The heat in the lower levels of the tower was no longer the stagnant, humid weight of a ruin. It was the dry, bone-deep throb of a furnace. With the tower's ascent, the ancient ventilation shafts had cleared, and the dormant elemental cores had begun to hum, turning the Teachers' Quarters into a subterranean heart of industry.
Alaric stood before the Great Anvil, his red-gold hair damp with sweat. Beside him, the Theurge leader moved with a grace that felt out of place among the soot and hammers. She wasn't swinging a mallet; she was weaving light. In her hands, a loom of arcane threads dipped into a cooling vat of liquid mana, ready to be layered onto the dwarven steel.
"We have exactly fifty-one sets to finish," Alaric said, his voice straining over the rhythmic clack-hiss of the machinery. "Fifty for the semi-finalists. One for the Commander."
"You are asking the tower to breathe life into dead metal, Alaric," the Theurge leader replied, her eyes never leaving the glowing breastplate suspended in the air. "The dwarven alloy is hungry. If we don't key it correctly to the wearer's intent, it will be nothing more than a heavy cage."
Alaric closed his eyes, reaching out with his Second Sphere perception. Through the Ninth Layer's connection, he could feel the armor. It wasn't just metal; it was a memory of the earth's pressure. He guided his Aurora mana, the durability of his father's line, into the cracks of the alloy, while the Theurge leader layered the Lune-like precision of elven enchantments over the surface.
The result was a hybrid of legends. It was armor that weighed half as much as castle-steel but possessed three times the tensile strength.
"The champion's set," the Theurge leader murmured, nodding toward the centerpiece, "is reacting differently. It's drawing from the tower's own mana reservoir."
Alaric looked at the Knight-Commander's plate. It shimmered with a dull, oil-slick iridescence. It wasn't just armor; it was a sensory organ, designed to relay the tower's defensive alerts directly to the man wearing it. It was the mark of a protector.
The Call to the Horizon
While the forge burned below, Asimi was busy in the command tent above, turning a village ceremony into a geopolitical event. She hadn't just sent messengers to the neighboring hamlets; she had sent them to the trade hubs, the border outposts, and the lawless crossroads where the Empire's grip was weakest.
"The Starfall Invitation," she called it.
By the end of the first week, the gates of Asmora were no longer guarded against monsters, but crowded with travelers. Asmora was no longer a village; it was a magnet. The smell of the mud was being replaced by the smell of roasting meat, strange spices, and the sharp tang of sharpening stones. Tents bloomed like mushrooms around the palisade, a city of canvas rising to meet the city of marble.
"You're inviting the world to see what we have," Dawn said, standing on the balcony of the tower's second floor, watching the colorful chaos below. "Asimi says the Inquisition will follow the trail of these mercenaries like hounds."
"The Inquisitors are coming regardless, Dawn," Alaric said, stepping out to join her. He looked at his hands, still soot-stained from the forge. "If we only have fifty villagers in armor, we look like a rebellion. But if we have a tournament filled with warriors from every corner of the world, we look like a center of culture and commerce."
He looked toward the horizon, where the white horse of the Inquisition had vanished weeks ago.
"We need the noise," Alaric continued. "We need the distraction. If fifty-one men walk out of that tournament wearing dwarven armor, the Palace needs to believe they are the best of the best—an elite force that Asmora 'found' and recruited, not a secret army we built."
"And the semi-finalists?" Dawn asked. "What if a mercenary wins? What if a man with no loyalty to Asmora becomes the Knight-Commander?"
"
Alaric smiled, a thin, sharp expression that made him look far older than four. "That's why we're in the forge, Dawn. The armor is keyed to the tower. And the tower belongs to me."
Alaric's gaze sharpened, turning toward the shimmering wards that pulsed within the tower's walls.
"Every finalist who claims that dwarven steel will do more than just bow," Alaric said, his voice dropping to a low, certain tone. "They will swear an oath to Asmora that is bound directly to the tower's core. It won't just be words. The Theurges will weave the magic into the very fabric of their spirits during the knighting ceremony."
He leaned against the cold marble railing, looking down at the flickering campfires of the foreign warriors. "If they betray this land, the tower will know. If they turn their blades against us, the magic of the Theurges will uphold that oath by force. They can enter as mercenaries, but they will leave as the tower's own."