Chapter 15
We were falling from the edge of the stratosphere, a jagged meteor of shattered Aether-Glass, twisted silver metal, and black stone. The wind shear was loud enough to tear the eardrums of a mortal, but my gravity well created a protective envelope around us. Inside that violent, shimmering sphere of warped physics, it was dead silent.
Silas was unconscious, floating slightly above me within my gravitational pocket, his body spent from the pressure.
But Aurelia was awake.
She clung to my chest, her fingers digging into the hard, obsidian ridges of my shoulders. To anyone else, my skin was cold and unyielding, but to her, it was the only stable thing in an infinite, terrifying void. Her translucent white hair whipped around us like a halo of silk.
"The sky is breaking," her voice echoed in my mind, tinged not with fear, but with a tragic sort of awe.
I looked up through the rushing air and the burning friction of our descent. High above, past the layers of bruised purple clouds, the golden underbelly of the Zenith was trembling. Without Aurelia's negative mass to balance the billions of tons of celestial marble, the floating islands were losing their buoyancy. The sky-kingdom was tilting.
"Let it break," I said, my voice cutting through the roar of the atmosphere. "They built their paradise on your back, Aurelia. It's time they learn how hard the ground is."
[ Warning: Terminal Velocity Exceeded ]
[ Altimeter: 10,000 Feet and Decreasing ]
[ Collision Imminent: Prepare for Impact ]
Below us, the snow-covered peaks of the Great Divide were rushing up to meet us like a jaw of jagged teeth. If I landed like a normal man, the kinetic energy would liquefy Silas and crush Aurelia into dust, regardless of my own invulnerability.
I had to become more than a falling stone. I had to become the cushion.
"Hold on," I whispered.
I shifted Aurelia, tucking her head beneath my chin, shielding her body entirely with my massive frame. I reached out with my left hand and grabbed the drifting, semi-conscious Silas, pinning him tightly against my flank.
[ Skill Trigger: Absolute Inertia ]
[ Concept: The Bottomless Pit ]
Five hundred feet from the ground, I stopped fighting the fall and commanded my internal mass to expand its influence outward. I didn't try to slow myself down using aerodynamic drag; I forced the space directly beneath me to compress. I turned the air pressure into a solid wall of dense gravity, creating a cushion of invisible, repulsive force.
BOOOOOOOOM!
We didn't hit the mountain. We cratered it before we even touched the stone.
A localized shockwave exploded from our landing point, blowing away millions of tons of snow, ice, and ancient bedrock in a perfect, three-hundred-yard circle. The sheer force of the compressed air flattened the pine forests miles down the mountain slopes.
When the blinding cloud of pulverized ice finally settled, the plateau was gone. In its place was a smooth, bowl-shaped crater of glassed granite, melted instantly by the sheer kinetic pressure of my descent.
I stood in the center of the pit. My boots were buried ankle-deep in the cooling, glowing slag.
[ Feat Accomplished: Orbital Re-entry Survival ]
[ Current Mass: 4,800 lbs ]
I carefully set Silas down on a patch of solid ground. He groaned, coughing up a bit of mountain dust, but he was breathing. His ribs were intact. I looked down at the girl in my arms.
Aurelia looked up at me, her supernova-colored eyes reflecting the dark purple of my skin. For the first time in her life, she wasn't wearing her lead-weighted boots. She didn't need them. My presence alone was enough to keep her grounded. Her feet lightly brushed the scorched stone, perfectly balanced.
"Can you walk?" I asked softly, my voice dropping its tectonic rumble.
"With you," she whispered aloud, her physical voice a fragile, beautiful sound she hadn't used in years. "I can walk anywhere with you, Misos."
A sudden, blinding flash illuminated the horizon, brighter than a dozen suns.
We both turned, looking out past the rim of the crater toward the east. Miles away, where the ocean met the edge of the continent, a massive shadow was blotting out the stars. One of the Zenith's outer agricultural sectors, a floating island the size of a minor kingdom had completely lost its orientation.
It fell horizontally, slicing through the clouds before plowing directly into the eastern sea.
The impact was silent at first due to to the distance, followed seconds later by a low, apocalyptic roar that shook the very core of the Earth. A wall of steam and displaced water rose miles into the sky, lit from within by the dying magical fires of the island's broken engines.
The First Impact had begun. The age of the gods was officially over, and the age of the collapse had arrived.
High above, a single prismatic streak of light flew away from the falling debris, heading toward the central capital where Solas sat on his golden throne. Lyra had survived. She was going back to tell the Father that his defect hadn't just crawled out of his grave, he had brought the grave with him.
I tightened my grip on Calamity's Edge, planting the tip of the black blade into the stone.
"Let them prepare," I murmured, watching the distant smoke rise into the atmosphere.