With a great shuddering breath, Kyreth unfurled his enormous wings—a vast sail of dark hide stretched against the endless aether.
The skyhook cables whirred and snapped taut, one after another as the siblings soared up with a thrill in their stomachs and Finn's tangled laughter in the wind—hoisted gently by the Skyborns. They landed in a tumble of awe and breathless wonder atop Kyreth's vast scaled back, the sky yawning around them in a silken hush.
Then, with a powerful leap, Kyreth took flight into the heavens—cutting through a sky draped in veils of nebula-river light that danced across the clouds above and below them, refracting in colors no palette could name. Wind roared around them, warm and cool in pulses, alive with invisible currents that seemingly hummed in memory and song.
Below, isles lay bathed in flickering starfields—swaths of sparkling constellations that crawled across the horizon like living tapestries. Every beat of Kyreth's powerful wings sent ripples through the surrounding aether, stirring up motes of glowing dust that clung to their hair and clothes as the siblings steadied themselves. His wide tail sliced through drifting ribbons of stardusts, sending violet and silver specks spiraling in their wake.
Trailing behind, a shoal of smaller sleek drakes—with Sorsei's retinue mounted—ranged in tight formation, each riding swiftly the updraft of Kyreth's passage so their wings needed only a gentle flick to hold station.
On Kyreth's back, the siblings now stood secure within the gentle rise and fall of his immense body, their footing held by smooth, darkened hide and the network of harnesses and platforms that clung to his spine like a shifting village.
Mira pressed her cheek against Kyreth's scale, tasting the faint tang of ozone and salt-scented air. Finn clutched the ridged spines, marveling as each beat of those gargantuan wings stirred longitudinal ripples that carried them effortlessly forward. Elias pressed his palm to the Wyrm's flank, feeling Kyreth's steady pulse.
"It's so… beautiful." Mira's eyes shimmered with tears she didn't try to hide, a mix of emotions rushing through her like a flood too vast for words.
"I can't believe we are actually riding a dragon!" Finn whispered, voice cracking, then louder—"Woohoo! I'm actually on a dragon!"
His breath hitched—once, twice—before laughter burst from his chest, wild and unrestrained, arms flailing in the air, earning some strange look from the busy Skyborns.
Some were adjusting harness clasps and flight-gliders. Others polished crescent-forged blades in quiet rhythm, another sat cross-legged, inputting aetherglyphs into a floating skypad—its glowing interface tracking altitude pulses and wind curvature. Finn excitedly ran towards them, eyes dripping with curiosity, asking questions with uncontained enthusiasm.
"Stars above and below," Elais said, trying to copy Sorsei's voice as he nudge Mira's shoulder gently. "You're crying, yet again. Miracle Elenari—first of her name, breaker of logic, crier at scenic views."
She swatted at him weakly, half laughing through her tears. "Shut up."
"No, really," he went on, mock-serious. "Should we build you a shrine now or later?"
"Shut up," Mira said again, voice breaking with a laugh, brushing at her cheeks even as more tears escaped. "You don't get it—"
"I do get it," Elias said more softly, his teasing fading into something warmer, a proud smile curling his lips. "I've just never seen you cry over something that wasn't your brother, or for being busted with your Astheria obsession."
Mira smiled quietly, somehow there was a tinge of sadness to it. "Pops really wasn't mad afterall…"
The words hung in the air, fragile and full.
"I almost gave up back there—in the lighthouse…" She cleared her throat, wiping her cheeks. "... if it wasn't for you."
"No, it was still you, Mira. You didn't give up—you're the reason we're here." Elias said, falling quiet beside her, letting her feel the moment—after all, she had chased this celestial world since, his smile never leaving his face.
The carved walkway they were standing on spanned the length of Kyreth's back like the keel of an inverted ship, reinforced with bonewood ribs and woven aethercord, lightly glowing. Small posts branched off along the spine: a lookout perch, a resting deck with tied-down satchels and hammocks, a supply chamber shaped like an ovoid pod of smoothed metalwood—sealed for pressure drops and turbulence. Just behind the base of Kyreth's neck stood a sky-navigator's post bearing a banner of a broken-winged phoenix crest above, waving wildly in the wind. It was open-roofed and filled with rotating gyroscopes, glass lenses, and skymaps inked with living aether threads.
Sorsei stood there—one hand on a crystalline rein embedded just behind Kyreth's head, the other adjusted a wind-rudder: an extension of one of Kyreth's own bonefins—guiding their path through a gentler airstream that arched wide and slow like a soaring current. Her dark braids snapped in the wind behind her, glinting with skyglass beads.
Walking back towards them, Finn plastered a grinned—bright, smug, victorious, his eyes locking on Elias.
"Still think it's just fairy tales and fantasy?" he said, arms crossed. "Or are we officially in the 'eating my words' phase?"
Elias tore his eyes from the view ahead and looked at him, dazed. "I didn't say I never believed in Astheria."
"Oh no, don't backpedal now," Finn teased, walking with a skip in his step. "You called it nonsense, remember? Pretty sure you even rolled your eyes, a lot of times."
Elias groaned, dragging a hand down his face. "You're never going to let me live this down, are you?"
From the post, Sorsei raised an arm and waved, beckoning them forward with sweeping motions.
Finn turned, walking backwards, arms open to the world around them. "Not in this lifetime. Or the next ten… what do they call it—Cycles."
And though his pride stung, Elias laughed as they head towards Sorsei—because the impossible was real, and it was more beautiful than any of them had ever imagined.
"Everything okay? Any of you feeling dizzy?" Sorsei turned slightly, catching Elias's eye.
"Yeah, no, it's—your—everything's beautiful—fine." Words tangled on Elias' tongue, spilling out in broken stammers. "Everything's fine, we're fine—thank you."
A quiet scribe perched on a side platform side-eyed him briefly, his celest-ink pen dancing over a translucent, skywoven vellum-like material that gently glowed, tethered with a wind-seal to prevent spillage. He wore a visor of shifting lens-crystals and muttered time notations softly under his breath.
"Okay. Hold tight," Sorsei called with a grin, then shifted the rein. Kyreth dipped slightly, tilting his body into the flow like a great ship carving through liquid light.
A younger Skyborn passed the siblings with a curt nod, a skyhook strapped to her back. "Status log's updated. Five shifts to the Vaeloris range. Zharah, winds are favorable."
Then the world changed.
A soft gasp escaped Mira's lips first.
Above them—and below, and somehow within—the sky unfurled into a silky drape of moving colors. A great river of light flowed across the heavens, not in straight lines or arcs, but in vast spirals and shimmering currents that looked like smoke and starlight braided together. It pulsed in slow, steady waves—blue, violet, gold—like a celestial heartbeat stretched across the firmament.
Elias leaned forward instinctively, unable to tear his gaze away. The flow didn't seem bound by gravity. It coiled and drifted between islands and clouds, curving as though it wove through the very fabric of the sky.
He blinked, wide-eyed. "Is it… is it swimming?"
The light shimmered in answer—flickers of green and rose gold dappling his face like fish darting through water, his hand reaching out. It was too fast to be wind, too graceful to be a storm, and too alive to be mere reflection.
The world felt quiet for a moment, as if Astheria itself had paused to admire it.
They watched the light tides ebb and flow across the shifting sky, some streaks of cobalt giving way to sudden blooms of violet, then darkening again in golden moody pulses. Each surge felt like a heartbeat, a living reminder that this realm was breathing around them.
"That's a light tide," Sorsei said, her voice lower, reverent. She let out a breath, loosening her grip on the crystal rein. "Or what the ancients once called a caelora stream."
She gently guided Kyreth toward the edge of the stream, angling his wings until the light swirled around them. It didn't resist them—it parted, like mist, glistening in arcs of impossible color.
"It's formed when celestial energies leak from the remnants of the old continent, ser'laen, especially near places where time runs thin. The light flows like rivers—moving not through space, but through what's left of the world's memory. Khir'naan, that's why it feels familiar… even if you've never seen it before."
Mira turned to her, voice hushed. "It feels like… a dream."
Sorsei nodded. "Some say they carry echoes of Astheria before the Great Shattering. Whispers of what the sky used to be."
"Yeah. And more." Finn absently mumbled to himself, nodding slowly in agreement, eyes lost to the view.
Sorsei stepped back from the navigator's post and gestured for the siblings to follow her.
"Come," she said, chin jerking. "You might as well learn the layout of the Kyreth's back before we reach Vaeloris."
"Finn, are you coming?" Mira called out, snapping Finn's faraway thoughts.
They moved carefully along the central walkway. Sorsei pointed to a triangular alcove—barebones but still wind-shielded. "Resting deck. Keep your packs tied—Kyreth doesn't always fly level. Once you lose your belongings, it wasn't really yours to begin with, we always say."
Next: the sealed pod.
"Supplies. Aetherglass, water spheres, stormgliders. And a few skyworms in jars—don't touch those. Lyth'naer." Sorsei pointed to each item, eyeing Finn firmly, who just smiled coyly.
"Here you go, they don't only keep you warm, but also allow you to glide briefly." She each gave them aether-woven cloaks. "You can also change your covers later, or would you like to stay on them until they dry?"
"We'll change." The siblings spoke in unison—voices overlapping with eerie precision as if they'd shared a single thought, wired to the same startled brain, making Sorsei chuckle.
"Kha'rathir."
They continued walking farther down, past a narrow ledge. "Skymap station. Tell Harin, here, if you see any distortions or unknown drift clusters—they are unstable formations of islands that drift unpredictably. He logs such anomalies to avoid collisions."
"And here," she tapped a small seat bolted beside a wind-shielded alcove, "is where you sit when Kyreth dives. Don't argue with the harness. It wins."
She gave them a rare grin. "Welcome aboard the Wyrm," she said, turning back to the navigator's post.
The siblings smiled in awe, scanning every structure on Kyreth's back—taking it all in like a map they meant to memorize.
As the Wyrm's glide smoothed into a calm drift, the wind softened. The sky opened wide before them, gilded in soft golds and silvers, and behind—the fading trail of the light tide still shimmered like memory bleeding into twilight.
The three moons—Vael's silver hush, Molun's opalescent watch, and a distant ember-rim of Cireth—hung together in uneasy alignment, infusing the currents with a sudden, hurried, crackling energy as they dipped lower.
Elias leaned close to Sorsei, who was murmuring a soft chant under her breath, tracing runes in the air to steady their course under the shifting pulse of light—ultramarine tides giving way to blooms of lavender, then deepening into bruised indigo at the edges of sight. It was a slightly unstable aetheric tide, a river of pure starlight and magic, and they were sailing in it downstream.
"We are flying north—toward Vaeloris. Buckle up and listen close—because what I'm about to tell you will either blow your mind… or, ath'ruun khaar, make you wish you'd never come here in the first place." Sorsei's voice came soft but firm, slicing through the whistling wind, surveying the clouds below as if reading the pages of a map.
She pointed ahead. "See those islands?"
Below them lay an archipelago of shattered stones. Some drifted free and alone; others clustered in ragged chains.
"Those are some drifting isles I was talking about. They are often surrounded by twisting gravity fields or broken time. Dangerous. Tae'lis naerth." Sorsei curved a smile full of warning. "Although they are still part of the Skyfaring Region—where we are now, upper mid-altitude—we avoid going there."
The siblings were quiet, eyes darting from floating islands glimmering in light and shadows.
Above them, an island half-frozen in time drifted past—its surface encased in crystalline frost that glowed faintly under the pale light. Against the ice, ghostly figures floated—phantoms of long-dead Skyfarers, frozen mid-stride, caught between flows of time.
Finn gasped. "They're… like statues."
Sorsei's hand brushed his shoulder. "Time fractures in that part there, where the currents snapped the flow. Some never return from such places. Don't stare too long."
The silence crept back in, even the air rippling on Kyreth's wings seemed to quiet down.
The shoal of drakes dipped suddenly, some growled headshaking and snorting, pulling the siblings' attention to a nearby phenomenon: a swirl of turbulent sky currents warped into a vertical column—an aerial whirlpool that glowed with gold and violet sparks.
"That," Sorsei said as some airships and clippers in the distance are heading towards it, "is a Light Maelstrom—part storm, part Glintfall. The easiest place to lose yourself in fractured memories, but also where you can harvest rare aetherglass… if you survive it."
Elias swallowed, standing stiff as he tried to berth logic in a place that had none. "Why would anyone go there?"
"Because some secrets can only be found in chaos. Athal'thuun. It doesn't appear often so whatever they'd find there, it's worth a lot. One-way ticket to great riches—or painful death." Sorsei's lips curved to a smirk.
The siblings felt a shudder as their eyes lingered to the airships and clippers shrinking out of view.
Sorsei gestured to a scatter of thousand isles they were approaching, drifting serenely on the winds, sitting locked like pearls on a necklace. Some were fixed under ancient anchors—enormous chains and roots reaching down into the clouds like tentacles. Others meandered slowly, free from tether.
"Those are called anchor islands. Isles like those are moored to the sky currents. The isles free from tether maintain steady gravity since the flow of sky currents there are less erratic." she explained.
"Drifting isles float wild while anchor islands are stable." Mira echoed, all ears like a good student.
"Not all the time. Tia'khar." Sorsei commented, eyes on the bustling life of the Skyfarers—noisy, kinetic, alive.
Tethered walkways intersected between floating platforms, where merchants shouted over the roar of wind and trade, their stalls bursting with fruits that shimmered like stardust and metals that hummed faintly in the hand. Airships buzzed through the air like beetles with sails, ascending and docking in constant rhythm, their banners trailing house sigils or guild crests. Smoke curled from chimneys of sky-smelteries and taverns where merchants traded goods from distant regions.
"These islands are not completely immune to the changes," Sorsei said, waving to some Skyfarers as they passed by. "Though their gravity may remain consistent for long periods, large unexpected shifts in the surrounding sky currents or the power of an ancient storm could still alter their gravitational pull, even if temporarily."
She described how this mid-upper layer is crisscrossed by steady wind lanes, with lamplight towers and beacon fires to guide travelers at dusk.
"The Skyborn fleet keeps its carriers and cruisers in this band disguised as merchant guides," she noted. "Our ships patrol between these islands by escorting clippers through the lanes. Every anchor island has a fleet detachment ready to launch."
Then they were shadowed by a massive fortress-carried isle that floated above, cogwheels turning as if maintaining its altitude. It was the largest one they had seen so far, even though it was drifting over yonder.
"That's the main anchor island of the Drifters' Guild—one of the four major factions here. They build farms and cities on these stable plateaus, monopolizing memory-silk and echo fruit." Sorsei explained. "They claim neutrality—traders and deal-makers, always pushing into the next frontier. Their anchor islands are the crossroads of Astheria. A lot of Skyfarers live here even though they are not part of the guild—merchants, caravaneers, or those who simply want to seek a stable safe haven."
"Drifter's Guild..." Elias muttered, gazing a moment more as the isles shrank with every stretch of space, its edges softening into haze, until it was no more than a smudge against the vastness behind them.
They passed into a band of sky where gravity bent sideways. Rocks and debris drifted in arcs that looped upward rather than fall. Mira's stomach lurched as Kyreth adjusted his stride.
"Reverse-gravity zone," Sorsei explained, her voice calm. "Once a mountain cluster. Now torn by the Rift's pulse. We steer around most of these, but today we must thread the needle—Vaeloris awaits."
A sudden roar of thunder started to roll beneath them as Kyreth's claws clipped a loose ledge to steady himself.
"Now, we are approaching a storm corridor below us," Sorsei warned, pointing to the roiling storm wall at mid-altitude.
The siblings leaned forward as Kyreth turned toward a distant storm, the roar of its thunderhorns like a call to arms.
"That is the Maelstrom Belt—home of fierce winds and the very heart of chaos. Tae'lis naerth. Riftborn sanctuaries lie hidden in these clouds, protected by gravity wells and storm breath. They say spirits of old storms take refuge there." At the Belt's heart, as Sorsei explained, gravity itself warps.
Dark clouds massed beneath as they flew above it, a belt of savage storms—forked lightning dancing amid clouds of purple mist. They could see swirling vortexes of storm and lightning wrapping around gnarled rock spires far below.
"See those spinning clouds? Each one is a miniature cyclone that can either lift a skyship or an entire island up, or drop it miles below, lyth'naer."
The air grew heavy and humid, the silence only disrupted with the howling winds.
"H̴e̵a̵r̵ ̸m̵e̷…"
Finn stiffened. He blinked and glanced around. No one else seemed to react. Elias and Mira were still taut with focus, as if each word Sorsei spoke was a fuse burning slowly toward something they couldn't afford to ignore.
"The storms here obey no rhyme. Only the bravest Skyfarers chart this corridor." Sorsei said as she tightened Kyreth's reins.
"L̸o̶s̸t̴,̷ ̵s̵t̵i̷l̴l̸ ̸s̵e̸e̷i̶n̶g̴… ̵Y̴o̴u̷ ̵l̶i̶s̷t̸e̶n̶…"
Finn clutched the aetherglass sitting under his clothes. It pulsed faintly against his palm—like a heartbeat. Like it had heard it too.
Sorsei continued, "The Stormforge Dominion claims this belt as their realm. Their forge-stations burn day and night, hammering stormsteel and aetherglass into war machines. They built thunder-cannons on safe islets, drawing power from the lightning, forging weapons with the storm. But even they respect its fury. Countless ships have been twisted by these winds."
"…Who are you?" Finn whispered back.
No response.
Only wind.
But something had heard him—something that was waiting.
The Wyrm's wings strained against the pull of wild currents as they passed over its edge.
"You were saying?" Sorsei asked Finn, all eyes shifting to him, snapping his thoughts.
"Oh—I, I was wondering when you said Stormforge… you thought we were Stormforgers? Is that what they are called?"
"Aye. Cycles after the Great Shattering, the Warlord Veynir exploited the chaos. He seized Aetherglass and twisted it into weapons. The Skyborn Order—once guardians of Astheria's balance—could not stand against his armies. Nir'kahl. We call it the Great Schism." Sorsei traced a jagged rune in the air and it blazed briefly before fading. "We were scattered. Exiled. Called rebels. But we endured. We now carry the Skyborn Rebellion name with pride."
Elias cleared his throat. "Uh, I've noticed you keep tracing some symbols in the air. What are those?"
"Celestial Runes." Sorsei answered without looking back, her fingers carving glowing sigils through the air again. "To listen to the sky. Rhan'tal, the sky speaks in patterns—and sometimes, it takes shape only when drawn."
Mira and Elias exchanged quiet, wide-eyed glances—no words needed—as their grandfather had been right.
"Can you teach me?" Mira asked, eyes full of excitement, clutching her hands together.
"It cannot be taught or learned." Sorsei chuckled. "Honestly, I'm only partially connected to some of them. Just enough to listen when the winds shift or when the currents stir strangely."
Finn had fallen behind, drawn by a tug he couldn't quite explain. He felt the air was strange—thicker, like it held breath.
"Finn, you with us?" Sorsei asked him again, her eyes studying him for a second longer.
"Oh yeah, yeah. I'm just… admiring the view." He blinked, masking the chill on his spine with a lazy grin as he watched the Maelstrom Belt over yonder.
"Are you okay?" Mira asked quietly beside him, to which Finn simply nodded.
Mira didn't press him and glanced back to Sorsei. Elias' hand rubbed Finn's arm gently, offering a silent comfort, then resting it on his shoulder.
"Going back, the true language of the sky belongs to the Windseers. And even though that's the case, they still see each rune differently—what you see depends on your resonance. Eryn'thal." Sorsei said, her eyes now darting to Finn every now and then, observing him silently. "They do not reveal the same shape to every eye, nor the same meaning to every heart."
"So it really does respond to your emotion, intention, and presence." Mira concluded, deep in thought.
"Huh—you do resonate with these, kha'rathir." Sorsei commented as she hunched against a gust of wind. "Heads up."
Far ahead, an island hovered in defiance of every law they knew. It was as if the chunk had decided to forget which way was down—the Skyfall Abyss.
Water spilled from its edges—not downward into mist, but upward, in long, shimmering ribbons that twisted lazily into the sky like the tails of celestial comets. Lakes clung to the underbelly of the floating landmass, their surfaces rippling toward the heavens. The waterfall flowed in reverse, gleaming like liquid glass as it rose from a cleft in the stone and vanished into the clouds high above, trees hanging like chandeliers from the heavens.
"We steer clear of that Isle. It's where Skyfallen ships vanished for good. Even the Drifters avoid it unless they're hunting salvage."
"Also a reverse-gravity zone." Mira could only mutter.
The brothers stood in stunned silence, the last breath of wonder still clinging to their lips, certain this world had no more surprises.
"Aye. Although the Skyfaring Region is home to most Skyfarers, ser'laen, there are still zones we'd like to avoid." Sorsei spoke softly with a wry glance.
The siblings, breath caught, nodded as Kyreth banked gently, and they climbed again into a warmer current. A small wind-chime hanging from Kyreth's saddle tinkled in the breeze.
They stood quietly near one of the secured view rails, the vastness of Astheria stretching in every direction. For a moment, no one spoke. Not even Finn.
"You mentioned the old continent—the Great Shattering…" Mira's voice came first—quiet, hesitant, breaking the silence as she tried to absorb every bit of information. "Does this mean Astheria is… broken?"
Elias leaned on the rail, eyes to the endless sky, his expression unreadable. Finn sat near the rear, his legs dangling between the rails, the aether-woven cloak draped over his shoulders.
Sorsei didn't answer right away. She walked a few steps ahead, letting the wind tug at her dark cloak. Then she turned, eyes steady and far older than her face betrayed.
"Beyond broken," she said at last. "Many believed it could be fixed. They said that if the Celestial Horn is restored—if its true note could be sounded again—then the land would remember its shape. The fractures would seal. The tides of time would flow straight once more."
She looked upward—toward nothing visible, as if searching through the stars and swirling clouds for something half-forgotten.
"The Windseers spoke of it. Not plainly, of course. They rarely did. The verse was etched into the vaults of their sanctum. It reads: 'When the shattered breath sings whole,And the storm within the stars is calmed, Then shall the skies be bridged anew, And the heartbeat of Astheria remembered.'"
Her voice lingered like wind tracing old stone.
"But most now think of the Horn as a fable. A relic lost to myth. Tia'khar. And the Windseers… they never spoke another prophecy about it." She looked at the siblings. "We call it a horn. But it's older than music. Older than memory. It was once the sky's anchor."
Finn furrowed his brows slightly. "So nobody knows what it actually is?"
"Or what it would truly do if restored. Some think it would heal everything. Others…" Sorsei gave a tired smile. She paused, then looked away. "Others believe it would break the world a second time."
"Do you think it's real?" Elias, who was quiet, finally asked.
"I… I don't know. Valthra." Sorsei huffed softly, clung to the thought of it like a half-remembered story told in childhood, a fragile legend fraying at the edges, hope thinning with each passing day until even believing felt like pretending.
Silence followed again, this time heavier.
Kyreth shifted beneath them, his wings catching a deeper current. Overhead, smaller drakes now veered in and out of the slipstream he carved, flying like sparks around a flame.
Far ahead, more islands began to rise into view—drifting fragments of a world that once was, like forgotten pieces of a puzzle that had never been solved.
Sorsei spoke again as they walked towards the supply pod, her voice steady despite the wind. "Astheria used to be one land. A single, immense continent suspended in the sky. Nir'kahl. But something broke it. Split the land, the sky, and time itself. The fragments drifted apart, becoming the islands you see now—some caught in storms, others twisted by gravity or time dilation."
Elias frowned. "And no one remembers what caused it?"
"No one alive," she said. "Not clearly. Even our oldest records are fragmented. But the Riftborns came after. And the Celestial Horn, once the heart of it all, was shattered to pieces—gone."
"Riftborns?" Mira echoed.
"We know very little about them. They started appearing after the Great Shattering. Many believe they are ghostly remnants of the ancient Astherians, others said they are echoes of the Celestial Architects. Some Seers believed they originated from the whispers of the forgotten beings." Sorsei answered. "Saer'tael, s'kahl.You'll see when we reach Vaeloris."
They passed a small outpost shack where a Skyborn scout adjusted a skyhook, then saluted Sorsei in passing.
"Each island that remains, as you saw, is different, even their local time," Sorsei continued as she passed them water spheres, the siblings tracking her every move as she popped one in her mouth. "Some kept their rhythm. Others… warped."
She pointed toward a distant shape rising like a needle of silver and bone from a cloud ring, as she munched the water sphere—the texture was in-between viscid and jelly-like. "To the far East is Thalros, all jungles and singing stones. The skyworms there don't sleep. They say time's wound up like a knot. You can get lost walking a straight line."
Mira shivered. "Has anyone ever—?"
"Not many who come back. That's why we scribe the safe paths."
Sorsei nodded towards the skymap station, where the scribe was still murmuring skylog entries. "Harin logs every drift cluster and time fold we spot. That way others don't vanish like the old fleet."
They neared the forward section again as Kyreth banked slightly, gliding past a chain of nearby islands—some tilted ninety degrees like a painting askew, its cliffs stretching sideways into the clouds, trees growing out horizontally.
"We're almost there. Oh wait—" Sorsei raised her arm and pointed. "See the jagged ring? That's Karn's Halo. Collapsed island ring. Nothing lives there now… except maybe bones."
Finn squinted. "Looks like a giant bite got taken out of it."
"Athal'thuun. That's not far from the truth," she muttered.
They walked past the resting deck again. The hammocks swayed gently in the wind, the satchels tied securely to the harness rails.
Sorsei gestured on the horizon, the great bulk of Vaeloris finally loomed—a dragon of unimaginable scale, an ancient titan stretched across the sky like a living continent. Its magma-forged wings spread, veins of glowing crystal running along its back like a city lit by a billion lanterns.
As they neared, thousands of sleet-bright airships threaded around its broad shoulders came to view, their banners carrying that same crest fluttering in the wind. Below, the carved decks of dragon-born homes and suspended Skyfarer spires glittered with Aetherglass veins.
"This is the last refuge of the Skyborn Rebellion." Sorsei's voice softened. "Here, scholars piece together the Celestial Architects' lost lore. Windseers convene in council. And dragons, once slaves to the Stormforge Dominion, now soar free again."
The siblings were frozen in disbelief, jaw dropping from the sight unfolding before them. Nestled in Vaeloris' cavernous scales, different dragons—some smaller than Kyreth flew between spires.
Kyreth started to descend toward the living city on Vaeloris' back, yet as he approached the ridged back of the greater beast, he looked no larger than a fleck of ash drifting onto a mountain's shoulder.
Finn leaned forward, beyond awed. "So this is them… the Skyborn?"
Sorsei nodded. "Not a bloodline, but a calling. Eryn'thal, we are called the Keepers of the Old Ways, we reclaim what was lost. Our elders believe the Celestial Horn will someday call the Skywhisperer home—and with it, restore Astheria's balance."
Their hearts thundered, the siblings felt a shiver—not of cold, but of astonishment. All around them, the aether glimmered as if echoing that promise, and Kyreth's wings found rhythm with the world's pulse—carrying them at last toward a new dawn.
"The regions of Astheria are many and although we can't fly through them all, ith'rex, I can definitely walk beside you, help you make sense of it, and maybe—just maybe—make it feel a little less strange." Sorsei leaned forward, steeling them for the final glide. "Welcome to the Fleet of Vaeloris."