Aeris: Frost's Flight

(Filed under ACI Pilot Log // Lt. Cmdr. Lucas A. Paige, Call Sign: Frost) "They say the sky used to be blue. I wouldn’t know. By the time I was born, the Xynes had already carved their shadows across every horizon." My name is Lucas Paige, Lieutenant Commander of the Aeris Combat Institute, pilot of the F-7X Aeris Talon. Thirty percent of humanity carries the mutation that let us outrun extinction. Some call us gifted. Others call us unstable. I call it the only reason we’re still alive. The Xynes—mutated insectoid organisms born from the Exile-09 incident—own the ground and devour the seas. So we fight them where they’re weakest: the sky. Up here, speed decides survival, and hesitation is a death sentence. I don’t feel pain. CIP took that from me. It also took a few things I’m still counting. This is the log of the days we held the line. Of the pilots who flew beside me. Of the choices that carved their way into the clouds. And of the moment everything changed. Because war doesn’t pause for the broken. And the sky never forgets the ones who fall.