The High Tower's Secret

Taxisis climbed the steps one by one.

As if sensing her arrival, the great doors slowly opened to either side. The vines wound around them snapped at once, and long-settled dust drifted down in sparse showers, raising a thin brown haze.

When the mist dispersed, a biting cold wind blew out from the tower, forcing the guides standing outside to retreat several steps.

Taxisis neither dodged nor yielded, letting her red hair dance wildly in the wind.

Once the wind gradually subsided, she brushed the collar around her neck and stepped into the stone tower.

The girl's figure was swiftly swallowed by the darkness within.

Only then did a trace of fear appear on the guides' cold, expressionless faces.

According to the records, failure in a challenge did not end only in death—some challengers lost their nerve midway through, or realized they could not reach the top and chose to turn back. If they were lucky enough, they could leave the Dragon-Climbing Tower. Yet all of them, more or less, were left with aftereffects: some lost their minds, while others found their injuries impossible to heal. As a result, fewer and fewer Magic-Users were willing to become Dragonborn through the Dragon-Climbing Road.

After all, Magic-Users already stood above ordinary people, and there was no shortage of Dragonborn who inherited their bloodlines. Why would they risk everything to challenge themselves?

Only when they stood before the High Tower did the guides realize that gap anew.

No matter how they slandered Taxisis Eternal Wing, she remained an existence they could never reach in their lifetimes.

After the doors closed, Taxisis discovered that the inside of the tower was unexpectedly empty.

She found neither the spiral staircase she had expected nor an atrium running through the entire tower. Beyond the corridor lay