Milo returns to his agreeable, pliable self when you scoop him up again; happy to ride in your arms or cling to your shoulder as you go up the spectral stairs. To him, at least, this seems unalarming; perhaps that is a small comfort.

The stairs do not give way, and their phantom ascend leads to a phantom turret at the top of the tower, where a phantom signal fire casts its eerie glow over the snows below, the river beyond... and you see now, toward a matching light upon a similarly destroyed and mystically reimagined tower on the other side of the river, in Quenelles.

You share this vista with a single sentinel; a ghost of a mountain of a man who must be seven feet tall. Cool, stoic stillness fills his features as he gazes out over the river and beyond. The ancient Bretonnian, or perhaps Bretonni, seems to take no notice of you for a minute or so before finally his ghostly gaze sweeps your person. He strikes you as sad; a little tired, even. Without explaining himself, he unlimbers a scabbarded blade with its shoulderstrap from his person, and offers it to you. Or... the ghost of it, anyway; the scabbard and simple hilt of the longblade shimmering like hazy turquoise glass.