It simply appeared in the forest one day.
The tower, as all bewildered folk referred to it, was exactly 36,000 bricks high, and ten soldiers could easily link arms around its unassuming circumference. Nearest its capped peak was a small, barred window seemingly chiseled out of the grey stone— hardly wide enough to fit through and dim enough that one could not peer inside to determine just what was hidden inside such a strange phenomenon.
And as bizarre as this all was, perhaps the most oddest of things was the doorknob located at the base of the tower, with not a door in sight. It would not turn for any of the initial curious who had tried it, nor could it be removed, melted, or smashed. There was a magic here, as uneasy murmurings began to grow; a magic even more ancient than that of the forest itself. A magic that ought not to be remembered, the kind that persists in dreams alone and there ought to remain.
Naturally, the Queen could only send her best to investigate, and General Lilia Vanrouge drums his fingers idly against the hilt of his weapon as he watches the various accompanying mages weave all manner of spells against the unyielding stone exterior, each one more ineffective than the last. The use of magic is taking its deadly toll, and he's seen more than one be pulled away, rubbing uselessly at the spots of accumulated blot as the tower endures their attempts to uncover its secrets and grows all the more reticent for it.
"Perhaps we should simply knock and try the door once again?"
His exasperated attempt at humor falls flat over the heads of the wan and weary mages, and before he can raise his hands in mild supplication, he finds himself pushed by rather desperate hands to the very doorknob in question. And while he certainly meant his suggestion in jest, it isn't as if there's anything to lose by following through. Only, he needn't have wondered— the moment his hand folds around the knob and before he can even raise his other arm to knock, the stones surrounding the doorknob smoothly swing inwards as if greased, revealing the most unpredicted of sights to their wide and disbelieving eyes.
Before them, still and pliant on the stone floor as if a doll that had been tossed aside from play, lies of all things a boy. A human one, Lilia's keen gaze notes despite the dumbfounded surprise, with a shock of pale hair and strangely dressed too in what seems to be some kind of military uniform, one that Lilia certainly doesn't recognize; the garments are a gleaming obsidian, acid stripes of green lancing the fabric. All seems to be as pristine as if newly washed and pressed, no evidence in sight of the passage of time dusted upon the silent figure.
Lilia cannot fathom what possesses him to move so roughly past the other mages at that hushed observation despite their startled and disapproving cries, struck by a strange desire to prove the speaker otherwise despite all battle-hardened instincts screaming at him that something about this macabre scene is so terribly, woefully, wrong. But the moment that Lilia's gloved fingers brush against the boy's shoulder, he's met with a tired gaze of the brightest dawn and a yawned greeting that stills the blood in his already frozen heart, the young man stirring to life as he stretches idly as if falling asleep in strange appearing towers was simply a normal occurrence.
"Oh— it's you, Father. How long have I been asleep?"
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