The sky was not blue; it was the color of a bruised lung.
Kaelen Vane sat on the edge of a floating jagged rock, a "skiff-fragment" no larger than a dinner table, drifting three thousand feet above the Miasma. He didn't have a ship. He didn't have a crew. All he had was a bottle of cheap, fermented cloud-berry juice and a death wish.
He looked at his right hand. The veins were glowing a sickly, pulsating indigo.
"Three months," he muttered, taking a swig of the bitter juice. "Maybe four if I stop using the Core. But what's a bird without wings?"
In the world of the Shattered Firmament, gravity was a luxury provided by the Great Engine at the world's center. But the Engine was dying. The islands were drifting apart, falling into the toxic violet fog below—the Miasma—where the air turned to acid and the "Gravity-Ghosts" wailed.
A low, tectonic hum vibrated through the air.
Kaelen squinted. Emerging from a bank of thunderclouds was a Consensus Dreadnought. It was a mountain of iron and hubris, flying the white-and-gold banners of the High Spires. It moved with an unnatural steadiness, its massive underside glowing with the light of a thousand enslaved Aether-Cores.
"Look at you," Kaelen whispered, his eyes narrowing. "Fat with power while the rest of the world drops into the soup."
Suddenly, his chest flared. The Void-Core embedded in his sternum—a jagged shard of star-glass he'd stolen during his exile—screamed for fuel. The "Burn" was starting. It felt like someone was pouring molten lead into his veins.
He had two choices: die from the internal heat of his own power, or find a way to vent the energy.
He stood up, his boots sliding effortlessly on the slick rock. He reached for the hilt at his hip—a handle made of translucent glass with no blade.
"I guess I'm going for a walk," he said.
He didn't jump; he simply stepped off the fragment.
Most people would fall. Kaelen slid.
"Void-Style: Frictionless Descent."
He erased the air resistance against his body. He became a human bullet, slicing through the wind at terminal velocity, aiming straight for the Dreadnought's primary docking bay. The wind screamed past his ears, but he felt nothing—no drag, no heat, just the cold, terrifying freedom of the void.
He hit the Dreadnought's outer hull at two hundred miles per hour. Ordinarily, he would have been a red smear on the iron. Instead, he activated his Core. The friction between his boots and the ship's hull became zero. He didn't impact; he flowed onto the surface, sliding along the vertical armor plating like a drop of water on a hot pan.
He ignited the glass hilt. A blade of pure, distorted space extended from the handle—it wasn't light, it was a "lack" of light.
"Let's see what the High Spires are hiding in their basement," Kaelen hissed, his indigo eyes glowing with a manic light.
He sliced through the three-foot-thick reinforced hull as if it were warm butter. He stepped into the dark, pressurized corridors of the vault deck. The air was cold, smelling of ozone and high-grade oil.
That was when he heard it. Not a sound, but a feeling.
A heartbeat.
It wasn't the rhythmic thumping of a machine. it was a slow, silver pulse that resonated with the Void-Core in his chest. It felt like a song he had forgotten centuries ago.
Kaelen followed the pulse, cutting through bulkhead after bulkhead, leaving a trail of cooling iron behind him. He reached the center of the vault.
There, suspended in a cylinder of liquid mercury, was the girl.
She wasn't a prisoner. She was the engine. Her silver hair drifted in the fluid, and her eyes—wide and swirling like galaxies—locked onto his.
"Little Crow," her voice echoed in his brain. "You are late."
"Who are you?" Kaelen asked, his sword flickering as the Burn in his chest reached a fever pitch.
"I am the reason the world still hangs," she whispered. "And I am the reason you will not die today. Break the glass, Kaelen Vane. Break the world."
Kaelen didn't hesitate. He raised his blade and struck.
The glass shattered. The gravity failed. And for the first time in his life, Kaelen Vane felt the weight of the universe.