A ruined fortress in the northwestern interior of Phyr Island, deep within the Jungle of Spines. The tower was Haegstra's seat of power during her forty-three-year reign, and the site from which she worked the curse that transformed the island.
The tower still stands, though barely. The upper floors have collapsed. The walls are cracked and overgrown with crystalline vines. The main gate hangs open, has hung open for three centuries, as if inviting visitors.
No one goes there.
The Jungle of Spines is at its worst near the tower: the spines longer, sharper, the curse stronger. Creatures that would flee humans elsewhere on the island grow aggressive near the tower, as if defending it. The few expeditions that have attempted to reach the ruins report feeling watched, hearing sounds that couldn't be natural, seeing movement in the peripheral vision that vanished when looked at directly.
Some expeditions have reached the tower. Fewer have returned. Those who did describe:
- Chambers filled with statues that weren't soldiers, but islanders, Haegstra's subjects, arranged in poses of supplication or service
- A throne room with a throne of fused stone, multiple petrified bodies melted together into a seat
- Sounds from below, from chambers beneath the tower, a rhythmic pulse like breathing or grinding stone
- The certainty, irrational but absolute, that something down there was aware of them
The Petros Shard: Beneath the tower, in chambers carved long before Haegstra arrived, lies the source of her power: a fragment of elemental earth roughly the size of a human torso, pulsing with petrification magic. The shard is not truly alive, but it responds to proximity and intent. It grants petrification abilities to those who bond with it: touch it, accept its presence in their mind, let it partially transform their flesh.
Haegstra found the shard when she first came to Phyr. She was its third known wielder. The ruins beneath the tower predate human settlement on Ve; whatever species carved them left no other trace.
The shard is why the curse persists. It's the engine that powers everything: the spine sickness, the warped creatures, the petrified army. Destroying it might end the curse. Or it might release three centuries of accumulated magical energy in a single catastrophic burst.
What Haegstra Became: When Haegstra petrified the army, the magical backlash didn't kill her. It dispersed her.
Her consciousness fused with the curse itself. She didn't die. She became the crystalline spines, the petrified reefs, the stone soldiers, the warped creatures. The curse IS Haegstra. Every spine that breaks skin carries a fragment of her awareness. Every statue contains a sliver of her attention. The island is her body now.
For three centuries, she's been fragmented, present everywhere but coherent nowhere, her mind shattered across thousands of cursed objects. But she's slowly reassembling. The shared dreams that occasionally sweep through Attla are Haegstra becoming focused enough to reach out intentionally. The lights in the tower are her attention gathering at the shard, the center of her distributed self.
The Attla elders understand this. They've tracked the dreams for generations, noting their increasing frequency and clarity. Thirty years ago, the dreams came once a decade. Now they come several times a year. Haegstra is waking up.
She won't have a body. But within another generation, she'll likely be coherent enough to direct the curse precisely: extend spines toward specific targets, control the creatures as extensions of her will, perhaps animate the stone soldiers as puppets. The island will stop being passively dangerous and become actively hostile.
The elders don't share this knowledge with outsiders. They don't want treasure hunters getting ideas about "killing the curse" by destroying the shard. An uncontrolled release could petrify everything within miles, including Attla.