Merk crested a hill and as he did, a valley spread out beneath him and in the far distance, a great peninsula reached out into the Sea of Sorrow, water sparkling all around it. He gasped. At its windswept end, there it sat: the Tower of Ur. Merk’s heart beat faster at the sight. Surrounded by ocean on three sides, huge waves crashing into the rocks and sending up sprays of mist, sparkling in the sunlight, the tower was set in the most haunting, beautiful landscape he had ever seen. A hundred feet high, fifty feet wide, shaped in a perfect circle, its stone was ancient, a shade of white he had never seen before, looking as if it had stood for centuries. It was capped by a smooth, round golden dome, reflecting the sun, and its entrance was marked by soaring doors, thirty feet high, arched, they, too, made of shining gold.

It was the sort of place Merk expected to see in a dream. It was a place he’d always wondered about, and a place he could hardly fathom was real. Seeing it now, in person, took his breath away. He did not believe in energy, yet still, he could not deny that there was some sort of special energy radiating off the place.

Merk set off downhill with a new bounce to his step, elated to be on the final leg of his journey. The forest opened up and he found himself a smooth, green countryside, the entrance to the peninsula, warmer here than the rest of Escalon. He felt the sun shining down on his face, heard the crashing of the waves, and saw the open sky before him, and he felt a deep peace. He felt, finally, he had arrived.

Merk hiked, the tower looming in the distance, and he was baffled to see no one standing guard around it. He had expected to find a small army guarding it on all sides, protecting the most precious relics of Escalon, and he was perplexed. It was as if it were abandoned.

Merk couldn’t understand. How could a place be so well-guarded, and yet have no one standing outside? He sensed this place was unlike any other he had been, that he would learn things here about the art of combat that he would never learn elsewhere.

Merk continued hiking and reached a broad plateau of grass before the tower. Before him sat a curious sculpture: a stone staircase, circular, rising perhaps twenty feet high, its steps intricately carved in ivory. The steps turned and twisted and led, oddly, to nothing but air. It was a freestanding spiral staircase, and Merk could not understand its meaning or symbolism—or why it was placed here in the midst of this grass field. He wondered what other surprises lay ahead.