Excavators working the north tower of the Glass City confirmed this week that a long-sealed inner chamber was breached, exposing what witnesses described as a floating black sphere surrounded by five glass-encased figures. The discovery, made by the pair of travelers who have spent recent weeks investigating the ruins alongside Sandgate miners, has reignited old fears about the fused spires that dot the Dustfields.
According to Torunn, the Sandgate foreman now stationed at the tower entrance alongside fellow miners Mathis and Fenna, the door itself resisted entry for some time. "Five rings, five hands," Torunn said. "It wanted blood and prayer both before it would open. We heard breathing behind it for days and thought it a trick of the wind. It was not."
Once inside, the travelers reported the chamber spoke, through one of the glass-bound figures, of a mage named Iskandra who vitrified the entire city in a single act centuries past. Cartographer Zahira Sunforge of Dusthollow, who has spent years mapping the glass spires' perimeter, said the account matches fragments of old desert lore she had dismissed as myth. "We always thought the glassing was a weapon turned on the city," Sunforge said. "If this is true, it was closer to a tourniquet."
"She believed she could destroy it. She was wrong," was how one of the travelers relayed the figure's warning, according to guide Hakan Darkstone, who spoke with the pair before their departure. Darkstone confirmed the two returned briefly to Dusthollow to resupply, consult Sunforge's maps, and rest before setting out again at dusk this week, bound north through the Scorch toward a trail known locally as the Needle.
The travelers' stated purpose, per Darkstone, is to reach a place called Still Peak in the northern mountains, believed to hold shards of the same binding magic that keeps the chamber's black sphere contained. Miners Torunn, Mathis, and Fenna have agreed to hold the tower entrance in their absence. Sunforge cautioned that without further binding work, the seal beneath the Glass City may not hold indefinitely. "They spoke of a year, perhaps less," she said. "That is not long, in the desert or anywhere else."