Echoes Beneath the Tower
Part I: The Door Below
The wind off the sea whispered through the high windows of the Wizard Tower, tugging at blue-tasseled curtains and rustling parchment scrolls. Dusk painted long shadows across the stone floor of the study chamber, tinting the room in Saradomin’s favorite blues and golds. Yet Thalyria stood before the hidden stairwell with the weight of something ancient pressed in her chest—something older than the god she served.
Her fingers grazed the key that hung on a silver chain beneath her robes: a twisted relic of mithril and obsidian, cool even against her skin. She had found it weeks ago in a hollow space behind a statue in the library’s forbidden alcove—guided not by accident, but instinct. The moment she touched it, she knew.
It opened the door beneath the tower.
The one that should not exist.
The one no one dared speak of.
Now she waited in the sanctum chamber, where evening light flickered through enchanted glass, watching the horizon swallow the sun. The floor beneath her vibrated ever so slightly—just enough to feel like a breath held too long.
The door was real. The ruins were real. And she would not enter them alone.
The door opened behind her.
“Thought you’d be up here,” came Nyssarra’s voice, calm and crystalline as the sea at dawn.
Thalyria turned. The half-elf ranger stood framed in soft torchlight, her crystalline bow slung across her back, pale hair braided back from her face. A quiet strength radiated from her, as if she were rooted like a tree even when walking on stone.
“I sent the hawk this morning,” Thalyria said, stepping forward. “Did you read the message?”
“I did.” Nyssarra’s gaze moved to the spiral staircase that wound down into the tower’s depths. “And I knew before I opened it that you wouldn’t be asking me for tea.”
Thalyria allowed a soft smile. “You know me too well.”
“Not as well as you think. But I know that look in your eye.” Nyssarra tilted her head. “You found it, didn’t you?”
Thalyria nodded and reached into her robes, drawing out the key. The mithril caught the last of the sun’s light and refracted it in prismatic sparks across the chamber walls.
Nyssarra stepped closer, fingers almost touching the key but not quite. Her brow furrowed. “It feels... wrong. Not in a dangerous way, exactly. Just old. Like it remembers.”
“It does,” Thalyria whispered. “I think it remembers a world before us.”
They waited in silence until footsteps echoed again. Jahn Stirling arrived wrapped in a deep brown cloak, his golden hair pulled back into a warrior’s knot. He bowed his head slightly in greeting, though his eyes were wary.
“You’re certain about this?” he asked Thalyria. “We’ve had no word from the Archmage. The archives are sealed. No one speaks of the lower tower for good reason.”
Thalyria met his gaze evenly. “And I am no longer satisfied with silence.”
He studied her a moment longer, then looked to Nyssarra. The two shared a nod—a pact of understanding forged long ago, somewhere between Entrana’s quiet shores and the iron tension of the Wilderness.
Then Jahn turned back to Thalyria and said, “If we go, we need more than faith and instinct. The wards could be active. Magic down there may not follow the rules we know.”
“I agree,” Thalyria said.
It was Nyssarra who spoke the next name, low but steady. “We’ll need Wolfthora.”
Jahn’s brows lifted. “You want to bring her here?”
Thalyria inhaled. “I’ve considered the risks. But this isn't a raid or a duel. If the lower tower holds what I believe it does—fragments of the old wizard orders—then it’s possible we’ll encounter Zamorakian magic. Or traps designed for Saradominists.”
“Or for all of us,” Nyssarra added. “Wolfthora has walked through chaos and laughed. She may see what we cannot.”
Jahn’s mouth pressed into a thin line, but he didn’t argue. Instead, he paced once across the chamber, then turned back.
“She’ll come,” he said finally. “Not because she owes us anything. But because she’ll want to know what you’re unlocking.”
They met Wolfthora by the ocean cliffs two nights later.
The Zamorakian warrior leaned against a jagged outcropping, arms crossed, her dark red leathers catching the moonlight. Her axe hung at her back, but her expression carried amusement more than menace.
“You really are all terrible at subtlety,” she said as they approached. “A Saradominist priest, a crystal-bowed elf, and a storm-eyed mage come skulking through the Tower asking about locked doors? Either you're forming a cult or starting a war.”
“We’re doing neither,” Thalyria replied evenly. “We’re going beneath the Wizard Tower.”
Wolfthora’s brows lifted. “Now that is a sentence I never expected to hear from you.”
“We believe there’s something down there worth recovering,” Jahn said. “Ancient magic. Knowledge buried with the old Orders.”
At that, something flickered in Wolfthora’s eyes. “You mean the Red, Blue, and Green?” she said, voice quieter now. “The old Wizard factions?”
“And the Grey,” Thalyria said.
Wolfthora’s laughter was low and surprised. “Now that I haven’t heard in a long time. My grandmother used to say the Grey were the ones who made peace possible. Or destroyed it, depending who you asked.”
Nyssarra stepped forward. “Will you come?”
Wolfthora tilted her head, gaze flicking across all three of them. “You’re walking into a forgotten tomb, hunting truths that probably got buried for a damn good reason. There’ll be traps, ancient guardians, probably ghosts—or worse.”
“We know,” Thalyria said.
Wolfthora grinned. “Good. I’m in.”
They gathered at midnight beneath the central tower.
A secret spiral stair led down through cold, rune-etched stone, sealed behind a wall most assumed was solid. But with the key Thalyria now carried, the wall rippled like water and revealed the passage: wide enough for four, steep enough to disappear into darkness. Runes flared to life with each step, pulsing softly in red, green, blue... and gray.
The magic of the old world still remembered its colors.
No one spoke as they descended, not even Wolfthora.
At the base of the stairs, they found a great iron door veined in crystal. A sigil hovered above it—one none of them recognized fully. It was circular, divided into four quadrants of different hues, their edges intertwining not in conflict, but in union. At its center was a white flame surrounded by gray mist.
Thalyria stepped forward. She pressed the key into the waiting lock.
The door groaned open—not with violence, but sorrow.
Beyond it lay silence, deeper than death.
The four stepped inside together.
To be continued in Part II: The Forgotten Hall.