The Griffin Tower wasn't the kind of place you just wandered up to for fun. It was ancient, stupidly tall, and crowned with a massive stone griffin that looked like it was personally judging every student on campus. Real griffins nested at the very top...living, breathing ones with wings that sliced through the sky and claws that could probably bench-press a car.
Their cries echoed like old war horns, and the wind up there? It didn't play nice. It stole your voice and tried to steal your clothes too. And the building was so high up in the sky that if you didn't take the magical wooden escalator you would literally pass out half way.
Which was exactly why Lydia's heart was doing Olympic gymnastics the second she stepped onto the rooftop and came face-to-face with a griffin three times her size. Not because she used her legs no she was literally enveloped by a fear so intense that she almost jumped back down.
