Chapter 38: The Aetherial Loom
The sky, as they ascended into the Empyrean Reach, became an enemy of perception. There were no clouds to mark progress, no birds to give scale. The blue deepened from a daytime cerulean to a profound, velvety indigo, yet the sun remained a fierce, cold diamond a contradiction that strained the mind. The air grew so thin it seemed to suck not just breath, but sound and thought from them. The constant, reassuring hum of the Aethel's Promise's elemental core began to falter, its rhythm gasping and irregular as if struggling against a thickening silence. This was not a place. It was an absence that had presence, a void with weight.
"We are in a memetic dead zone," Thaddeus whispered, his voice swallowed by the oppressive quiet. His instruments were useless; crystal lenses showed only darkness, needles lay dead against their stops. "The final Engine... it doesn't reside in the sky. It is the sky's capacity for memory. It is the framework itself."
