He stood at the edge of the cliff, breathless, no longer from fear, but from the sheer impossibility of it all. The world had split open. Above him: a vaulted cathedral of living cloud and wild blue, mountains hung like lanterns in the mist, waterfalls unspooling in the air, feeding rivers that vanished into the sky. A flock of Sky-Renders wheeled overhead, their cries braiding through the wind, ancient and jubilant.
But it was the Sky-Renders themselves that stole every word from his mouth. They were not dragons, not truly, nor beasts of bone and claw. They moved like storms given flesh. Their bodies were long and sinuous, a fusion of draconic muscle and something finer, wings not of feathers, but of translucent, prismatic membrane, veined with living blue fire. Their scales shimmered from slate-grey to iridescent violet, each movement casting rainbows across the clouds. Along their spines, wisps of mist curled and unwound, dissolving into vapour with every breath. Their eyes—gold, unblinking, fathomless—carried the sorrow and wisdom of sky and stone alike.
One by one, they circled him, closer and closer, until the air itself seemed charged with memory. A low, resonant hum began, not from their throats, but from the space between them, a music older than language. Luka felt it in his bones, a thrum that matched his pulse, and the blue marks on his skin answered, lighting up with gentle flame.
The largest Sky-Render—the matriarch, scales scored with old scars and glory—landed before him. Her wings spread wide, stirring the clouds, and all the others bowed their heads, as if in reverence. She bent low so that Luka could see the storm-bright intelligence in her gaze. Without words, he understood. This was the ritual. The moment of naming, of belonging. The matriarch exhaled a plume of blue fire, which curled and danced in the air, weaving itself into shapes, glyphs, memories, fragments of stories untold. She touched her nose to Luka's brow, and in that instant, a thousand images crashed through him: the sky at dawn, the song of rain on stone, the memory of every child who had ever been lost, and found, in these mountains. The other Sky-Renders followed, each adding their voice to the wordless song. The air shimmered. Clouds drifted low, wrapping Luka and the beasts in a cocoon of light and mist.
He felt himself lifted, not by hands, but by will, a gentle buoying, as if the mountain itself accepted him. Then, as quickly as it began, the ritual ended. The flock dispersed, yet did not leave. They circled above and around, a living guard, a promise: You are one of us now. Sky-blood. Flame-marked.
Belonging.
For the first time, Luka was not afraid, not of the dark, not of what waited below or above. He was seen. He was held. He was home.
* * *
Dellos walked.
At first, every step was uncertain, his legs weak, his head light as a lantern in a high wind. But the further Dellos went, the more the labyrinth seemed to open for him, as if stone and fire alike recognised the pulse that now lived inside his bones. The blue flame glimmered under his skin, answering secret glyphs he could not read but somehow understood. With each turn, a new clarity: the fear was still there, yes, but it had become a guide, a shadow to be followed rather than fled. He moved through long, winding galleries where the walls were inscribed with ghost-marks and memory scars. The silence was no longer suffocating, but watchful. Once, in a passage too narrow for fear, he paused, certain, for a moment, that he saw a flicker of Luka's silhouette just ahead, a child's outline drawn in blue fire. But it vanished when he blinked, leaving only longing and a strange sense of peace.
The flame's current led him ever upward, toward currents of fresher air, toward the promise of light. Hunger and thirst still bit at him, but the need to reach Luka was a hunger older than any flesh.
Halfway through a chamber carved into the shape of a great spiral, he stumbled. His hand brushed against rough stone and met not rock, but something else:
A fragment—small, sharp, and humming with impossible energy, tucked in a crevice at the spiral's heart. It glowed, brighter than the veins around it, a splinter of the Rememberancer itself, forgotten or left behind. When he closed his fingers around it, a shock ran through him, a sudden, tidal rush of sensation. He knew then, with a certainty that cut through every last doubt: this shard was meant for something. For someone. It was calling not just to him, but through him, out, upward, to the world above. He tucked it carefully in his belt, heart pounding with purpose and fear.
And now the thoughts came, thoughts that were not wholly his own. Images pressed against the inside of his skull:
Wings slicing through clouds.
Luka's eyes, wide with wonder, staring at a sky that was not the sky he'd known.
Islands suspended on curtains of mist, forests rooted in air, a world layered atop the world he had lived and died for.
He saw glimpses of other beings, too, creatures wild and immense, not just Sky-Renders but all manner of flying life, luminous, mythic, impossibly alive. The flashes came so strong he almost fell. He had to press his back to the stone, knuckles white, breath hissing through his teeth. They weren't hallucinations, he knew that much now. They were memories, but not his. They were Luka's. Or the flame's. Or the mountain's itself. He understood then: the labyrinth was not merely a prison or a test. It was a bridge. And he, for all his failings, was crossing it.
The tunnel began to rise, the air growing sharper, less heavy with old ash.
He followed the living map beneath his skin, trusting the current, letting it draw him toward the Mouth. At last, he saw it: a cold blue gleam in the distance, the faintest breeze whispering in. The way out. He staggered forward, knees buckling with relief and exhaustion, and emerged blinking into the half-light of dawn. The Mouth yawned before him, jagged and ancient. On the ledge above, framed against the bruised gold of morning, two figures waited.
Reyland was first to rise, eyes wide, hope and worry twisted together. Asyana, arms crossed, sporting new bruises, grinned her lopsided, dare-you grin. Dellos stumbled, half-walking, half-falling to his knees before them, clutching the shard in his palm. For a long moment, none of them spoke. Reyland's hand hovered at his shoulder, not touching yet, as if afraid the spell might break. Then Dellos looked up, eyes wild and shining with new knowledge.
"I found him," he managed, voice hoarse, but unbreakable. "He's alive. And..."
He swallowed, holding out the shard, letting its blue glow paint their faces.
"And there's a sky above the sky. There's a world we never dreamed."
Asyana gave a low, incredulous whistle, eyebrows disappearing beneath her sweat-streaked hair. "Well, look at you," she said, arms folded, voice half a laugh, half a dare. "Crawls out of the mountain, looks like a ghost, starts preaching about secret skies and lost worlds. You sure you didn't hit your head on a rock, Dellos? Or did the old flame finally boil your brains?"
Dellos managed a weary grin, the shard's glow catching in his palm. "Not the first time you've called me crazy."
"Yeah, but this time I mean it with respect." She knelt beside him, eyes scanning his face, searching for the cracks. "I've seen folk come out of that labyrinth talking to ghosts, but never with souvenirs." She tapped the shard, her fingers quick and light. "What is this, then? Proof, or just a fancy bit of madness?"
Reyland crouched down, his gaze sober, almost reverent. The wind tugged at his cloak, his eyes reflecting the sky's bruised fire. "He's not wrong, Asyana. Something's different." He hesitated, voice dropping. "But Dellos, another sky? Creatures, worlds above the clouds...? That's not just a legend. That's...well, it's mad."
"Exactly," Asyana said, slapping Dellos gently on the back. "Absolutely mad. Which means I'm in." She grinned, reckless and alive. "What's the point of being sane, anyway? Never did me any good."
Reyland shook his head, a small, wry smile breaking through. "You're both impossible. But if there's even a chance, if Luka's up there, then we follow, no matter how high, no matter how mad it sounds."
Dellos looked at them, one grinning, one grave, and felt, for the first time in forever, the wild ache of belonging. He closed his fingers around the shard. The wind howled through the Mouth, cold and sweet and full of promise.
"Madness, then," Dellos said quietly, voice strong and steady. "Let's see where it leads."
And above them, far beyond the clouds, the sky was waiting, too.
* * *
There are things a boy can never say, not with words, not with the quivering of hands or the stammer of old fears. Luka understood this now, standing at the threshold of a world he had never even dreamed could exist. Here, among cloudbridges and thundering falls, beneath arches of living stone, he had no language left. Only awe. Only the ache of becoming.
And the Sky Render, the one who took him, the one who brought him through the wound in the world, waited with ancient patience. Its hide shimmered where the blue flame ran, half-draconic, half-vapour, body rippling with the pulse of the mountain, the rest not so much flesh as living ether. Mist made muscle, memory made sinew. Its wings unfurled, not as the thunderous banners of some old monster legend, but as veils of stormlight, flickering at the edges, feather and scale interwoven, translucent, ever-shifting. When it breathed, the air tasted of rain, of something new blooming where old sorrow had fallen.
Luka reached up, trembling, unsure, and placed his palm against the great beast's cheek. The world stilled. The contact was electric, no, more: it was music, the echo of a thousand silent songs threading through his veins. He felt Dakin's hunger, yes, the old need for flame, but also the gentleness, the curiosity, the wild, unspoken promise: You are not prey. You are kin.
"I have to call you something," Luka whispered, half to himself, half to the listening air. The beast turned, golden eyes narrowing, questioning.
"Dakin," Luka decided aloud, letting the syllables shape the space between them. "Mist, for what you are. For how you move. For what you let me be."
Dakin rumbled, pleasure, approval, the kind of sound that makes bones stronger and hearts a little braver. The bond sealed, not in fire, not in blood, but in that quiet, trembling place where need and trust become something more. From that day, Dakin was no longer simply the Sky-Render that had stolen him from the world below. He was a companion, a shadow, a guardian, the other half of a song waiting to be sung.
They soared together, Dakin and Luka, over a kingdom no child of the lower valleys could have guessed. The air here was silvered, dense with a kind of light that changed as you breathed it. Mountains rose and vanished, suspended on pillars of cloud. Forests clung to cliffs in defiance of gravity, their branches trailing veils of moss that glittered like strings of stars.
All around, other sky-beasts drifted and hunted and played:
Leviathans of mist, all wing and whorl, casting rainbows with every turn.
Flocks of feathered serpents, winding in and out of floating arches, their scales catching sunlight, their songs braided into the wind.
Creatures that looked like living crystal, refracting the flame through their bodies, chasing each other in endless, jubilant spirals.
Beneath it all, the ruins of a forgotten world: spires and bridges, glyphs still glowing faintly, broken machines half-swallowed by vines, memory etched in glass and bone. But this was no tomb. It was alive, if only in the wildness of what had come after, the sky itself remade, not by war or conquest, but by the necessity of wonder.
Luka drank it in, every breath a new truth, every heartbeat a promise that he was more than just the lost boy in the cave. He was Dakin's companion. He was part of this impossible kingdom now.
But comfort lulls. Comfort lies.
Luka, astride Dakin, was lost in awe, soaring through a sky not meant for mortals, swept up in beauty and belonging. Below, the new world sprawled: waterfalls in freefall, clouds blooming into shapes no elder ever whispered. The other Sky-Renders, their bodies half-real, half-myth, circled wider, their eyes holding secrets older than the world. He should have felt safe, nestled between the wings of his impossible companion, the cold wind whistling a lullaby just for them. But comfort, he would learn, is only the pause before the trial.
Without warning, Dakin tilted, spiralling upwards into the blinding blue, wings cutting the sun to ribbons. Luka gripped tighter, laughing, until Dakin twisted again, sharper, crueller. A flick of massive shoulders. A snap of muscle and mist.
Luka was thrown, flung like an offering into the empty air.
He had no time for screams. The world went silent except for the wind, a wild shriek in his ears. The clouds spun. His limbs pinwheeled, weightless. All the comfort was gone, no beast, no father, no ground, only the certainty that he was falling, doomed, forgotten. Terror clawed up his throat, white-hot and choking. But beneath it, something older stirred—the flame.
It rose: a pulse, a memory, a promise he never understood until now. It was Dakin's music, the flock's, the old song of the mountain, blazing through him like the first fire. Luka gasped, then let go, let go of panic, of old fears, of every tether.
The world slowed. The sky seemed to reach for him. The wind gentled. He was not falling. He was... floating.
No, flying—held not by wings, but by will, by the flame thrumming in his veins. The air bent around him, the blue fire in his scars burning cold and true. Luka stretched out his arms. He was not a boy, not a rider, not prey, not even lost. He was sky—becoming, belonging, bound to Dakin not by reins or fear, but by the music of what they were together.
Below, the flock roared their wild approval, the sky shaking with their joy. Dakin hovered, waiting, no longer the beast that had stolen him from the world below, but the first witness to his becoming.
Luka fell, Luka floated, Luka flew. He was not just kin. He was the song itself. He drew a ragged breath, his first as something new, and the air tasted of rain, bright and sharp, electric as thunder. For one suspended heartbeat, Luka felt the impossible ache of longing, Dellos's absence burning fiercer than ever, a thread pulled tight between the worlds. Joy, yes, but stitched through with the pain of everything left behind.
Below, Dakin wheeled in a wide, graceful arc, matching Luka's every tilt and drift. The great Sky-Render bowed its head mid-flight, then loosed a low, resonant note, a song unlike any the flock had sung before. It vibrated through the clouds and straight into Luka's bones. Somehow, he knew it was meant only for him.
And in that impossible sky, Luka was finally, fiercely, alive. A child of the sky became the sky itself.
Electrified by flame, sustained by wind, and soon to be transformed by memory. He was not falling anymore. He was ascending, remade with every heartbeat, more than a boy, more than fear, more than the sum of all lost children. In the arms of the blue air, with the mountain watching and the flock singing, Luka soared into becoming.
* * *
The climb to the launch ledge was silent, save for boots scraping ancient stone and the hush of wind slipping through broken teeth of rock. The Mouth closed behind them, swallowing the old world's darkness. Before them, the sky waited, impossibly high, impossibly bright, and yet full of promise.
It was Reyland who spoke first, voice soft but sure, as he unrolled the battered canvas from its weathered case.
"We'll need to cross the valley. The high peak, Solith's Crown, is where the Ancient Kite is kept. The Order still guards it. Ardentul's men. If they catch us..."
He hesitated, weighing the risk against the weight of their hope.
"They won't," Dellos answered, gentle, certain. "They're keepers, not jailers. Besides, we aren't stealing. We're remembering. And it's time."
Reyland's hands moved with reverence, fingers reading the fabric's seams like a map. Every patch, every scar told a story. He checked the bamboo struts, tested the tension of the frame, each action a prayer to the winds.
"It's said the first Navigators tied their blood into the threads," he murmured, "so the sky would always know them. Some nights, I believe it."
Asyana, never patient, never delicate, pretended to grumble but found herself slowing, watching. She tried to knot her line with quick, careless hands, but Dellos's presence anchored her. She glanced over, just once, saw the way his weathered fingers moved—steady, unhurried, the way you might tie a child's first boots or mend the hem of a lost love's coat. Without thinking, she mirrored him: double-knot, twist, pinch, pull. The motions felt right, as if her own hands remembered a father she'd never truly had. Dellos noticed, but said nothing. Instead, he moved beside her, checking her knots, not correcting, just affirming with a slight nod, the kind that made pride bloom under old scars.
"You're getting it," he said quietly.
"Course I am," Asyana shot back, but her voice was softer than usual, almost shy. "I don't fancy falling, not after all this."
Reyland grinned, passing her the last spool of sky-thread.
"She always makes the best knots when someone's watching," he teased.
"Shut up, bird-boy." But there was a smile in her eyes, and a gratitude she'd die before admitting.
The ritual moved between them—Navigator, Jumper, Father—each lost in their own prayer to the sky. Reyland read the wind, raising a wet finger, eyes narrowed. Asyana checked her harness twice, then a third time, refusing to look nervous. Dellos, steady as the old stones, tested each anchor, feeling the sky's tension through his bones. No words for what came next, just the hush of belonging. Here, on the ledge, preparing to face the unknown, they were more than broken children of the wind. They were family, if only for a heartbeat.
Asyana, at last, let her hand linger on the edge of Dellos's kite, tracing the faded sigil sewn into the corner, the one she'd mimicked for years, never daring to ask its meaning.
"I never told you," she said, voice low, "I used to watch you launch from the low ridge when I was little. Thought you were some kind of sky-god. All the boys wanted to be Navigators. I just wanted to see what you saw."
Dellos looked at her, and for a moment, the years between them vanished.
"You'll see it all today," he promised. "The world above the world."
Reyland gave a little bow, mock-serious, holding his kite like a banner.
"Well then. Shall we defy the gods?"
Asyana laughed, reckless and raw, but her voice trembled with something close to faith.
"About damn time."
They stood together at the edge, the sky vast before them, kites trembling with the wind's song, hearts tight with hope and terror. The ritual was done. All that remained was to leap.
And somewhere, in the clouds above, the ancient world waited to remember their names.
They stood at the ledge, the sky a living ocean before them, sunlight splitting on wind-scoured peaks, clouds boiling far below. For a heartbeat, the world paused, three figures poised between the old life and the unknown. Reyland's voice, quiet but unshakable, was the last anchor to earth.
"Wind's in our favour. On my mark."
Asyana flashed a wild grin, reckless and hungry for the impossible. Dellos met her gaze—father, teacher, companion, and nodded once, steady as stone. Reyland lifted his kite, the sigil of the old Navigators glinting in the dawn.
"Now."
They ran. The launch was chaos, stone falling away, wind seizing canvas, harnesses snapping tight. The kites caught and rose, ropes screaming, bodies weightless. For a suspended moment, there was nothing but blue—blue above, blue below, the world spinning open like a wound or a promise.
Reyland led. His kite was older, battered, but it danced on the wind as if it remembered every path the sky had ever shown him. He leaned into the currents, eyes narrowed, pupils shot through with that uncanny blue light, the Sight. He read the wind's eddies and updrafts, saw the hidden thermals that shimmered invisible to the unchosen. With a twitch of his wrist, his kite banked, soaring higher. The others followed, trusting him to find the path between cloud and chaos.
Dellos, less graceful, was all purpose and resolve. His hands, callused from decades of mending, gripped the frame with the calm of someone who knew how many ways a body could fall and how few mattered. He let the kite pull him, surrendered to its will, but guided it with the wisdom of a man who'd learned every lesson the hard way. The wind sang in his ears, a hymn of memory and loss, of Luka, of the world below, of all he still had to do.
Asyana, wild and laughing, made her kite an extension of her own body, part muscle, part miracle. Her cloak fluttered out behind her, rippling like the wings she always wished she'd had. She flirted with the currents, dove, spun, then shot back up in Reyland's wake. She glanced at Dellos and, just for a heartbeat, let herself pretend he was her father for real—her safe place, her anchor, the reason she dared to leap.
They soared.
The world below was a myth of green valleys and old scars. Peaks like jagged teeth rushed by, their shadows racing the wind. Rivers glittered far beneath, snaking through the folds of the land. The sun dazzled, bright and cold, gilding the edge of every cloud. Sometimes they cut through wisps of mist, cool breath on sweating skin; sometimes the wind roared, ripping words from their mouths, leaving only laughter and the steady pulse of belonging.
Reyland called out, no words, just a sharp, musical whistle. His kite banked left, the others following, a flock of three against the blinding blue. He saw the path, the air currents shimmering like threads only his Sight could see, veins of force tugging them higher, higher toward Solith's Crown. His eyes glowed, that mythic blue, the mark of the Navigator.
Dellos checked his harness, double-knotted, feeling the ache in his shoulders, the thrill in his gut. He flexed his arms, loosening the cape at his back. The wind bit at his face, stinging, waking every sense. He was alive in a way no ground could ever offer.
Asyana whooped, cape snapping. She tested the quick-release on her line, feet braced, ready for the leap. Her blood sang, every doubt burned away by cold air and sunlight. She looked sideways at Dellos, grinned, and he grinned back—a pact, unspoken, sealed in wind.
Solith's Crown rose ahead: a blade of stone, shrouded in mist, the ancient order's banners barely visible in the sunlight. The final ascent was a knife's edge, the wind a live thing, pushing, testing, promising everything and nothing.
"Ready?" Reyland called, voice lost in the wind but felt in the bones.
Dellos answered, calm as prayer: "Ready."
Asyana flashed her wildest smile. "Let's jump, boys."
Three kites wheeled above the impossible peak, the sun behind them, clouds blazing gold and violet. For a heartbeat, they hovered, legends in the making, shadows on the world's highest altar.
And then, together, they let go...
The moment of release is everything.
Dellos and Asyana unclip their lines in near-perfect unison, feet already braced, bodies poised for flight, not fall. The world drops away in a rush of air and light, a leap into myth, into memory, into the jaws of the unknown.
Gravity grabs first, hungry and eager. For a heartbeat, they plummet, bodies tumbling, wind tearing at capes and hair and hope. But this is the dance they've lived for, the madness that keeps the old gods watching.
Asyana laughs, a sharp, reckless sound ripped from her chest as she twists midair, body arcing into a wild spiral. Her cloak snaps out, catching the updraft, transforming freefall into flight. She angles her arms, rides the current, lets the wind cradle her like a promise. For a moment, she's weightless, half-girl, half-gale, alive in a way the ground could never teach.
Dellos is all precision, muscle honed by years of stubborn survival. He lets his body fall straight, streamlined, then flares his cape wide. The fabric billows, wind catching, slowing his descent to a glide. He rides the thermal Reyland had spotted, lets it buoy him, then dips one shoulder, carving through the mist. His eyes are sharp, calculating, seeing every hazard, every hope. In his hands, a coil of rope, he's already eyeing the best anchor, planning five moves ahead even as the earth claws for him.
They spiral down together, carving paths through the air like calligraphy. Ropes whirl out, anchors find stone, boots skid and catch on ancient ledges. They land hard, controlled chaos, knees bending, bodies absorbing shock. Dellos's feet hit first, then Asyana's a breath later, her wild whoop echoing off the rock. In a blink, both are tying down their kites, hands moving with practised speed, muscle memory and adrenaline singing in their veins.
Above, Reyland circles once, twice, a silent sovereign surveying his kingdom. Then, with the grace only true Navigators possess, he descends, kite steady, legs swinging beneath, landing so softly it's almost an insult to gravity. He steps from the harness, cloak fluttering, boots silent on the peak.
He surveys the jumpers, eyes full of pride and relief, though he masks it behind a wry smile.
"You two ever consider just walking up a mountain?" he says, voice dry, wind-torn.
Asyana grins, wild and breathless, cheeks flushed with triumph. "Where's the glory in that?"
Dellos just shakes his head, rolling his shoulders, every muscle aching and alive. "Besides," he says, tying the last knot, "I like to remind the world it can't shake me off just yet."
The three of them stand together, the wind roaring around Solith's Crown, sky blazing all the colours of madness and miracle. Below, the world is small. Up here, they are legends, the first to touch the sky atop the sky.
And ahead, just beyond the mist, at the heart of the impossible peak, an ancient wonder waited—silent, immense, unmarred by generations of fear and forgetting. A kite never touched, never claimed, hidden for those rare and reckless enough to chase the sky's wildest dream.
It hung there, folded in shadow and dawnlight, waiting not for the boldest or the best, but for the ones willing to steer it where no soul had ever dared.