It is three past midnight. The Mad Queens Tower stands on the northernmost end of the castle grounds, as thick and squat a cylinder as any, one of the many rounded turrets that protrude in ancient tumescence from the baseline of the castle foundation.

The top of the tower does not narrow into a point. Rather, it has a flat roof which serves as an observation point, with thick crenellated parapets rising in a brim of protection. Wind hums through the crenels between the merlons and disappears into the gaping absolute darkness of the descending stairwell, in a twister, a whirlpool of aerial force. There it races down, down, down, falling without end, like a nightmare-dream.

Until it hits bottom, full force.

If wind were a man, it might be expected to die, as such things be told in the proverbial way of things.

They say, always wake up before you hit bottom.

Only, the bottom is no end, and the end is not the bottom. The base of the stairwell opens like a curling snake into a courtyard area, and here the wind and the clamoring air currents have the chance to continue their mad rush, onward and out into the world. The sky of the world is wrought of only a few degrees lesser darkness than the interior of the stairwell and other places hidden by stone walls, on account of a sprinkling of stars that lend a diffused glow to the heavens—throw a spoon of milk into a cauldron of pitch, stir to smoothness, and the dark remains, yet its nature has been altered just a degree beyond overt perception.

On such a night as this, with no moon, it is said that in the ancient days the noblewomen who reside in the tower would receive lovers. If the lover does not come, the high-born woman walks out onto the roof and waits for him, sometimes with a single flickering candle to signify her presence; its light can be seen for miles, a cry in the void. She waits, standing in the chill air of many nights, and eventually she becomes unbalanced...