The pirate's shoulder met the cliff with a sick, wet thud.
Ren rolled, shoved up, and used the man's stagger as momentum—one brutal shove that sent the armored brute skidding into mud and broken crates.
The air smelled of hot iron and cloud-salt; the pendant at his throat thrummed like a trapped insect.
"Move!" Kira snapped, voice cutting the chaos. "Get the family—now!"
Ren rasped out a breath and sprinted.
The weight behind his ribs was sharp but steady, like a bell that kept him honest.
Nails bit into rope. Splinters sprayed. Above, hulls dripped sparks into the night.
"You hit like a farmer," the fallen pirate spat, wiping blood with the back of his gauntlet. "Worth a scrap—maybe a little more."
"Keep talking," Ren said, pushing his boot into the man's chest until the pirate coughed and let out air like metal being unlatched. "Don't get up."
"Boss'll want the parts." The pirate laughed, small and cruel. "Bones and bolts. You're light—good for fuel."
"Touch the sacks and I'll gut you where you stand."
Li's voice rolled over Ren like a wave; the old man planted his feet and jammed a pitchfork into the earth as if staking the world to the ground.
Kira moved faster than Ren remembered—blink-and-slice quick.
She tossed a coil of wire over a scope of a pirate's helmet and jerked; the man toppled, muffled cursing escaping.
"Keep them off the kids!" she barked, eyes wide and fierce.
"Over here!" a farmer cried, dragging a child through a narrow gap between crates.
The child hiccupped from the smoke; soot streaked down a small cheek.
Ren hooked a rope and hauled.
The rope seared his palms raw; skin split and stung, a sharp punctuation to the rhythm of pulling.
The pendant hummed a high note.
A memory tightened under his jaw—the old scar that had thinned to a pale line after his fall down the wind-tunnel years ago—and it pinched, a small warning he had learned to obey.
"Watch your left!" a woman shouted.
A pirate lunged with a hooked blade; Ren shoved the hoe up under the man's ribs, forcing him back.
The blade scraped his sleeve. Splinters lodged in his palm; hot blood mixed with mud.
"Take the grain!" a pirate yelled, frantic. "Move the sacks!"
"No!"
Kira yelled, cutting a wrist-strap and flinging a small pouch into a pirate's face.
Powder burst—a silver cloud that smelled of ground metal and sharp ozone.
The pirate staggered, hands over his eyes.
Ren grabbed a child and moved them down the path, boots slipping in churned mud.
The pendant at his throat flared—a coal against his skin—and a voice crept up from somewhere beneath the noise: a low, syllabic whisper that fit inside his ribs like a foreign coin.
"PROTECTION… BOND… MISSION," it said.
"What was that?" Ren gasped.
"Keep moving!" Kira's reply came clipped and practical. "Don't stop!"
A translucent glyph flickered at the edge of Ren's vision, thin and faded like a second moon.
It blinked in letters of washed light.
Objective: Protect the inhabitants of Tianyun.
The glyph vanished as fast as it had come, but the directive settled in like an order.
He tightened his grip on the hoe and ran toward the sound of Kira's scream.
The world slowed, not from magic but from focus—every footfall clearer, every ragged breath a drum.
Ren barreled through a line of overturned crates and collided with the pirate whose saw had snapped earlier.
The man spun, surprise cracking his mask-speech.
"You!" the pirate spat. "You broke my saw!"
Ren answered with movement—forward, then a pivot, elbow catching the pirate's jaw with a dry snap that echoed like a snapped twig.
The man hit the ground with a grunt; stars swam at Ren's vision edge.
"Nice," Kira said, elbowing another pirate that tried to circle her. "Keep them on the ground!"
"Thought you were smaller!" a younger pirate sneered, wiping at his lip. "Guess the stories lie."
"Stories get teeth when you believe them," Li said, catching a thrown shard with a hand that didn't tremble. "Don't let them get greedy."
Ren's forearm throbbed where the saw had kissed it, and a pale pattern—scalelike and irregular—blazed for half a blink before melting back into skin.
Blood thinned down his sleeve; the action had a cost: an inner hollowing that pressed at his lungs, dizzying like being pulled under a wave.
"Can you stand?" Kira asked, breath dragging.
Ren flexed a hand until the ache screamed less.
"I can," he panted. "Get the kids to the anchors. I'll cover the gap."
Kira grinned, brief and wicked.
"You keep saying that. One day I'll stop fixing your mistakes and start selling them as art."
"Then buy me dinner from the proceeds," Ren gasped.
They both laughed once—short, brittle—before plunging back into the fray.
A new ship cut the cloud with a shriek.
A flare struck a terrace roof with a wet burst; the wood exploded into shards that fell like a storm of teeth.
The pirates tightened their circle.
More ropes dropped from hulls; men slid down like black beetles.
Ren moved as if obedience had replaced thought.
Each strike took weight; each parley left a ledger entry of pain.
His movements found purchase where before they might have missed—each punch landed with the blunt honesty of someone who had been given leverage.
"You protect them!" a pirate snarled, trying to shove Kira against a post.
Kira spun, elbow snapping into his sternum. The man gagged.
"Back off," she hissed. "This girl's got a temper and I don't want to sell it cheap."
Ren planted a foot and shoved a pirate back with a shoulder that rang with effort.
The cost of the burst in his chest hammered like a bell—his knees wobbled, his breath came in small packets, and sweat made his shirt cling like a second skin.
"Keep moving—toward the anchors!" Li shouted, river-rough and urgent.
A pirate lunged with a hooked weapon aimed at Kira's face.
Ren lunged faster.
His fist connected with a jawbone with a sound that made the man's teeth clap together.
The impact flared like a match. Pain shot up Ren's arm; his hand tingled with cold and fire.
The pirate slid back, hand touching his lip.
Blood slicked his fingers. He coughed, and the cough tasted of adrenaline and fear.
The scaly flash on Ren's forearm winked again, like a lighthouse briefly surfacing, then dulled.
Kira ducked and flung another handful of metal dust.
The air filled with a glitter that made the pirates stagger, hands tearing at eyes.
"Now, Ren!" she yelled.
Ren stumbled, forced himself to his feet, and pushed through the maelstrom.
Vision tunneled; sounds compressed into single notes.
The world was costly and beautiful in the same breath.
They carved a path—small, ragged, human—but it held.
Children were dragged through gaps; a woman who had been propped against a post coughed and then ran, clutching a sack of Celestial Grains to her chest.
"Go!" Li ordered, stamping his heel into a pirate's chest and sending the man sliding. "Get to the dock!"
"Dock?" Ren panted, turning as Kira shoved a child past him. "What about the gliders?"
Li's face was a map of sweat.
He jabbed a thumb toward the lower terraces.
"The planemaker's dock—if you get a signal from the skiffs, the guard island will hear. It's our only chance to call the watch before they strip the terraces clean."
"Then we move!"
Kira slammed a heel into a pirate's knee and ran.
"Anchors, Ren! Now!"
A pirate with a gas-mask raised his saw again.
Men bunched, ropes frayed; the sky filled with new hulls, each one a hungry mouth.
The terrace burned with short, angry flames that licked at the thatch and made sparks like fleeing beetles.
Ren shoved off a splintered beam, lungs a tight pack.
The pendant at his throat pulsed slow, then faster, as if counting.
The taste of iron coated his tongue; the ache at his side flared with each step.
Kira's laugh—sharp, fierce—cut out then turned into a scream as two pirates closed around her.
Before Ren could react, another sound threaded through: a hush, like a curtain dropping.
He looked toward the dock.
Far on a high cliff, a shape stood apart from the crews and the hulls.
It was not a pirate.
The figure held a strange staff, and its eyes shone with a dull violet light—a color that did not belong to this world.