Chapter 16
The ash from the Second Impact had turned the sky over the shattered coast of Valen into a permanent, bruised twilight. It had been three weeks since the naval sector of the Zenith had collided with the sea, and the tide still washed up fragments of golden marble and white sun-glass, smoothed by the waves into glittering pebbles.
I stood at the edge of the jagged obsidian cliffside I had pulled from the ocean floor to serve as our base camp. My frame had settled at an immovable 5,200 pounds of localized mass. The air around me didn't hum anymore; it warped, twisting the light so that I constantly looked as though I were standing in a heat mirage.
Beside me, Aurelia was sitting on a crate of salvaged rations, her feet bare. She was wearing a simple tunic of dark mortal wool, a stark contrast to the ethereal, suffocating silver of her prison garb. She didn't float away. My presence was a heavy blanket that kept her tethered safely to the stone, though her hair still drifted slightly toward the clouds like milk in water.
"They're afraid of you, Misos," she said softly, her physical voice growing stronger by the day. The mortals in the valley. They look at the sky and see the gods falling, then they look at the mountain and see you. To them, there is no difference between a tyrant who floats and a savior who crushes."
"There is a difference," I said, my hand resting on the pommel of Calamity's Edge, which was driven two feet into the solid rock beneath me. "The tyrant expects them to look up. I only ask that they stand clear."
A rustle of loose gravel announced Silas before he even rounded the path. My seismic sense picked up his uneven, hurried stride fifty yards away. The boy had grown over the last few weeks, not from magic, but from the brutal reality of managing an army of refugees. His shoulders were broader under his leather jerkin, his face smudged with charcoal from the forge.
"My Lord," Silas panted, stopping just outside the five-meter perimeter where my gravity began to pull heavily on mortal limbs. "The scouts from the eastern ridges just returned. It's not a Purge Squad this time. It's a migration."
I turned my head slightly, the obsidian skin of my neck catching the dull, amber light of light of the setting sun. "Explain."
"The High Priests of the Third Spire didn't wait for the kingdom to fall," Silas said, catching his breath. "When the naval sector went down, they abandoned their floating platform. They used the remaining solar-engines to lower an entire city-district into the valley. They've fortified the lowlands. They're calling it the 'New Dawn Sanctuary'—and they've taken ten thousand of our people as labor to rebuild the tethers."
[ Mission Update: The False Sanctuary ]
[ Objective: Dismantle the Third Spire's Remnants ]
[ Target: High Priest Malakor ]
"They're trying to build a new anchor," Aurelia's voice echoed in my mind, a cold, sharp chime that made the veins in my forearm pulse with black light. "They know they can't survive in the clouds anymore. They want to turn the surface into a new Zenith, using mortal lives to keep themselves above the mud they despise."
"Malakor," I rasped, the name tasting like copper and ash. "He was the one who designed the siphons for your cradle, Aurelia. He knows exactly how much pressure a soul can take before it breaks."
I pulled Calamity's Edge from the stone. The mountain let out a sharp, cracking sigh as the weight of the blade was lifted.
"They think because they've touched the dirt, they understand how to rule it," I said, stepping past the edge of the cliff. With every stride, the ground beneath my boots compressed, leaving deep, glassy footprints in the basalt. "Silas, assemble the vanguard. We aren't going to defend the valley."
"My Lord?" Silas looked up, a familiar spark of awe and terror lighting his eyes.
"We're going to show Malakor what happens when the foundation decides to move." I looked back at Aurelia. She stood up, her hand reaching out to trace the air just inches from mine. She didn't need to hold on anymore; she knew the gravity of my intent would keep her from drifting.
"Stay with the camp, Aurelia. The air in the valley is going to get very thick, very quickly."
"Bring me his tethers, Misos," she whispered in my mind, her supernova eyes flashing with a dangerous, golden light. "I want to watch them break."
I didn't answer with words. I simply stepped off the cliff face, utilizing my Absolute Inertia to drop toward the valley floor like a silent, black cannonball, leaving the mountaintop to tremble in my wake.
It was no longer about survival. It was about eviction.