The air above Midveil tasted of metal and thunder. Kael Orison angled his glide-wing along the updraft, city-spires dwindling beneath. Cargo pods rattled against his boots; thirty minutes to deadline, forty klicks of empty sky ahead. And somewhere beyond the smog curtain, the Skyrealm shimmered like a taunt.
He muttered an old flyer's prayer—half aeronautics, half superstition—then checked the parcel at his hip: a matte-black cube the size of an orange, pulse-light dormant. No sender's mark, double hazard pay. Anything that secret is trouble, he thought, accelerating.
A flicker on his visor: Trajectory anomaly—object approaching 700 m, vector intercept. His heart kicked. Pirates? Storm sprites? Either could shred his carbon sails. He banked left…
Too late. Verdigris feathers slashed past—wings, but not avian. An angel, armor etched with runic data-threads, spear of condensed light. Skyrealm enforcer.
"Courier Orison," a vox rolled across open channels, "surrender the Logos Core."
Kael cursed. "Never heard of it."
"You carry it at your waist."
As if awakened by the accusation, the cube warmed, lit from within by latticework sigils. Kael Orison, a voice resonated directly in his auditory nerves, designation: Vector-0. Accept custodianship?
"What— No!"
The angel lunged. Kael snapped his stab-brake; turbulence tore his wingcloth, hurling him downward. Wind howled; altimeter spiraled. Clouds became claws, raking heat from his skin.
Accept custodianship. The inner voice persisted, calm, almost amused.
"Fine! Accept! Just do something!" Desperation isn't negotiation, but the void didn't care.
Instantly, the cube dissolved into motes, reassembling around his forearm as a translucent gauntlet. Symbols flared; a kinetic shield erupted. The angel's spear struck, shattered into photons, scattering like dying stars.
Kael's momentum, unchecked, carried him straight toward a yawning rift—the scar of the ancient Sundering. Lightning spider-webbed the abyss; Midveil ended there, and Netherdeep's inverted darkness opened below.
Vector-0, the gauntlet intoned, Harmonic Signature verified. Path to Nexus recalculated.
"Recalculate me a way out!" Kael screamed.
But gravity was a tyrant. The glide-wing tore free, spiraling upward in useless elegance while he plunged.
At three hundred meters the gauntlet flashed RUNIC RED. At two hundred, time dilated; Kael glimpsed fractured imagery: twin suns over crystal towers, oceans flowing upward, a woman with wings of glass reaching for him. At one hundred—
A second angel dove past, wings tinted midnight. Not a seraph—something corrupted. Talons extended, it seized Kael by the wrist, gauntlet to gauntlet, sparks cascading.
"Mine," the dark angel hissed. "Fallen do not relinquish prey."
Kael's scream was swallowed by the abyss as both vanished into the lightless chasm.