The History of the Spire, Part IV

Welcome back to the six-part series detailing the history of Eldenspire and the family that called it home, the Battenbornes. Duke Rhime of the Spire is available for pre-order now and releases July 29th!

Here is what we learned from Part III: The Long Watch and the Darkening (300–580). During the Darkening, famine, plague, and chaos spread across Lucardia, pushing the Five Kingdoms towards collapse. As Spiretown fell into ruin, the Battenbornes withdrew into Eldenspire, sealing its halls and embracing strange, silent rituals. Over generations, they became eerie figures of legend—never seen, never speaking—watching as the world decayed, their stillness more terrifying than war.

Now, for Part IV. Sereth the Warborn and the Fire Beneath (580–650)

After centuries of silence, a voice rose once more from the Spire.

In 632, the Battenbornes presented a new heir to Westerly’s court—a tall, pale man with a serpent’s stillness and eyes like smoke beneath glass. Sereth, born of stone and silence, was not like his forebears. Where his ancestors had watched, he acted. Where they sealed, he opened.

Under Sereth’s rule, Eldenspire stirred.

Men again appeared on the outer walls. Messengers were dispatched to nearby townships. Silent libraries were unsealed, and the deeper vaults re-examined. In the lowest chambers of the Spire, Sereth walked alone and returned speaking of purpose.

He claimed he had seen what was to come, and the Step would need a spear—not a passive one, but a living, pointed blade.

When the Second War of the Five Kingdoms broke out in 642, the Kingdom of Emergrave moved eastward, cutting across the southern passes in hopes of driving into Westerly’s exposed flank. With the king’s forces scattered and his court paralyzed by internal feuds, it was Sereth who marched to meet the ancient foes.

He did not bring a vast army. He brought forth two thousand men, black-cloaked and masked, their armor lacquered to a dull gleam. They moved without flapping banners, for there was scant cloth for such pagentry, but the unblinking serpent of Battenborne was sewn into every collar.

At the Battle of Watcher’s Bend, Sereth’s force met Emergrave’s larger host, one rumored to be ten thousand strong, under a red sky. What happened there is not a clean history. Thousands witnessed it, yet no story was the same, and insanity colored all of them.

The enemy broke without battle horns. Commanders bled from the eyes. Some soldiers collapsed in seizures. Others turned on their comrades in fevered rage. A few were torn apart by shadows. Lightning struck the same hill seven times. The rain that fell afterward was black and smelled of rot. The few survivors, barely clinging to sanity, said Sereth commanded a black dragon.

But that wasn’t important. By dawn, Sereth had routed Emergrave. The eastern marches held. He had saved the Westerly Kingdom.

The king, though disturbed by the stories he heard, could not deny such a victory. Sereth was named Grand Duke of the Step and given the command of the entire eastern frontier. He accepted with no ceremony.

But what Sereth had awakened would not go unnoticed. The whispers of dark magic and its growing power took hold, not just in Westerly but throughout all of Lucardia. It drew attention to the ten magical guilds, which had grown in influence amongst all five of Lucardia’s kingdoms.

In 650, a decree came from the court of Westerly Rock: magic was to be purged. Practitioners were to be hunted. Grimoires burned. Relics shattered. The Five Kingdoms, seeking control in a fracturing world, turned to fear and fire. The mage guilds had grown too powerful, and the Five Kingdoms united on a single goal: the extermination of magic from the realm.

At first, Sereth gave no response. Then, quietly, he did the opposite of the decree, perhaps knowing it was only a matter of time before the witchhunters came for him.

Word spread that the duke was an ally. Magic doers from across the realm fled to Eldenspire seeking refuge. Witches, wizards, sorcerers, and seers hid in its tunnels. Scrolls and books meant for the pyre disappeared, preserved in the vaults beneath the Spire. Over time, Sereth amassed a vast repository of magic, and the Spire became a sanctuary, cloaked in ritual and the glow of firelight.

It could not last. The Legion was coming, zealots protected by their Aquila medallions, ones that resisted all magic. The court grew suspicious. The king sent envoys, then spies, then assassins. Rumors festered. The name Battenborne returned to the mouths of the people, not in reverence, but in unease, and then disdain.

Sereth turned to his son.

Varion, Sereth’s heir, was not a man of passion. He was cold, calculating, and patient—a strategist born in the shadow of his father. Where Sereth stirred the embers, Varion saw the wildfire to come. He heard a whisper in other courts. The Legion was coming for his father, thousands of them, and they would arrive soon.

The purge was no longer politics. It was religion now. Sereth’s death was inevitable, and with it, perhaps the entire Battenborne name. But what if this calamity could be shaped? So, father and son made a pact.

Sereth would die. Publicly. By his son’s hand.

The old duke would be made an example—burned for disloyalty, condemned in front of all by his own son. It would buy Eldenspire safety and the Battenborne name some time. It would paint Varion as the inheritor of reason. One that would redirect Eldenspire back to loyal servants of the crown.

And so, in the courtyard of Eldenspire, with torches lit and priests chanting, Sereth walked into flame. He did not scream. He did not weep.

His final words were for Varion alone: “Guard the magic, for it will be our avenue to the throne.”

The fire consumed him, and the people believed it was just. Only Varion knew it was a sacrifice and would spend the rest of his life obeying his father’s dying wish.

Be sure to come back on Saturday for Part V: Varion the Cunning (650–670). Check out Duke Rhime of Spire’s trailer here, and find the first chapter here.

Cheers!