, they had not seen so much as a crumbling signpost, let alone a village.
He didn't say anything, admitting they might be lost was not a burden he was ready to shoulder aloud.
They made camp just off the trail, a quiet patch beneath a willow tree with wide leaves that rustled like soft laughter in the dark. Celeste gathered kindling, Yvain tended to the fire, and Mars, ever the eager domestic, claimed the cooking with all the ceremony of a master chef preparing a banquet. The soup he conjured from dried beans, smoked herbs, and a crumbling stock cube of questionable origin was, against all expectations, delicious.
As the sun disappeared behind the hills and the fire cast a golden glow over their modest camp, the creaking of wheels interrupted the hush. A small caravan approached along the road. Three wagons, brightly painted but weatherworn, with banners fluttering like tired flags.
The lead cart rolled to a stop. A man in a red vest and a travel-worn wide-brimmed hat stepped down and approached them with the ease of someone used to speaking first.
"Good evening, good sirs," he called, offering a friendly wave. "I hope it's no trouble if we make camp nearby. This patch of road's been generous with flat ground."
Yvain gave the man a measured look. The caravan bore the marks of trade, crates of wares, a pot clanging from one axle, a dog sleeping under the rear wheel. Nothing unusual. Nothing threatening
"Whatever suits you," he replied, nodding once.
The man grinned, whistled to his people, and soon the area was a bustle of quiet industry. Campfires flared, tents unfurled, pots clanged. It wasn't long before the woods smelled of a dozen different suppers.
Mars, beaming with pride at his own culinary success, was playing his lute again, strumming a lilting tune that danced somewhere between melancholy and merriment.
"That's a lovely tune," said the caravan leader, now seated on a fallen log near their fire, his daughter perched beside him, her legs swinging in the air.
"Well, thank you, my good sir," Mars replied with a gracious bow of the head. "At last! A man of taste. My companions, I fear, are tragically immune to musical brilliance."
Yvain didn't even look up. Celeste smirked behind her soup bowl.
"What's it called?" asked the man.
"Tragedy of Tragedies," Mars announced dramatically. He turned to the little girl with a playful gleam in his eye. "And what's your name, little bird?"
"Iyana," she mumbled shyly, clutching a ragged doll in her arms.
"Lovely name, Iyana. Would you like to hear a story?"
The girl nodded so vigorously her braids bounced.
"Excellent!" Mars declared, leaping to his feet with theatrical flair, knocking over an empty bowl in the process. "Everyone knows the tale of the Endless and His Divine Tragedy. But few—very few—know what came after. This is the story that ended the First Age."
Yvain sipped his soup in silence. He already regretted letting Mars on the cart, but the man could cook, and apparently tell stories too. Celeste leaned her head on his shoulder, a rare moment of softness from her. She already knew the tale, of course, but she smiled, listening anyway.
"After the Endless gave His life to forge the world," Mars began, his voice shifting into the rich cadence of an old storyteller, "humankind was left under the care of angels. These were not the gentle statues you see atop chapels. These were the Grigori, mighty beings with eyes like lanterns and voices like thunder."
Iyana's mouth fell open in awe.
"For untold millennia, the world thrived under their watch. Until she came. Lilith. Mortal. Clever. And dangerous. She fell in love with Samyaza, chief of the Grigori, and he with her. A forbidden love! The best kind."
Celeste snorted quietly. The original tale described seduction, rebellion, and enchantment, but Mars was spinning it into a tragic romance fit for a traveling play.
"Samyaza taught her the secrets of the stars," Mars continued, "and the names no mortal should speak. How to cloak demons and robe angels. How to bargain with the dead and read fate like ink on a scroll. From this, the first witch was born."
Iyana was wide-eyed, completely enchanted.
"But their love," Mars said with a sigh, "was not meant to last."
"Why not?" Iyana asked, leaning forward.
"The prime angels looked down and saw sorcery blooming across the earth, Nephilim walking the realm. They were furious. They seized Samyaza and the other Grigori who had consorted with mortals, locked them deep within the earth. Then, they sent the Deluge."
He paused for effect. The fire crackled.
"The First Age ended. But not all was lost. Some humans survived, and so did sorcery."
There was a moment of silence. Then Iyana said in a breathless voice, "What happened next?"
Her father chuckled and patted her head. "That's enough for one night, honey. Time for bed."
"But Papa—!"
"No arguing. Stories need sleep too," he said, lifting her into his arms. "Thank the bard."
"Thank you, Mister," she murmured.
Mars doffed an invisible hat. "A pleasure, little bird. Sleep deep, dream well, and beware any talking owls. They're terrible liars."
As father and daughter disappeared into their tent, Mars flopped backward onto the grass with a dramatic sigh.
"You know," he said, staring at the stars, "I might've been a priest once. Or a prince. Something with a 'P.'"
"You were probably a pest," Yvain muttered.