By WhiskeyJaneDoe winner of the Walls And Towers contest. 

When the walls appeared, Adelaide had been a young child. She'd been too small to initially understand the implications of being cut off from the rest of the kingdoms, yet she soon learned.

Trade plummeted, and people within her kingdom of Soladia turned on one another, fighting over a now finite amount of resources. In the ensuing conflicts, King Ulregard, who had always been inept, implemented measures to maintain peace. Unsurprisingly, those half-hearted efforts failed to prevent a desperate and starving populace from devouring itself.

When her father had been killed, Adelaide had learned. When her mother was forced to give her only daughter up in order to be able to feed Adelaide's two starving younger brothers, she'd learned.

The world was a terrible, awful place.

The walls hadn't created the darker sides of humanity, though. The walls had revealed those sides, highlighted pre-existing evils within the kingdom of Soladia.

"Stop standing there and help me, Adelaide!" Andros snapped at her. His words drew her from her musing, prompting her to pull the potions and other items they'd need out of the saddle bags.

It hadn't been all bad, of course. She'd become a wizard's assistant when her mother casted her out. Andros, Adelaide's mentor, had devoted his life to finding a way to penetrate the impenetrable towers. He sought answers about Soladia's painful isolation from the rest of the world.

Andros grunted, flipping through the pages of his spell book before saying, "Don't forget the-"

"Ember's eye" Adelaide finished for her master, drawing a reluctant smirk from the man. They'd never admit it to one another, but they liked each other. The old man, for all his absent-minded bluster, was charming in ways that only ornery old men and women could be.

Arms heavy with the ingredients they required, Adelaide made her way to Andros' side and began laying out the materials in a ceremonial formation on the ground.

"The door should be right there," he said with conviction while pointing at a spot on the tower.

Adelaide grinned. He'd said the same thing last time before he accidentally lit his robes on fire. "Of course, Andros. The magical warding around these towers and walls doesn't stand a chance in the face of your wizardry."

He smiled brilliantly, basking in her only half-sarcastic praise before he instructed her, "Begin the incantation with me."

Adelaide followed his lead, and the two of them began repeating the chant for revelation of truth. At first, she believed nothing would happen, but to her shock, stones began toppling from the supposedly indestructible structures. The earth then began to shake so violently that Adelaide feared Andros would fall and injure himself, but she could do little more than desperately try to remain upright herself. When the quaking finally stopped, she looked up to find that a door had appeared on the side of the tower.

Andros smirked at her, "Grab our bags, Adelaide. It's time for us to acquire some answers."