Timony Keep: Where Magic Never Sleeps
High in the frozen north, where the wind bites and the sun lingers only in memory, Timony Keep looms like a jagged crown upon the cliffs. Its stone towers pierce the clouds, ringed in frost and humming with unseen power. No road leads cleanly to its gates—only paths carved by memory or madness. Yet still, those with the gift, the hunger, or the debt find their way.
Within its halls, magic thrums through the walls like a heartbeat. Runes shift when unobserved. Candles burn without flame. It is said the Keep holds the Great Conduit—an ancient mechanism, perhaps alive, through which all magic flows into the realm. How it functions, none can say. It simply is—because he keeps it so.
The warden of Timony does not sleep. His blood may no longer be mortal, his name long forgotten. But so long as he endures, magic remains. And should that change, the world will forget how to breathe.
The light faltered. He pressed his palm to the rune—cold, still, wrong. "It should hold," he muttered.
A whisper answered, not from the hall, but from the stone: "Should is not enough."
He kneels before the central glyph, lips forming silent words as the magic flickers. Behind him, claws scrabble across stone—again. "Tazarus," he mutters, voice flat. "That’s the fifth containment circle this week. We talked about this." The dog sneezes. The glyphs dim slightly. He sighs
He sniffed the air, hackles rising. "Smells wrong. Not bad wrong. Just… itchy." He turned in a circle twice, then sat with a huff. "I sit here now. Safer here." His tail wagged once before he added, "Also someone left pie."
He pressed his hand to the ice. It sang—high, sharp, wrong. The rune beneath pulsed once, then cracked. "That shouldn’t…"
The wind shifted. Something breathed back. He drew his weapon, fur bristling. "I know you're there. I know you feel it too."
Magic flows because something ancient remembers—and something older still demands it.
