The marble felt cold under his hand. Rolin stood next to the tower’s door. There was a familiarity to the building that was hard to explain. The colors were similar to those of his family, but different enough that he could make a distinction. It did feel like there was something alive in there, which made sense if Brela was in fact a projection of the spirit that was locked in the tower. It still didn’t make much sense to Rolin why he was chosen to help her out. Perhaps it was purely a coincidence, but it could be that someone without sight was needed for this strange power to work. He took a deep breath. The answers might be inside of this tower. Behind him the other people were discussing what to do. Karnisal and the man named Ankh seemed to be locked in a fairly hostile conversation while the others were mostly keeping their guard up. Ankh had sent the Sahilid accompanying him out of earshot when he told the group about who he really was and those same Sahilid were now sitting a little bit off in the distance, looking at Rolin as he stood there. He could feel their gaze and see their colors. There was something complicated there, as if multiple feelings were alternating with each other at all times. Distrust, jealousy and curiosity were at the front, in their greens, dark purples and light blues. It made for a strange view. One of the Sahilid was different. This person was not focused on Rolin but instead staring out into the distance. Rolin couldn’t distinguish what it was they were looking at, but as their focus either got stronger or less strong – it was hard to tell – their colors shifted until they were almost translucent. It gave Rolin an idea. He closed his eyes and started breathing very consciously. In and out, rhythmically, while holding his hand on the door’s cold frame. Focus, relax. Focus, relax. Breathe in. Breathe out. Exist. Disappear. Outside. Inside.
He opened his eyes and found himself standing inside the tower.
Looking around, things were hazy. He flashed back to before he found his eyesight, almost as if his blindness was back to how it was. There wasn’t much to go on, but some white dots of light here and there at least gave him the feeling like his eyesight hadn’t fully disappeared again, but instead there was something else at play.
“Over here,” a tired but familiar voice said.
Rolin followed the path through the tower, eventually stumbling onto the first step of a circular staircase. He put his hand on the wall to the side and carefully ascended the marble steps, a hollow sound ringing through the tower with each step. It took him several minutes to reach the top, partially due to being careful not to fall but partially because the staircase was much taller than he would have guessed. At the top the voice sounded again, and he rummaged around above his head until he found a hatch. Opening the hatch, he was suddenly bombarded with light beyond imagination. Every color on the spectrum hit his eyes all at once and for a moment he felt like he would pass out. Then after blinking a couple of times, things calmed down and even reached a point where the view was pleasant and incredibly clear, much more clear than how he would normally see things. Sitting on a wooden rocking chair in the back of the room was a small fox with seven tails, each emitting a different color. “I’m glad to finally see you again,” Brela’s familiar voice said to him.

“Sit, let’s talk,” the fox said. One of the tails motioned to another rocking chair, off to her side. Rolin sat down, not sure what to think, but none of what he saw made him feel threatened either.
“What is going on here?” He asked her.
“This place is a prison and I am its prisoner. I invited you in here to help me find peace.”
“To help you get out?” Rolin asked.
The fox shook her head. “No, to help me find rest. My body is far too tired to carry on. I died long ago, but the magic of this place wouldn’t let me leave. Now that you’ve opened the lock I can finally pass on, but I wanted to talk with you before I did.”
“Why me?” Rolin asked. “I’m just some blind guy from a small town. Is it just a coincidence?”
“Yes and no.” Brela replied. “In all honesty, anyone with a little bit of kindness in their heart would have sufficed for this. Even someone with ill intent could have worked, as long as I could get them to open the door for me. But it all comes at a cost. They would gain my powers at the cost of their eyesight.”
Rolin understood. “And there’s no loss of eyesight if the person was blind to begin with.”
Brela nodded. “Correct. I reached out to the town to hopefully find someone who could free me and that’s when I found you. It seemed like the perfect opportunity. A kind young man with no eyesight who I would not mind giving my powers to.” She smiled, a kaleidoscope of colors hidden behind the strange fox grin. “I hope you’re not angry.”
“On the contrary, this gift has been a blessing. I was happy before, of course, but I never dreamed of being able to not only visit the elven city but also see it. I got to see my family for the first time, even if I soon found out that my eyesight was very different from theirs.”
Brela nodded. “Essentially, you’ve been given my magic sight. It is a form of ocular magic that allows the wielder to look beyond the outer layer of a person’s being and see them for what they really are. It’s really powerful and could be abused easily if put in the wrong hands.”
Rolin nodded. “I can imagine, yeah.” He looked at her beautiful form. Each tail had a different color equated to those of the rainbow, which was a phenomenon he only recently learned what it looked like. “Is there no way to save you?”
Brela smiled. “There is not and I would not want it to be another way. I’m tired, Rolin.” She laid her head down on her paws. “I’ve been in this tower, stuck in a dark void, for centuries.”
“What happened to this tower for it to be here? Where did it come from?”
Brela paused, seemingly unsure what she wanted to share, before coming to a conclusion. “I’ll spare you what you already know, as I managed to see a lot through your eyes while you spoke with the other people outside. And I’ll warn you that it’s not a story I’ll enjoy telling.”
Rolin carefully picked her up and put her on his lap. “Only tell me the things you want to tell me, leave out all the sad details you’d rather not repeat.”
Brela nodded, her eyes mostly closed from her longtime exhaustion. “The mages in Kanarth were researching cutting edge magic and yet they still fell short of what the spirits could do simply by being born of magic. This stung and it eventually led to them doing experiments on any of the spirits they could catch. There were several towers like this one, Vincula they were called, where spirits were held in captivity and essentially being tortured in an attempt to figure out how to take our magic for themselves. One night, a group or people who were opposed to the awful work these mages were doing snuck into one of the towers where they freed two spirits known in your realm as The Twin Snakes of Venoria. During this mission they were spotted by a group of mages that was working in that tower and a battle ensued. Now the next part is a little bit vague since I had very limited knowledge of what was going on, but I believe one of the mages attempted to activate an enormously powerful spell that would banish the intruders into a different realm. This mage then failed to execute the magic the right way, causing all of the magic within the city to pool into a singular spell. Not knowing how to fix his mistake while he was casting the spell and essentially stuck within the moment, he panicked and tried to send the magic back into the floating crystals that held the island aloft. In doing so he shattered the entire city into small shards that started to fall to the ground. I don’t know exactly who then managed to redirect the city into another realm and how they did it, but Kanarth was shunted into a realm of darkness while also torn asunder into thousands of pieces. Because myself and many of the other spirits in the city were being kept alive by artificial means, many of our souls were bound to these shards and stuck there until now.”
Rolin looked at her in horror. “So you mean there are more spirits locked in these shards?” He asked her.
“Yes. Although I do not know how many there are stuck and where they are, I am certain there will be others.”
“That’s awful, we should find these Vincula and free them.”
“I knew I picked the right person to inherit my powers. She held out her paw and carefully placed it in Rolin’s palm. “Allow me to teach you a little bit about how to wield the magic you now possess, so you can maybe help some of my family escape from their prisons too.
Rolin closed his eyes as images of a younger Brela learning how to wield the ocular magic filled his mind. He sat in quiet, processing the images as they came in, taking his time with each image until he was confident he understood what he was looking at. Finally, he opened his eyes again. The fox in his lap had turned into a tiny fox statue with seven different colored tails. For a small moment Rolin hoped that this meant Brela was still in there somehow, but his newly acquired magic quickly told him that this was false hope. All that was left was the anchor that once held Brela in this world and was now dormant, the spirit gone for good. Multicolored tails rolled down Rolin’s face and fell onto the ground, leaving ripples of color to travel along the marble floor where they landed. After a few minutes he steeled himself and descended the stairs again. He felt much more confident in his eyesight now, having gained a deeper understanding of how the magic worked, but he also realized it would take a lot of practice for his body to get used to it. He touched the walls of the dark room below until he found the door and let his kaleidoscope eyes absorb the darkness until it looked like any normal old room. He pushed down the door handle and stepped outside, into the cold winter air.