Sixteen Years Later.
The wind at the edge of the Vort-Isle didn't just blow; it screamed.
Kiron was suspended by a fraying hemp rope, his boots skating against the mossy underside of a derelict sky-galleon. His lungs burned. Every breath felt like inhaling ground glass. On the islands of the "Deep-Cloud," the air was heavy with the Taint—a soot-like residue left behind by the Gods' passing.
"Hold steady, Taz!" Kiron shouted, his voice nearly swallowed by the gale.
"I'm trying! The winch is slipping!" Taz yelled back from the ledge above. Taz was a year younger, thinner, and prone to the "Cloud-Cough," but he was the only person Kiron trusted with his life.
Kiron ignored the protest. He jammed a rusted crowbar into the seams of a Caelum-Plate—the rare, glowing metal that powered the ships of the High-Nobles. To a scavenger, this was a month's worth of food. To the Gods, it was trash.
Clang. Clang.
As he hammered, a sudden, sharp pain lanced through Kiron's skull. His vision blurred.
The fire. The Song. The sound of thousands of hands slapping together in a final, desperate rhythm.
"Gah!" Kiron gasped, losing his grip. He swung out into the empty air, the rope snapping taut with a jerk that nearly dislocated his shoulder.
"Kiron! What happened?"
"I'm... I'm fine," Kiron wheezed, shaking his head to clear the images. He looked down at his palms. They were empty, scarred from years of manual labor, yet they burned as if he were holding white-hot coals.
He looked toward the horizon, past the drifting debris of their scrap-yard island. The clouds were turning that familiar, bruised purple. A massive shadow began to blot out the suns.
"Taz, get the steel and hide," Kiron said, his voice dropping to a low, urgent whisper.
"What? We're almost done—"
"Taz, look up!"
The Executioner's Guard—the armored servants of the Gods—were descending. They didn't fly on ships; they rode Wing-Harrowers, beasts of shadow and scale. They weren't there for a tithe. They were moving in a search pattern, their golden spears glowing with a light that felt like a needle in Kiron's brain.
"They're looking for someone," Taz whispered, his face turning the color of ash.
Kiron clutched his rusted crowbar. He felt small. He felt weak. He was a boy who could barely afford bread, standing against the harbingers of the heavens. But as the lead Guard turned his beast toward their ledge, Kiron felt a strange, cold calm settle over him.
The nightmares weren't just dreams. They were a map. And for the first time in sixteen years, Kiron realized that the people in his dreams weren't just dying—they were waiting.