The sky swallowed Lyra Flynn.
Clouds wrapped around her like smoke, damp and tingling with static as she dropped in freefall, arms pressed to her sides, wind screaming past her ears. Below her, the vast chasm of the Great Sky Canyon yawned open, layers of floating cliff, mist, and ancient ruins rising like jagged islands suspended in the air.
She waited. Waited—
Then snapped her arms open.
With a sharp, crystalline hiss, the glider-wings strapped to her back unfurled, feathered with silversteel struts and enchanted silk. They caught the wind and jerked her upward into a sudden glide, the strain pulling at her shoulders. She arced wide, wind slicing past her cheeks, the city of Aviari vanishing behind a veil of clouds above.
She laughed.
"Now this," she whispered, "is freedom."
Beside her, Kael Dareth dove from the clouds, his own wings catching the air with a swift flutter. He was fast—faster than her, even—but heavier in turns. His glider had sleeker lines, dark with shadowglass. He swooped beneath her, then rose again with a grin.
"You always launch blind?" he shouted over the wind.
"Only when I'm being chased!"
He gave her a look. "We weren't being chased."
"Not yet."
They tilted westward, toward the Windy Straits—the narrow current that wound between the Great Sky Canyon and the distant Cloudhaven Peaks. The terrain here was treacherous: floating rock masses known as skyshoals drifted without warning, some small as boats, others large as fortresses. Jagged wind currents, called razor drafts, could tear a glider in half.
But it was the fastest route south.
Below them, the land shimmered with floating crystal ridges, ancient Aerthian ruins, and flocks of great avian beasts known as skyspirits—creatures as long as ships, with wings like banners of mist and eyes glowing soft silver.
Lyra whispered to Cael, the enchanted sphere tucked in her satchel.
"You feel anything?"
The artifact pulsed. "A tremor. Echoes stir beneath."
Beneath.
She angled downward.
Kael matched her descent. "Don't tell me we're stopping."
"There's something under that ridge."
He squinted. "That's not on the map."
"Exactly."
They dropped lower.
The ridge jutted from a floating landmass barely a hundred yards wide, shaped like a broken spine. Vines trailed from its underbelly, and Aerthian columns jutted from the top—collapsed, moss-covered, but humming faintly with magic.
They landed lightly near what had once been a temple—circular, open-roofed, its floor cracked and overgrown.
Lyra knelt beside a broken plinth.
"Same symbols," she murmured, brushing aside moss.
Kael crouched beside her. "That's Aerthys glyph script. You think this was a waypoint?"
Lyra opened her satchel and removed Cael. The artifact pulsed brighter near the glyphs. Then it floated from her hand, hovered over the plinth, and released a whisper of blue light.
"Pathway sealed. Memory dormant. Awaken the Watcher."
Kael tensed. "Watcher?"
They heard it then.
A clicking—like claws on stone.
From the shadowed inner sanctum of the ruin, something stirred. Lyra rose slowly, blades sliding into her hands.
The beast emerged.
Eight feet tall, insectoid, armored in shimmering crystal chitin. It moved on four legs, with two scythe-arms and a face of multifaceted eyes. Aerthian runes glowed across its body.
It was not alive.
Not truly.
It was a construct—an ancient sentinel left to guard this ruin. And it had recognized them as intruders.
Kael drew his blade. "You had to touch the glyphs."
Lyra smirked. "Technically, Cael did."
The construct charged.
Kael leapt left. Lyra dove right. The sentinel's scythe-arm slammed into the stone where she'd stood. Shards exploded outward.
She rolled, came up under the beast, and slashed at its belly—but her blades glanced off its armor with a screech.
"Too thick!" she shouted.
Kael circled to flank it. "Eyes! Aim for the eyes!"
Lyra ran, leapt off a broken pillar, and landed squarely on the construct's back. It bucked, trying to throw her. She drove one blade into the seam of its shoulder, the other into a glowing rune.
The construct froze.
Then screamed—a high, metallic shriek that split the air.
Energy surged outward in a pulse, throwing her off.
She hit the ground hard, the breath knocked from her lungs.
Kael charged in, sword raised high.
With a shout, he brought it down on the cracked rune Lyra had damaged.
The construct shattered—splitting like glass, falling to the ground in a thousand glowing fragments.
Silence.
Then Cael floated gently above the remains.
"Watcher defeated. Memory unlocked."
A projection burst forth—a vision in blue light.
It showed a city, vast and radiant, floating above clouds. Spires of silver, bridges of light, towers crowned with glowing runes. Eldarath.
Lyra gasped.
"That's it," she whispered. "That's the city."
The vision shifted—showing a compass-like pattern with four cardinal marks.
At the center: Eldarath.
At the edges: four markers.
"Waypoints," Kael murmured. "We have to find them all."
The projection vanished.
Cael dimmed.
Lyra stood, heart pounding. "Then we'd better move."
For the next three days, they flew.
They passed over the Windy Straits, threading narrow gaps between skyshoals, battling crosswinds and sudden hail bursts summoned by unstable magic currents. At night, they camped on suspended cliffs or anchored themselves to slow-moving skycraft that offered passage.
They saw skywhales—massive, floating leviathans that fed on drifting cloud-blooms—and once barely escaped a stormwraith, a spectral predator born from the remnants of corrupted Aerthian magic.
At last, they reached the Starlight Lakes—a region of glowing, hovering lakes in the west, suspended in air like mirrored moons. Beneath each lake, vertical ribbons of light stretched downward into the abyss, lighting the surrounding skies in shades of sapphire, violet, and jade.
Here, they found the second waypoint—hidden in a submerged ruin beneath one of the central lakes.
It wasn't unguarded.
A serpentine skykraken, cloaked in shifting water and illusion, rose from the lake's depths to defend it. Its body was made of semi-liquid crystal, each tentacle bearing spell-glyphs of suppression and fear.
The battle raged in the air and underwater. Lyra had to use both blades and Cael's guiding light to disorient it, while Kael hurled detonating sigil-cores gifted by the Windborn Cities.
In the end, the kraken fell—its body dissolving into radiant mist—and the second memory unlocked.
Another symbol.
Another direction.
Only two more.
But as they rose from the water, wounded and breathless, Cael grew colder.
"Storm approaches. Darkness rides the wind."
Back in Aviari, a council of elders met in shadow.
Captain Tharos stood before them, eyes narrowed. "She's gone after the map."
"Then she endangers us all," said Elder Maevin, her eyes pale and clouded with age. "The Empire fell for a reason."
Tharos frowned. "We never learned why. What if the truth lies there?"
Another elder shook his head. "What if the curse does?"
"We should have destroyed the scroll," Maevin whispered. "Now it calls to her."
"And others," Tharos said. "The Windborn have sent scouts. So have the Cloudguard. They all want Eldarath."
A silence fell.
"We must prepare."
But Lyra was already flying.
Toward the Skyfall Mountains, where the Aetherstream pulsed like a living ribbon of magic through peaks so tall they vanished into the upper aether.
Her dreams were changing.
She saw flickers—of the past.
A woman with eyes like her own, standing at Eldarath's gates. A golden throne. A tower of mirrors.
And a voice, deep and old, whispering:
"You carry her legacy."
She didn't know what it meant.
But she would find out.
Even if it killed her.