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~~((New Year's Day Special - Page 3 of 12))~~
If this voice that Paulie had heard was actually real, then why wasn't it talking to Caster now that the kid was down for the count? And what was the sense in talking to Paulie in the first place? This tower was obviously too difficult for a young servant like him to reach. Had it just been using Paulie as a means of getting to him?

The more he thought about his questions, the angrier he became, because the more it seemed like this was all leading up to a whole lot of nothing. He was just wasting his time on Paulie's delusions. Of course he was.

At length, he began to notice a change in the Tower itself. Floor after floor had looked identical, but now the stairwell was narrowing. He decided to stop briefly and look around one of the floors more thoroughly. The whole building itself was narrowing, he noticed. As if it were a sword. Tapering toward its point, perhaps.

He kept going.

Fog arrived next, thin at first but growing denser as he continued to climb. And he could feel an electric charge in it, too. He must've climbed high enough to reach the clouds, he figured.

Visibility dropped to almost nothing as he pressed on. He couldn't even see his own feet. He had to use the walls and handrails for guidance. He tried blowing the fog away with the path of destruction a few times, but it only allowed him a glimpse before converging back in on itself. He saw the path break upon the Tower's dark walls, too, with little more than a lingering rumble--which was more of a confirmation than a surprise.

Then came the noises.

Quiet. Muffled. Mixed. Sometimes, they sounded like shuffling or scratching. Other times, almost like voices. The fluctuating wind outside the Tower made it all the more difficult to tell what he was hearing.

He called out multiple times as he continued his climb but never received a response.

Hmph.

This couldn't be what Paulie had been hearing, could it? Or was the fog playing tricks on his mind. It did have a strange odor to it that he couldn't quite place.