A frantic banging on the outer courtyard gates shook the foundation of the Third Tower at noon on Day 19.
Third Tower Grandmaster Kaelor kicked through the shattered bronze threshold of his subterranean vault.
He was a tall, severe man clad in white wolf-fur robes, his Nascent Soul Late aura crackling with fierce, unstable thunder-fire. Behind him marched thirty senior disciples, clutching defensive talismans, warming shields, and curved frost-axes.
Kaelor had expected to find a battlefield soaked in blood.
He had received an urgent raven at dawn warning that thirty rabid Nether-Blood Hounds had broken into his sub-basement, chasing the scent of Grandmaster Volkov’s missing inquisitor.
Instead, Kaelor stepped into pristine, spotless silence.
The subterranean vault was sixty paces wide. The ceiling rose forty feet overhead, supported by massive granite pillars.
The sixty-foot mountain of toxic, hazardous Yin-frost alchemy residue that had plagued his tower for fifty long years was completely gone.
