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Keeper's Adage:
"In the realm of the sky, even the stones know they can fall. It is the first lesson, and the last."
–From the Canticles of the Ground-Bound, Keepers of Stories Archive
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The first shift was a lesson in a new kind of gravity. Not the pull of earth, but the weight of absolute futility.
Lugal's world narrowed to the three feet of rock in front of him, the ache in his shoulders, and the metronomic clang of his pickaxe. The air was a gritty soup, each breath a labor that coated the throat with the taste of shattered stone and the ozone-tinged residue of spent Akar. Glow-globes, encased in rusting iron cages, cast a sickly yellow light that created more shadows than it dispelled.
He was Number 738. A digit. A unit of output. The Wardens, their armored forms like moving slag heaps, patrolled the tunnels. Their insectoid red lenses scanned for weakness, their crackling prods the punctuation to the mine's relentless, grinding sentence.
But Lugal's mind, sharpened by the Forum, was not on the rock. It was on the architecture of his new hell.
The tunnel wasn't dug; it was fused. The walls were too smooth, the ceiling too perfectly arched, as if the rock had been melted and persuaded to form a passageway. Aeridorian glyphs, far cruder than those in the city above, were etched at intervals into the stone. They didn't glow with liquid light; they pulsed with a dull, orange heat, and their purpose was clear: structural reinforcement. They were the only thing holding back the crushing weight of the floating island itself.
This was the most shocking truth. They weren't mining into a planet. They were mining out a flying mountain. Every swing of the pick was an act of defiance against the very thing keeping them aloft. The entire operation was a precarious insanity.
A rasping cough echoed from the next niche over. Lugal glanced sideways. An older man, his face a roadmap of deep grooves etched by dust and despair, swung his pick with the weary rhythm of a metronome nearing its end. His number, 511, was faded.
Their Warden paused, its red lens sweeping over them. "Eyes on your vein, grubs. The sky won't mine itself." The vox-grille voice was a flat, emotionless scourge. It moved on.
In the relative silence that followed, Lugal kept his eyes forward but let his voice, low and rough, carry across the few feet of darkness. "The sky. That a joke?"
The old man, 511, didn't stop swinging. His response was a dry, rattling sound that might have been a laugh. "No joke, new blood. That's the quota. 'Mine the sky.' Means we ain't met it yet."
"Where does it go?" Lugal asked, hefting his pick again. "The Akar. Up there?" He gestured with his chin towards the ceiling, towards the unseen city.
"Where don't it go?" 511 grunted, striking a spark from the rock. "The Sky-Riders use it to keep their castles in the air. The Sun-Kings burn it to power their light-forges. They say the fish-people in the deep brine-use it to grow their crystal cities. Everyone wants it. Nobody wants to dig it." He paused, wiping his brow with a trembling arm. "'Cept us."
"The Wardens," Lugal pressed, his voice barely a whisper. "They're not… like the ones above. They can't fly."
This time, 511 did stop. He turned his head, his eyes gleaming white in the grime. "The Aeridorian-born don't come down here. The air's too thick for their precious lungs. The gravity's wrong. Makes 'em sick. The Wardens…" He spat a glob of black phlegm. "...they're a different breed. Grounded. Born on the lower Drifts. They get the honor of whipping us, but they're just as chained to the rock as we are. Only thing they fly is a temper."
The pieces clicked into place in Lugal's mind. A layered society. The glorious, flying elite of the upper city. A subordinate, planet-bound warrior caste to police the mines. And at the very bottom, the fuel itself: them.
"Heard a story," 511 muttered, leaning on his pick now, seeing the Warden was out of earshot. "From a man who was here before me. Said the Akar ain't just power. Said it's… memory. That the crystals remember. The joy, the pain… the love of the world they came from." He shook his head, a flicker of ancient wonder in his dead eyes. "Said the Aeridorians don't just burn it. They… experience it. Like sipping fine wine."
Lugal went very still. The memory of the fleeting joy from the spilled Akar ore flashed in his mind. It was true.
"Sounds like a rich man's pastime," Lugal said, his voice carefully neutral.
"Aye," 511 agreed, the wonder vanishing, replaced by a bottomless bitterness. "They sip our memories while we choke on our dust." He raised his pick again. "Forget it, new blood. Just swing. The only memory you need here is the feel of the quota."
The shift horn blared, a sound like a dying beast. Lugal's muscles screamed in relief. He fell into line with the other shuffling prisoners, a river of grey fatigue flowing towards the barracks cavern.
The mess hall was a cavernous space where the air was marginally clearer but smelled of boiled fungus and unwashed bodies. He collected his ration—a lukewarm, grey slurry that clung to the spoon—and found a space at the end of a long, scarred table.
A man with a fresh, livid burn across his cheek sat opposite him. He glanced at Lugal's forearms, still bearing the faint, tell-tale tan lines of someone who'd recently worn finer clothes. "Crowns?" the man asked, his voice hoarse.
"Sinks," Lugal replied, not looking up from his bowl.
The man nodded, a flicker of camaraderie in his exhaustion. "Verge, myself. Engineer's apprentice. Thought I was building a future." He gave a short, bitter laugh. "Turns out I was just learning to build my own cage."
"The devices here," Lugal said, seizing the opening. "The lifts. The rock-melters. They're not like ours."
The ex-apprentice's eyes lit with a faint professional pride. "Aeridorian tech. It's all resonance and focused intent. Their glyphs don't command energy; they persuade reality. Our drills break rock. Theirs… convince it to un-become where they point. It's beautiful. And terrifying." His shoulders slumped. "And we'll never touch the workings. Just the results."
Later, in the oppressive dark of the barracks, Lugal lay on his thin cot, listening to the symphony of coughs and snores. He stared at the chiseled rock ceiling, his mind churning.
He understood the hierarchy now. The economy. The Aeridorians harvested experiences, sipping memories like wine. The Wardens, the grounded caste, enforced the system for a few extra privileges. And everyone else—the Sinks rats, the Verge apprentices, the forgotten of a dozen kingdoms—were the fertilizer.
The bitterness was a cold, hard stone in his gut.
The next day, he went back to the tunnel. The conversation with 511 played in his head. They sip our memories while we choke on our dust.
He found his spot. A rich vein of Akar pulsed with a soft, internal light. He watched the Warden pass.
This time, his action was not one of panic, but of purpose. A deliberate, calculated theft.
He used his pick not to break, but to pry. A small, glowing shard, thrumming with potential, came loose. He palmed it, the crystal warm and alive against his skin.
In the secluded niche on his break, he held it. This wasn't just power. It was a story. A life. Stolen by the sky to be consumed by the indolent.
A righteous anger, cold and pure, filled him.
He closed his fist.
The rush was less violent this time, more focused. A wave of sensation—not a jumble, but a single, coherent strand. The fierce, protective love of a father for his newborn daughter. It was so potent, so achingly pure, that it was a physical pain in Lugal's chest. It was everything he had never had.
And as he felt it, the presence in the back of his mind stirred. The Void. It didn't roar this time. It… coiled. Around the memory. Around the love. It didn't consume it with hunger, but with a dreadful, profound curiosity. A lonely, empty thing experiencing connection for the first time.
The memory faded, leaving Lugal breathless. The crystal was dark.
But the Void's attention remained. A new, subtle pressure. A silent, eager question.
More?
Lugal opened his eyes, staring at the dead rock in his hand. The love was gone, devoured. But the strength it had imparted remained. And so did the Void's focused, intimate attention.
He had thought he was stealing power. He was wrong.
He was starting a transaction.
And the terms were only now becoming clear. The despair was still there, a bedrock beneath his feet. But now, a new structure was being built upon it, stone by stolen stone. Not hope, but purpose. Not a wish to be different, but a plan to make everything different. He would become a thief of experiences, a smuggler of souls, and he would use the very essence of their luxury to forge himself into the instrument of their ruin. The man from the Sinks was being buried, and something else was being exhumed in his place.