From the moment I was chosen by the holy relic

She slowly recited a passage of ancient text, her voice like a resounding incantation in a sacrificial ceremony:

"His words are destiny, his observations are reality, he breaks down form to shape soul, and reverses cause to effect. Fire is his hand, shadow is his eye, dream is his path, and death is his companion."

She looked at Eric and continued:

"Dark magic includes corrupting all things, manipulating souls, modifying living beings, planting mental curses, cracking the barriers of reality, and reconstructing the undead."

"He once blessed a general with dark words, causing him to go mad and burn himself within five days of victory; he once stole day and night from a city with a single page of a dream book; and he once caused a speaker to fall into his own shadow and disappear without a trace during a gathering in the capital, in full view of everyone."

Leah felt a chill run down her spine and muttered under her breath:

"This isn't magic, this is a nightmare."

Eileen opened the page of the book and gently traced a five-pointed star shape on the illustration with her fingertips. The five points of the star corresponded to the five poles of the continent.

Her voice rose softly in the night breeze, like inscriptions on a stone tablet flowing in a dream:

"In the seventh year since the Demon King was sealed away, the night still whispers."

"With the seal complete, the Starfall Swordsman and his companions have long since vanished, their sword and pendant buried together in the ruins. The gate to those ruins has severed all passage."

Of the thirteen Night Whispers, only six survived. In their defeat and escape, they carried with them the Black King's last words, "Retrieve the pendant, break my seal," and scattered across the earth.

"They spent more than 30 years searching for the burial site of that meteorite relic."

Eileen's tone slowed: "They found them."

Eric quietly looked up. Although all of this was in the past, he could still feel the weight of that moment piercing through time and rising from the depths of the earth.

That was the first tremor.

Eileen continued:

"The ruins are silent as death. The six Night Whispers offer blood, spirits, rituals, and incantations, awakening the long-dormant demonic intent."

"And when the pendant's aura reappeared on the ground for the first time, the door that had been buried for many years remained unmoved."

"Untouched."

She repeated it softly, her voice carrying an indescribable chill.

"They discovered that although the pendant was still there, the seal array remained closed."

"They used lava, they used the undead, and they even tried to summon a 'phantom projection' to break it, but no matter what spell they used, it was ineffective."

"Until they found the answer in the hidden stone box beneath the Starfall Swordsman's tombstone."

"Waiting for the blood to return to its place."

Leah trembled slightly.

A cold glint flashed in Eric's eyes. He knew this was the beginning of everything.

Eileen said slowly:

"They realized that only those with the bloodline of the Starfall Swordsman could activate the gate and obtain the pendant."

"They don't know where the descendants of the Starfall Swordsmen went, or whether they are still alive."

So they made a decision.

She turned a page, and in the firelight, an ancient map appeared, marked with five tower-shaped points, each with its own unique form, like five temples of different gods.

Eileen said slowly, "They want to build a tower."

"The Magic Tower is not a temple, not a mage workshop, and not a tactical stronghold."

Eileen's gaze sharpened slightly, her voice low:

"They are the continuation of the ritual. They are the anchors of the sacrificial text. They are detectors, altars, rituals, and nails inserted into the remains of the gods."

"Each tower was built under the supervision of a Night Whisperer. They used the tower as their seal, the earth as their array, and the spirit as their sacrifice, not to protect the world, but to find one person."

"One who possesses the blood of the Starfall Swordsman."

"And this marked the beginning of the Five Towers Era."

Eileen turned to an isolated drawing, where there was no complete tower, only a downward rather than upward shadow of the tower.

"The First Tower: The Tower of Deep Shadows, whose master is Naxshu. The Tower of Deep Shadows is not on the ground."

"It's underground."

"Built beneath the ruins of the original capital, based on the embers of a meteorite, and with the Void Layer Echo Array at its core."

"The tower's master, Nakshu, is known as the Father of Night Whispers. He was once the Demon King's personal spirit mage, skilled in manipulating dreams and able to pull people into past remnants, allowing them to come into contact with 'possibilities'."

"He forged the entire tower deep into the earth's crust, using seventy-three slumbering spells and five layers of spiritual veins to bind himself to the tower, transforming himself into the tower's soul."

Leah asked in surprise, "He died in the tower?"

"No," Eileen said calmly, "He will live forever."

"In the core room of the Deep Shadow Tower lies a corpse that is constantly decaying, yet constantly resurrecting."

"That's Nakshu."

"His body died eight thousand times, but his soul still ponders, listens, and awaits the response of blood."

"The function of the Deep Shadow Tower is to detect the echoes of the bloodstains in dreams."

Eric frowned. "You mean, the tower can hear what's happening in my dreams?"

Eileen looked at him and slowly nodded:

"Theoretically, yes."

"The Night Whisperers believe that the awakening of the Blood Seal is silent and will not be suddenly exposed in reality, but will first appear abnormally in dreams and in the soul's vibration. They use Nakshu as a sensor to turn the entire tower into a huge dream echo shell."

"As long as you have a dream about a door, a sword, or a pendant, even if you are in a faraway place, it can capture it."

Eric's expression changed slightly, and he subtly shifted his gaze away.

Leah whispered, "That's a pervert."

Eileen turned the slightly curled page, revealing the next gray-black illustration. The picture looked like an engraving on some kind of metal, with a cold light floating on the paper. A tower rose from the valley, like a spiraling column of bones pointing straight to the sky. A huge, boundless disc hung upside down from the top of the tower, as if it were a piece of molten gold mirror.

Her fingers gently touched the disc, and she said slowly:

"That is the second tower: the Gold Casting Tower, built in the Jingyuan Mountain in the far east."

The firelight reflected on her eyelashes, flickering like a recurring dream. Her voice was low and clear, sounding particularly solemn in the silent night of the mountain forest:

"It is different from the Deep Shadow Tower. The Deep Shadow Tower faces downwards, while the Goldcastle Tower faces inwards."

"It is not meant to be put to sleep, but to be observed."

She paused for a moment, her gaze sharpening slightly:

"It is a mirror tower, a furnace for forging souls."

"The one who built this tower was one of the Night Whispers, Irem Entur. Unlike Nakshu, he did not appear in any scene of the Throne War. He was not on the front lines, not in the oaths, not in the slaughter."

"But if we ask who understands blood and soul best, it is the silent builder of the tower."

Eileen turned the page; it showed a cross-section of the tower, a spiral tower rising from the valley floor, with seventy-nine floors, each with winding black and gold veins embedded in its outer wall.

"Irem believes that blood cannot speak, but the soul can."

He once said, "A person can deny who he is, but his soul will not."

"Therefore, he wanted to build a tower to 'hear' the voice of the Blood Spirit."

"Not with words, not with incantations, but with echoes."

Eric looked at the blueprints and frowned slightly. "What does it mean? What is he listening to?"

"He doesn't listen to sounds," Eileen said softly. "He listens to frequencies."

"Every soul leaves an imperceptible ripple in space; that is the 'spiritual core vibration frequency,' like the breath or the rhythm of a heartbeat."

"Each level of the Gold Tower is a 'Spirit Return Array.' Whenever the power of the Blood Seal quietly revives somewhere in the world, that barely perceptible 'Blood Frequency' will gently ripple between heaven and earth."

"And the Tower of Gold will hear."

"Its disc is a microphone."

"Its tower is an echo wall."

"At its core is the Mirror of Soul Refining."

Leah murmured softly, "So that means it can hear who I am even if I'm thousands of miles away?"

"If the blood flowing through your veins is one that has been recorded in the Tower Inscription," Eileen nodded, "it will record you."

"Silent, without a sound, without alarm. It simply records you."

"Irem shattered the Demon King's Mirror in the old palace of the royal capital, melting its spirit fragments into the seventy-ninth floor of the tower wall, giving it the power of soul reflection."

"And at the base of the tower, there is a room for perpetual shadows."

"That is the heart of the tower."

She turned the page, and on that page was a picture depicting a crystal of light about three zhang tall, floating in mid-air, bound by six black iron chains, surrounded by six twisted souls, each with a downward piercing thorn on its forehead, as if nailed into eternal slumber by a god.

"Those six souls are memory prisoners. They are one of the nodes in the Death Seal Chain, a secret system shared by the Five Towers."

Eric lowered his head slightly, his brow furrowed.

Eileen noticed his reaction and lowered her voice even further:

"These people are not dead."

"They were once mages, sorcerers, priests, and thinkers of our world."

"But they were sealed at the bottom of the tower by Irem and awakened once every seventy-nine days, for only one purpose: to screen, compare, and judge the soul fluctuations recorded in the Eternal Stone."

"They can't speak."

"They cannot leave."

"They don't remember who they are."

"They only remember the inscription on the tower, the command: Find the one who responds to the Blood Seal."

She glanced at Eric, her expression neither joyful nor sorrowful:

"This tower does not burn people, cast spells, or wield swords."

"But it can record every part of you you want to forget."

The fire crackled and popped, sending sparks flying, like a distant and faint struggle.

"Irem died in the fifth year of the tower's construction. He was not killed, nor did he grow old, but rather he split his soul in two, one half embedding itself in the Eternal Stone, and the other half transforming into the tower master's obsession, attaching itself to the Golden Mirror."

"His body spontaneously combusted."

"From then on, the tower was left unguarded. But the tower never closed its eyes."

"Once," she turned to a passage where the handwriting was rapid and messy, yet very heavy, with many overlapping ink marks:

"In the Third Era, a baby was born in the capital. The baby's soul echoed the records of the Tower, triggering a spiritual vibration. The Eternal Shadow Stone within the Tower burned for three days and nights, and the four Soul Judges were thrown into chaos. The Tower sought to summon its master, and the three Towers moved in unison, causing turmoil that reached the Western Ridge."

Eric asked, "What happened to the baby after that?"

"He's dead," Eileen said calmly.

"Recognized as a false seal by the tower, it triggered the Soul Shattering Judgment, tearing the soul apart, splitting the soul frequency, and returning it to the tower stone."

"To this day, a fragment of a name remains in the records at the bottom of the tower: 'Not him.'"

Leah's face turned pale: "Is this thing insane?!"

"Irem has long been insane," Eileen said with a deep gaze. "But through his madness, he has perpetuated the Demon King's vision."

She paused, looking at the last paragraph of the book:

"The Pagoda of Gold is not a living thing."

"But it has memories."

"It remembers the soul frequency of the Starfall Swordsman."

"It is waiting for that sound to ring out again."

The campfire flickered, and the night wind swept through the forest.

Eric gazed at the firelight, his fingers unconsciously tightening around the hilt of his sword, as if something in the far, far east, in that cloud-shrouded land of mountains, was silently watching him.

The fire crackled and popped, and the shadows of the trees swayed.