Zayn sat down and watched the sun slowly inching higher and higher into the sky. he wasn't exactly sure what he was hoping to accomplish, but if the ghost was right wandering around without a plan wasn't going to help.

He looked at her, glowing fainter in the warming light of dawn, "Are you still going to be there when the sun comes up?"

She just giggled, making no attempt to explain herself.

“Great” Zayn muttered, turning to look back to the almost bright light of day, "Let's think about this. I can only see you at all because of my contract. Wait, am I the only person to notice you?"

"I don't know. It has been a long time since I have seen anyone try to cross it. No one is willing to enter this place now."

"So there could have been others that saw you?"

"I don't think so. I didn't think you would be able to see me, and I was surprised you can talk to me as well."

"You don't remember? How long has it been since you became a ghost?"

"Five years? No that can't be right. Five hundred or was it five thousand." She looked down at her faint fingers, half invisible in the morning light. Then she looked up with a smile.

"It was a really long time. I know that."

Zayn couldn't argue with her. There was a good chance she didn't even know, but the fact that she thought he was the first was interesting. If he was the only one to have ever learned the truth, then he was the only person to know what he knew. He had already spent several days wandering around in circles, and he still had a decent amount of food. The real concern was water. Even if he could figure out how to get out, he could still easily run out of water.

"Let's assume the wasteland really is only a day or two of walking in size." He muttered to himself and looked at the tower. He hadn't seen it grow much in size. That mean he hadn't gotten any closer or farther to it.

"So I am either too far south or too far north of it," he sat thinking about it before he remembered something the ghost had said, "You said that was a wizard's tower, right?"

"No, it is a sorcerer's tower."

Zayn waved a hand, "Whatever, I want to know if that is at the center of this place or not."

"Center?"

"Yeah, this thing that traps people. You said that everyone tries to go there, but they die. They die because they can't get close to it, right? So I am walking in circles. That means that thing is at the center of whatever is happening to me."

She was getting harder to see and looking more like a strange sandy cyclone than a girl, "I think so. I am not really sure what you are talking about though."

"You wanted me to mess everything up, right?"

She smiled a faint but energetic smile, "Right!"

"So I need to know if the thing that causes everyone to be trapped here is over there." He pointed at the tower.

"I guess it is. It's kinda complicated."

"Has anyone alive actually made it to the tower?"

"Oh no, they all die walking towards it."

Zayn rubbed his eyes, trying to think of something, anything that would allow him to figure out how this place worked. He sighed and let his eyes wander, trying to find anything as the shape of the sun shone brightly in the distance. For just a brief moment a long line of shadow was visible on the relatively flat and sandy landscape. The shadow was pointing to his right and it should have been pointing behind him. With a gasp, he realized that the shadows weren't wrong. They were potentially pointing to the west.

For a brief moment, the shadows were pointing in the wrong direction. He turned to the left.

"That would make you east," he turned slightly and pointed behind him, "And you west. So I have probably been traveling to the south, and I need to go to the east."

He started moving that way and the tower did its strange reappearing act. He looked around and most of the shadows had vanished, except for one. The one sticking out of the sand like a giant needle. Or a sundial.

"I can use the tower and the height of the sun to gauge roughly where I am and where I am going."

"So?" the ghostly voice asked.

He looked at her vague translucent figure, "It means I can get to the tower, and from there I can get out of here."

"You will leave me? The voice was faint and distant as she vanished from Zayn's sight completely.

He wasn't sure how he felt about that as he walked along, but he focused on making sure he was heading in the right direction first and foremost. As he walked he discovered several things. The tower had a habit of appearing to be directly in front of him. The sun wasn't so obvious, but it would move slowly around to the left or right. This meant that he could only reliably tell what time it was by how high the sun was in the sky, and he only could tell where he was by the constantly moving shadow of the moving tower.

He didn't move far, but he did make progress. Good progress. It wasn't even the third correction of his course when he realized that the tower was getting taller and better defined. At the speed he was going, he realized he would be near the base of the tower before the day was over. He would stop in its shadow to cool off and rest, as he was covered in sweat from walking during the heat of the day. Zayn's real problem was that the only way to travel required there to be sunlight, and that meant he was going to drink a lot of water. Water he didn't have.

It took six more adjustments to reach the tower. It got a lot easier as he neared it for two reasons. One was that the shadow was becoming clearer and clearer relative to him as he got close to the base. The second was that the wild fluctuations were dying down. The initial corrections had been large, massive swings as he had gotten wildly turned around. The last one was almost so small as to not be noticed. It might have led him astray if he hadn't paid attention, but only barely.

When he reached the tower's shadow, pointing roughly toward his location, he wasn't even able to tell if he was losing his sense of direction at all. Stepping into the shadow felt amazing as he was able to get away from the heat of the day for the first time since he had begun the journey. Theoretically, he was halfway through the wasteland at this point, but he had consumed almost all of his water getting here. If he hadn't gotten turned around, he would have been fine. After getting turned around, he had used up far too much water to be able to escape safely. He knew he didn't have enough to survive this place.

Inside the shadow, he was able to see the girl, drifting nearby. She seemed to instantly realize that he was looking at her as she waved at him.

“I am the first to get here, right?” He asked as he walked towards the tower.

“I think so.”

“Can you tell me anything about it?”

“It’s a tower. A powerful sorcerer lived in it. So did I.”

“I was hoping you could give me an idea about what caused this problem to even exist.”

“What problem?”

“The fact that everyone ends up trapped here.”

“Oh, that problem…”

Zayn looked at the faint ghostly girl and wondered why she was being so quiet, but he didn’t see any reason to push the issue with her. There was no chance that this was a coincidence. The tower appeared to hold the key to what had happened.

“How about water?” He ventured, “Any chance there isn’t a supply of water in here?”

Again the ghost didn’t say anything.

“If you don’t even help me a little, I will surely die. Is that what you would want?”

“No…”

Zayn didn’t push anymore but focused on reaching the entrance to the tower. As he got closer, he saw something that broke the smooth surface of the exterior on what would probably have been the southern face of the tower. So he focused on heading in that direction while staying in the shade of the northern side.

He was eventually forced to leave the shade, but by that point, he had almost reached the tower. He turned to face the large gateway that towered overhead. It was big enough that his entire village could have fit in the open doorway. If they had figured out some way to stand the houses on top of each other.

Getting inside the tower was surprisingly simple despite the doors' monstrous appearance; they swung freely and easily.

The interior was cool and dark, but even as his eyes adjusted to the much darker space Zayn didn’t have trouble seeing. He assumed that there was some hidden mechanism that provided a soft and gentle light to the entire space.

The inside of the space was wide and welcoming. The best part of the large entryway lay at the opposite end of the room. A large fountain trickled away feeding its water into a large basin.

Water. He had found the one thing that he needed to escape from this place. So he filled his waterskins and took a long bath. He took a while to refresh himself, and eventually the ghostly girl floated over to him.

“So are you going to leave me?”

Zayn shrugged, “I can’t survive here and I want to figure out if I can bring my village back to life. I can’t do that here either. So I don’t see myself having a choice. I am going to need to find a way to escape here. It would be easier if I could get rid of it, but I can get away without breaking it now. I figured out how it works.

“I don’t like that idea. Why do you need to break the curse? What did it do to you?”

“It trapped me in a place without food and almost no water.” Zayn didn’t even bother to open his eyes.

She didn’t say anything else and eventually Zayn couldn’t resist asking, “Why do you even care?”

“It’s boring…”

“Being here by yourself?”

“There are others here.” She didn’t sound very happy about it, “But they aren’t really nice to me.”

“Where are they?”

She just pointed up, “They hang around at the top of the tower.”

“Why?”

"They're not very happy up there. The tower seems to be getting to them."

“Is that why you are always outside?”

“I want to leave this place and go into the world at large. I feel everything has changed and I am stuck in this place.”

“So are you trapped here?”

“Everyone is trapped here. That includes the ghosts.” She looked away.

"So if I break the curse, you could go free. Isn't that what you wanted?"

"I..." She looked confused as she floated gently in the air, "I don't know."

"Well, I am going to explore this place, at least a little. If you want to help me, feel free to do so."

"Why would I help you?" She sounded a bit angry.

"Because I am studying the forbidden arts and you are a ghost? It seems pretty reasonable to me."

"What exactly does that mean? I don't know what you are talking about."

Zayn summoned the ghostly tome as its gemstone was still packed away.

"This is what I am talking about," he waved at the book.

"What... There is nothing there."

Zayn checked to make sure she was looking at the actual tome. It was floating in front of her, so there wasn't even a possibility that she hadn't noticed it.

He sighed and climbed out of the water. The air was cool enough that he went over to the door to dry off, once in the sunlight he dried quickly. Then he wandered back to his backpack and got out the stone. Once it was in his hand the book plopped into existence.

"Ooh, is that a magical book? I didn't know you were chosen."

Zayn stared at her innocent expression, but she made no move to indicate that it was a joke, "What does being chosen have to do with magic?"

"All magic users are chosen."

"Oh, well I told you that earlier. I said I was a devotee of Gavrik."

"You did?" She looked confused, "That doesn't sound like any of the orders that I am familiar with. Are you sure that is one of the orders?"

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Zayn didn't know what she was talking about, "I think we are talking around each other. This book has a lot to say about ghosts."

"Really so that means you are a devotee to Sapientia, Somnuxis, or maybe Umbrion, right?"

Zayn felt like they were talking in circles, "Here let me just look up something I saw in the book."

He flipped it open and began skimming through its pages looking for a reference to ghosts and curses. He had seen both mentioned several times but he hadn't read anything about either of them at this time.

Eventually, he was able to find a section that talked about ghosts.

The girl floated through him, looking at the page, “You can read that?”

Zayn hadn't ever really been a great reader but found the majority of the information in the book was relatively easy to read through.

"Some of it is easier than other parts. My mother taught me how to read, but I am not really that good at it. For some reason, I don't find most of this book that hard to read. I can usually understand the beginnings of the chapters really easily. As the chapter progresses, its material gets a lot harder to read through, and I don't understand most of it.

She looked between him and the book, “Huh. I am really good at reading, and I would swear that it looks like scribbles.”

He looked up at her, “Really?”

She nodded.

He didn’t really know what he could add to that, so he went back to reading. It took a while, but he eventually found a section talking about the natural occurrences of ghosts. This one was related to curses.

> Ghosts are commonly found untethered to a master in places with powerful curses. They can be an excellent source of souls if they can be reasoned with. If you want to take them by force…

He skimmed over that part. It didn’t look quite right.

> Breaking a curse can release the souls that are trapped in this realm. This will lead to the souls escaping and the effect of the curse disappearing. This can be useful as curses’ are a powerful source of negative energy. The souls of the ghost…

The instructions were fairly mundane and he was a little disappointed that it wasn’t more difficult to accomplish, but it was better than discovering he was missing some key ingredient. He looked up to see the ghostly figure floating overhead.

"It seems pretty simple. I haven't ever done it, but I should be able to break your curse. It should be possible to get the job done with or..." Here Zayn decided not to mention the consequences of the action, "without your help. If you want to travel the world, I can take you with me as I travel. Do you have any problem with that?"

"You can break the curse and take me out of this place?"

“Yeah.”

“You don’t need me to break it?”

“Nope.” Zayn didn’t look up from the book, as he was reading the instructions. A part of his brain caught the subtle tone and he looked into the eyes of the girl.

“That’s a good thing, right?”

She didn’t instantly respond, but rather floated around him for a few minutes, “I… I can leave the desert again?”

“I don’t think that there is a problem with that. Ghosts almost always need an anchor to hold them to this world. It seems like almost all of the natural occurrences of ghosts are because they are tied to a specific place. So you would basically be attached to me instead of this tower.”

“I can leave the desert again…” She muttered softly as if she hadn’t even heard Zayn speak.

“Yes.”

“I feel something is missing…”

Zayn did his best not to show surprise, choosing to look intently at the book he had opened before him. The lines in the book almost perfectly matched what was happening to the little girl. He wouldn't have thought he would get so lucky right at the beginning, but here he was looking at the only thing that was likely difficult to find.

“What are you missing?” He choose to keep the question simple and vague.

“Leaving the desert…” She was definitely fixated on something and didn’t really hear what he had just said. It probably didn’t even matter for him to hide it. If the book was right, she wasn’t even really aware of what was happening around her.

He looked at the page and sketched out the pattern that it recommended. There was a flash of dark green energy and the pattern burned its way into the hard stone of the tower.

The ghost jerked strangely as if something had struck it. She looked around and seemed to remember Zayn, “Can you do anything to help me?”

Zayn smiled, “Yes I can. Let’s get going, alright?”

She nodded slowly, “I can leave the tower?”

“I think so. You want to travel the world, right?”

“Travel…”

For a second Zayn wondered if she would get stuck again, but it lasted for only the briefest of seconds and then it was gone.

“I want to see the world again. That would be nice.”

Zayn glanced at the first symbol burned into the stone by a strange energy. The Eternal Balance had been right and the spell had worked. He reached down and touched the symbols. The stone didn’t just look differently, it felt different. It crumbled into a fine powder as he rubbed it, and he couldn’t help but remember the warning in the first lines of the book.

> They will kill any devotee that they discover.

“Hey,” He started to address the ghost and blinked, “I don’t know your name. What do I call you?”

“My name is a bit long, but everyone calls me Latty,” She curtsied as she spoke.

“Nice to meet you, Latty. Have you ever seen anything like this?” He pointed to the crumbling stone.

Her eyes widened in surprise, “Oh, no. What is that? It’s almost as if the stone has died!”

She kept talking, but Zayn didn’t hear anything else. Those last three words burned a certainty into his mind. If he was a devotee of Gavrik and there really were people hunting him, they would surely have ways to find people like Zayn. Burning the stone and leaving a perfect ring of what could only be described as ash was probably an easy way to identify them.

“You said there is a sorcerer in this tower, right?”

She nodded.

“His magic doesn’t do anything like this?”

“No,” The single word was emphatic and left no uncertainty. Zayn had already gotten the feeling that she wasn’t entirely there and he suspected that this would be fairly normal for the ghosts he would be encountering as he worked to advance his knowledge. Still, she didn’t seem confused.

“Could you tell me about his magic?”

She nodded, “His magic was super amazing. He could create mountains out of the ground and build massive buildings out of thin air!”

“So he just waved his hands and it happened?”

“It wasn’t something he wanted other people to see. I don’t know what it looked like, but I do know that he had to prepare a lot for something really big. He had a special room at the top of the tower to help him cast spells.”

“Can you show me that room?”

“I know where it is, but we would have to go past the throne room and that includes him. So I don’t think it would be a good idea to go up there.”

Zayn resisted the urge to look at the book again. He was pretty sure about what that meant. He would need to find three points that anchor the ghost to a location. The first had obviously been the tower itself. He hadn’t been certain if it would matter where he had attempted to break the link, but it had gone ahead and worked.

What was really interesting is that she was the anchor. The book had suggested that a single specter could trap others in the area, but he hadn’t really thought it would be her. He now needed to figure out what had caused whatever happened here and break the link entirely. Once he broke the link he would be able to seize the ghosts that occupied this place.

“What was it like here?”

“Oh, it was amazing once. There were grand balls, great feasts, and thousands of servants working tirelessly to make sure…” She started off smiling, but it quickly vanished as she described the once glorious life. When it was clear she would start up again, he knew he would need to ask more questions.

“Where did you live?”

She didn’t answer but simply pointed in a general upwards direction.

“Can you show me where you lived?”

“I suppose,” She didn’t sound nearly as happy about that as she had just a moment before.

“Come on then. You can tell me about everything.”

Once they were through the main entryway, everything changed. The central staircase was wrapped around an empty space that seemed to stretch up forever. Latty informed Zayn that this was for a service elevator, whatever that was. It had been left on the ground level, and it had eventually succumbed to the ravages of time.

As he climbed he began to see hints of wood having been used to cover different things. His first real hint was a wooden panel that was aged and cracked near the second floor. It clearly had once been a part of a larger picture, carefully carved into a long stretching image.

Zayn had never seen wood used in such a refined manner and the dried-out husks of wood weren’t a great hint at what lay further into the tower. Room after room. Hall after hall. Most of the towering structures' furnishings were still intact. Every now and then, they would discover a room, usually with pools of sand in it that had been ravaged by time, and the furnishings were gone.

The intact rooms were unlike anything that Zayn had ever seen in his entire life. The beds were made out of wood and they had strange fabrics draped on them. Some of them looked almost new, and they left them alone. Others looked like they had aged, and when Zayn touched one of the fabrics it melted away at his touch.

It reminded him of what had happened when he used his magic on the stone, but he suspected that this was just the natural effect of time on something like cloth.

When they got to Latty’s room, he was left speechless. Her room was virtually the way that it had been when she died, and he couldn’t help but wonder at the craftsman who had built this place. The wood had actual pictures worked into its surface, and when she pointed out her favorite. It was a scene of a knight fighting a dragon, Zayn made the mistake of asking her about it.

He had never even heard of such a creature, but she made sure to give him endless details about princesses and greedy beasts. He looked around the room that looked like it had been built for a princess and then at the ghostly girl talking about how terrible it would have been to be abducted by a fierce dragon.

He could see the young girl, dressed in the finest of clothes, trapped in the tower and dreaming of being abducted from this place.

He was tempted to try the second spell on it, but he didn’t think that it was the right thing. She wasn’t supposed to be so interested in talking about the things that tied her to this place. They wandered through the room and examined all the various things. She talked about each and every one of them, but he started to realize she was avoiding a specific area in the room.

There was a small round table with a large book laying open on it.

“What’s that?” He pointed to it.

“It isn’t important…” She muttered.

Zayn frowned. She hadn’t flat-out denied its existence, but she definitely didn’t seem to want to explain its presence in the room. He walked over to it and looked at several of the pages. The markings were completely nonsensical, and it gave him the feeling that the shapes were almost reacting to his presence.

“It isn’t important…” The ghostly girl muttered again.

That was everything he needed to know. He wasn’t sure why she had such a powerful artifact, and it was painful to use the spell on it. If he was wrong, it shouldn’t have any impact on the book. If he was right, a large portion of the book was about to melt away.

He drew the correct symbols over the book. It was a lot more complicated than the last set, and he spent a good several minutes working at it. The ghostly girl continued to repeat the same line while he doodled in the air.

Eventually, it was completed and the dark energy snapped into life, burning a circle through the book.

Zayn sighed at the destruction of what was probably a magical tome. He had no way of using the knowledge it contained, much less reading it. So it wasn’t exactly useful to him, but he would have loved to find a way to access its secrets.

“I miss my room,” the ghostly girl seemed more cheerful, but it was only a little improvement.

“Think we can go to the top?” Zayn asked her, “I really want to see the room he would cast spells in.”

She almost shrank, but she didn’t flat-out deny the possibility.

“You did say that you wanted to leave this place,” he prompted her.

“Okay…”

The response had the same listless energy and he half expected her to start repeating herself. She didn’t thankfully as it was a long way from her room to the top of the tower. Zayn was forced to rest multiple times as they climbed staircase after staircase, and he was only able to accomplish it with the freshly refilled water skins.

When the endless up disappeared, leaving an actual roof, they had arrived.

“It’s up there…” She muttered pointing up.

Zayn started to ask her for more details, but she simply started repeating herself. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what had probably happened here. The first two anchors were the tower and the spell book. If it was indeed a spellbook, then it probably should have never left the room above. That it had been inside her room suggested something very specific had happened. He pushed open the door and entered the room on the other side.

It was beautiful. The large clear surfaces let in huge bands of sunlight, hurting Zayn’s eyes as he went from the dark interior and into the sunlit room. He couldn’t feel any of the cool that he had experienced below, but he also didn’t feel the harsh wind blowing or the near-constant sand blown in his face.

When his eyes adjusted to the light, he was able to see the towering stone chair at the other end of the room. The strands of golden metal and the sea of colorful gems laying at its base reminded him of the throne he had made at the pit in his home village. The way the gems had scattered made Zayn feel like they had fallen from something, and he thought of the aged and worn wood often missing in rooms that had faced the fury of the desert's weather.

If this room had once had something like the girl’s bed, it had been no poor man’s attempt at a throne. It had been an actual throne.

“Who enters my throne room?!” A voice boomed, as a large figure appeared in the center of the room. He wasn’t a faint ghostly glimmer of a person. His robes were flowing and full of rich colors. Reds, yellows, and oranges all were intricately woven into a beautiful display of art. The quality and beauty left Zayn stunned as he considered how much power and wealth this man had once controlled.

“I do.” He said lamely looking at the imposing figure.

The figure glowered at him, “What are you doing in my domain?”

“I want to break the curse and leave the desert.”

The figure laughed, “Foolish mortal! I am a powerful sorcerer. That desert was my empire. Even I am held here by the curse. What can you do to break it?”

Zayn stared at the towering figure considering his options. If he chose to reveal himself, the figure might attack. Ghosts weren’t supposed to be able to do much to the physical world, but one born from an ancient sorcerer was probably more potent than the average ghost.

“I am a chosen, and I have some knowledge about breaking curses.” Zayn didn’t want to anger the spirit in front of him, but it didn’t seem a good idea to reveal too much to the figure. “I have already broken two of the three anchors that hold everyone to this place. I need to reach the casting room to finish the process.”

“Why the casting room?” The figure didn’t boom nearly so loudly.

“I believe everything started there. This story involves a girl, a book, and that room.”

The figure sighed, sitting down on the throne, “I wondered as much. That foolish girl never did listen to me.”

The ancient sorcerer looked down at the ground and then at Zayn, "So tell me what would happen once it is finished."

"I would be setting your spirits free from this world," Zayn lied. He hadn't really intended to trick the spirits of the dead until that exact moment. He could feel them gathering and watching him. Thousands upon thousands of ghostly forms were trapped here. This tower had been the home to an entire civilization at some point and they had all been trapped here in death. He could feel the power of the curse, holding this vast tide of undeath in place. If he broke the curse, releasing them into the void. He would lose the power that drove the curse just as quickly as the spirits themselves. It was an all-or-nothing proposition.

Zayn knew this power was nearly limitless and he couldn't afford to miss the opportunity.

"That would make you chosen of Sapientia, correct?"

"Would you expect me to answer that?"

The figure laughed, "Hardly. Sapientia holds her secrets most greedily."

Zayn didn't react to that statement. If he had gambled wrong, he would have been forced to do things in a far more destructive way. He had no idea if this ancient spell caster held the ability to attack him, and he didn't want to learn the answer to that suspicion. He waited for the silence to drag out before responding.

"Would you refuse my assistance?"

"I don't have a choice, do I?"

"I doubt anyone else could figure out the nature of the curse and reach the tower alive."

"How does it work?"

Zayn laughed this time, "Again you seem to think I am here to answer your questions."

"I know how Sapientia works. I am willing to trade information. A secret for a secret."

Zayn didn't exactly understand that, but he had no problem with the offer. "What secret are you offering me?"

"Don't insult me, boy. This tower has been without a master for ages. There is a good chance that no living minds remember its existence. So there will be no one to claim it once I am gone. You will get rid of us and you will attempt to claim ownership. It is the only reason someone serving Sapientia would enter this desert. She told you of the lost tower and you saw it as the ultimate test and opportunity. Did she tell you the solution to the curse's puzzle?"

"No. I solved it on my own." Zayn was tempted to argue about why he was here, but that might lead the old spirit to suspect Zayn's motive. So he didn't say anything else.

"The tower is locked. No one can claim it easily. If your mistress has revealed the process to you, you wouldn't need me. If she hasn't, then you will need to figure it out on your own. I can tell you how it works."

Zayn had no idea what that meant. He had found it rather easy to walk into the tower.

"Why are you wanting to know the answer to the curse? If I set you free you will simply pass on from this world. The information is worthless to you."

"It is true that I won't be able to use the knowledge that you are offering, but I want to know what spell..." He paused and looked to where the ghostly girl was floating, still muttering in the loop, "I may have been wrong about someone, and I would know the answer before I die in truth."

Zayn looked at the girl, a princess dreaming of being kidnapped by dragons, and then at the powerful sorcerer.

"Nothing escapes you does it?" The ancient spellcaster asked Zayn.

"She stole your magical tome. I can only assume she dreamed of adventures and exploring the world. She wanted you to teach her?"

The ghost slumped, "I did not think she had what was necessary to wield that power."

"The spell that holds everyone, you think you know which one she cast?"

He nodded, "I fear that I was very wrong about her. I assumed her knowledge was from her birthright, but now I wonder if she was something else."

"Tell me the secret of the tower, and I will tell you about the curse."

"We have a deal then?"

Zayn nodded, "We have a deal."

"This tower wasn't built by human hands. It isn't like the others. It isn't even like the Holy Citadel."

Zayn had no idea what he was saying, but the old sorcerer seemed to think he would understand what he was meaning.

"I suspect the Citadel, which is the template of all wizard's towers, is built off of the existence of this place."

He spoke those words with such gravity that Zayn felt their importance, but he still couldn't grasp what they meant.

"Simply placing your oathstone on the pedestal isn't enough to claim this tower." he raised his hands and a great glowing field appeared in the air. It was almost exactly the same as what Zayn created, but it glowed with a golden light.

"Memorize it well. Without this spell, the tower will never be yours."

Zayn spent minutes copying the pattern over and over again.

"I have it." He spoke only when he was certain that he knew the correct pattern.

"There are clues to it all over the tower. I only wish I had discovered more of this place's secrets. It holds many, and you can use this tower to rival all but the Citadel's. I have honored my part of the bargain."

Zayn started to explain how the curse worked, but he had barely begun explaining it when the old ghost waved his hand.

"Say no more. I know the spell."

"A single spell has entrapped so many for so long?" Zayn couldn't believe it, "That has been thousands of years."

"As I said, I suspected I was gravely mistaken. A chosen and a birthright." The old ghost looked at the girl, still stuck on her loop.

He stared at her long and hard, and Zayn felt he should understand the meaning. However, the spellcaster seemed to think he already knew the meaning of the words.

"Very well, follow me and I will show you the heart of the tower. That itself is a secret sealed in the stone, but I won't bargain for it. This secret will be used to free me from this place."

He drifted over to the wall behind the throne. Almost every stone in the building was uniform in size. One of the stones here was smaller than the others. He drew a symbol that had been in the large ritual circle he had shown earlier.

"This symbol is hah, and it will release the door. Do so and ascend the stairs."

Zayn drew it into the stone and the wall slid open, revealing a staircase behind it. He went up the small staircase, winding about a quarter of the way around the tower, until he reached a small room with a stone pedestal. On that pedestal sat a large golden gemstone. It glowed with a brilliance that hurt Zayn's eyes.

"This tower holds tremendous power. You see it here and now, don't you. That is the value of my secret. It was well worth it, yes?" The ghostly king had spoken as he drifted through the floor.

Zayn simply nodded, "Latty I need you."

She floated up through the floor, "It's up there..."

Only she pointed to the gemstone and not through the roof.

Zayn began carving the final set. A sigil designed to bind ownership of the one who created the curse, and to consume all the remaining energy into itself. It would leave nothing of the ghostly occupants. They would simply become fuel for Zayn's power.

The green energy crackled into life as he drew the last symbol over the glowing golden stone.

“What is this trickery boy?” The sorcerer roared to life as the energy filled the room, "You are no servant of Serpientia! Who is your master?"

Zayn fumbled the next part of the spell, letting his eyes drift to the old sorcerer. The figure's fingers were blurring through the air with practiced ease. Zayn fumbled again as he realized the ghost was preparing a spell. He focused on finishing the ritual, and the green energy devoured everything.

It roared into Zayn's pack and he felt the power surge into his stone.

The glowing golden gemstone cracked and turned to dust.

"What happened?" The ghostly girl suddenly seemed to come back to life. Even as he stared at her, her faint figure began to become more and more lifelike. The colors bled from purples to yellows to reds, and then she stood there like a tiny version of the ancient sorcerer. Her powerful figure adorned in reds, oranges, and golds was exquisite. Her dark skin held a purity that Zayn's family never had seen.

“Oh~!” She said as she noticed the change, “Hey I look like I am almost alive. Very nice.”

Zayn smiled, “I believe that you are now bound to me. We can leave this place at any time. Are you ready?”

She seemed nervous for just a second, and then a wicked grin of white teeth shone through, "Off to go slay a dragon?"

Zayn laughed. This time it felt real and natural.

"I don't really care, as long as we start this journey by heading east from here.

“It’s that direction.” She pointed to her right without even hesitating.

Zayn did his best to gauge the time of day and where the shadows were, but he had been inside at least for hours and wasn't exactly sure where it was. Still, he didn't have any reason to think she was wrong.

“Well let’s get ourselves out of this desert. Sound good?”