Tobias draws a breath and steps between the columns. The air changes the moment he crosses the threshold — warmer, strangely still, carrying a faint smell like rain on sun-baked stone. The open sky beyond is vast and violet-edged, the last of the night retreating from it in long slow bands. He can see now that the ruins sit at the top of a low hill, and the land spreads out in every direction: a dark ribbon of river, the bright smudge of the meadow they crossed, and — far to the north, rising above a fold of hills — the pale shape of a tower he has never seen before, narrow and bone-white against the brightening sky. The fairy settles on his shoulder and points. Her violet eyes are bright with something that might be urgency, or might be joy. From the tower, very faintly, comes a sound like a bell struck once and left to fade.