Kael had always been told the sky islands were eternal. Four massive landmasses, chained to the dead earth below, drifting in a slow, silent waltz. Generations believed the chains were unbreakable, the ground cursed, and the shadows below nothing but stories to frighten disobedient children.
But as Kael leaned over the rusted railing of the maintenance platform, staring into the gray abyss, he understood the truth. It was all fragile. All of it.
The wind ripped at his face, howling through the colossal links of the Chain with the sound of a world in pain. Far below, the ash-strewn wasteland stretched to a hazy horizon. And there a flicker. A shimmer that moved against the wind, coiling and uncoiling like a living thing.
"Kael! Get back!"
Liora's voice was a knife slicing through the gale. Her boots clanged against the grating as she grabbed the back of his work harness, her grip fierce. He could feel the tremor in her hands. This wasn't just about the Council's rules.
"I saw something down there," he shouted, not looking back, eyes locked on the impossible shimmer. "It's real, Lia. The stories are real."
"It doesn't matter!" she yelled, pulling at him. Her fear was a palpable thing, sharp and familiar. It was the same fear she'd had when they'd climbed the old watchtower as kids, the fear that had made her whisper, 'I won't let you fall.' "The platform hasn't been serviced in decades. The whole thing is—"
A deep, metallic groan cut her off. It vibrated up from the Chain itself, through the bolts and into their bones. The platform jerked violently.
Kael's heart hammered against his ribs. "Hold on!"
But the command was useless. The groan became a shriek of tearing steel. The world tilted. The railing Kael clung to peeled away like paper. For a horrifying second, he saw the terror on Liora's face, her hand stretching toward his then the platform fell away beneath them, and gravity was the only law left.
The drop was a silence so profound it was louder than the wind. Sky, chain, and island spun into a sickening blur. He didn't scream. There was no air. Only the terrible, final certainty of the ground rushing up to meet him.
Consciousness returned in a wave of agony.
Kael gasped, and fire lanced through his side. He lay on his back, every breath a struggle against a weight that felt both inside and outside his chest. Above, the familiar blue of the island skies was gone, replaced by a thick, bruise-colored haze where a blurred sun struggled to shine.
He was alive. The thought was absurd.
Gritting his teeth, he pushed himself up. The ground was not ground as he knew it—it was a jagged landscape of cracked earth, twisted metal spires, and ruins that hinted at shapes he couldn't comprehend. And it was silent. The ever-present wind of the heights was gone, leaving a vacuum that pressed against his ears.
Then, movement.
Figures, maybe a hundred paces away. Human-shaped, but wrong. Shadows clung to them like wet silk, flowing and distorting their outlines. They moved with a slow, deliberate grace that made his skin crawl. As one turned its head, Kael felt a jolt—not of sight, but of recognition. A memory, long buried: the scent of rain on the temple stones, a feeling of profound loss. It was his memory, but he was seeing it reflected in the hollow darkness of the figure's gaze.
He tried to call out, to demand answers, but his throat was a desert. Only a dry rasp escaped.
Kael…
The voice was in his mind. Soft, intimate, and devastatingly familiar. It was his own inner voice, but layered with a sorrow that was not his own.
A figure separated from the others, gliding toward him without a sound. It was tall, its form subtly shifting within its shroud of living shadow. Where a face should be, two points of faint, silver light glowed. They were not eyes, but windows and through them, Kael saw fleeting images: himself as a child, hiding; his mother's face, half remembered; Liora's hand reaching for him in the falling light.
The figure did not speak aloud, yet the words formed directly in the center of his mind, calm and inescapable.
You have always been falling, Kael. We have been waiting.
It reached out a hand, not of flesh, but of coalesced darkness and forgotten noon.
Welcome home.
Kael scrambled back, the pain in his side screaming in protest. The primal warning in his chest wasn't just screaming now; it was a clarion bell. He had crossed a line. The safety of the islands, the law of the chains, the history in the archives all of it was a carefully maintained fiction.
The truth was here, in the silence and the shadows.
And it knew him by name.