The Spire of Unmaking

The entrance trial killed six people.

Mira Lun watched the count update in the corner of the assessment crystal as she climbed the Spire of Unmaking — a tower that grew taller the faster you climbed it. She was on floor thirty-one. The noble girl who had been ahead of her at floor twenty was no longer in the rankings.

Mira climbed.

She had been climbing things her whole life: irrigation scaffolds, harvest storage towers, the cliff above her village where the water spirit's shrine sat. Heights did not frighten her. The only thing frightening about this tower was that at floor forty, it stopped adding floors and became genuinely forty floors tall.

She passed floor forty at the two-hour mark.

The Realm Breaker Academy had sent ten invitations to the mortal provinces this year. Nine had gone to children of minor noble houses who at least had spirit roots. One had arrived at the Lun family farm addressed to Mira by name, in the handwriting of the Headmistress herself.

Mira had finished her chores before opening it.

She reached the top of the tower, slapped her palm on the crystal at the summit, and looked down at the nine people still climbing.

She waited.