The wind roared like a living thing.
Luke couldn't tell if he was screaming or if it was only the sound of the air tearing past him. His body spun, weightless and helpless, but his mind was suddenly clear—every color sharper, every second stretched thin and crystalline.
The sky above was a blue he'd never seen before, an impossible ocean stretched upside down. Below, the world rippled with heat and light—broken towers like jagged teeth, rusted metal bones jutting from dunes of ochre sand. Patches of glass glimmered where lightning or some forgotten war had once scorched the earth.
He was falling through freedom.
For the first time in his life, there was no ceiling. No pipes. No air vents. No hum of machinery. Only wind, sunlight, and the dizzying truth of open space.
So this… this is the surface.
Something tugged at the edge of his vision—a blur tumbling beside him. Elias, arms flailing, eyes wide in shock. Beyond him, Reina twisted in mid-air, trying to control her descent with zero effect. And further still, Silo was whooping, of all things, laughter barely audible in the storm of sound.
"Wooohoo—! We're flying!" Silo's voice cracked with panic and joy all at once.
Luke wanted to tell him it wasn't flying, it was dying—but even that thought seemed distant. Everything around him was too vast, too unreal.
He turned his face upward once more, to the glowing sun. Its warmth hit his skin—harsh, direct, alive. He had read about it in books stolen from upper-city dumps, but no words had prepared him for its power. The light painted the others gold as they fell, like figures descending from a forgotten dream.
He closed his eyes and let it burn across his eyelids.
If this is how it ends, he thought, at least I got to see it.
The air thickened. The wind shrieked louder. The ground was coming fast now—a blur of dust and ruin rising like an ocean wave.
He spread his arms, half a prayer, half surrender—
---
Sand filled his mouth. His lungs convulsed.
Luke gasped and rolled over, coughing, spitting grit. Every muscle screamed in protest. He was alive, somehow, though his body felt like a bag of shattered glass.
The sky above was softer now, painted with streaks of orange and violet. Dusk.
He groaned, pushing himself up. "Elias…"
A moan answered from nearby. "Still here… I think…"
Elias lay a few meters away, half-buried in a dune, his hair full of sand. He blinked sluggishly, wincing as he tried to sit up.
Luke crawled toward him, leaving shallow tracks in the dust. "You good?"
Elias let out a dry laugh. "Define good."
"Alive," Luke said simply.
"In that case—yeah. Barely."
Another voice cut in, raw and furious. "Those royal bastards! They kicked us!"
Reina staggered upright a short distance away, her once-white tunic shredded and streaked with dirt. She swayed, clutching her ribs. "You two better be grateful I broke half the fall with my shoulder!"
Silo's muffled voice came from beneath a mound of sand. "Uh, someone mind digging me out before I suffocate?"
Luke crawled over and started clawing at the pile until Silo's head popped free, hair sticking up wildly, grin somehow intact. "Heh. Still think we're flying?"
Silo coughed, spitting out a mouthful of sand. "Hey, technically we landed. Doesn't that count?"
Elias slumped back onto the ground, staring up at the sky. "We should be dead. That was… that was hundreds of meters…"
Luke glanced around. Their landing spot lay at the base of the outer wall, a wasteland of sand and collapsed metal. The air shimmered faintly with heat, and the faint taste of rust hung everywhere.
He frowned. "Something slowed us. Maybe air pressure near the wall, or some kind of field…"
Reina gave him a look. "You think the Crown bothered to save us after throwing us off?"
"Not them," Luke muttered. "Just… physics, maybe."
Silo laughed weakly. "Or divine luck. Maybe the Surface gods like us."
"Shut up, Silo," Reina said, but her tone had lost some of its bite.
Silence settled between them for a while. The wind whispered through the ruins, carrying the faint metallic moan of the wall high above. From here, it looked impossibly tall—a man-made cliff slicing the horizon in two.
Luke couldn't look away from it. The structure stretched into the sky until it vanished in the clouds, a reminder of the world they'd been cast out from. Yet beneath that shadow, something stirred in him—a strange calm.
He was alive. They all were.
He ran his hand through the sand. It was rough, warm, real. Not concrete, not steel. Real earth. He could almost feel the pulse of something ancient beneath it.
Elias sat up slowly, eyes scanning the barren distance. "So… exile, huh?"
Reina folded her arms. "Exile or death. Guess we got the 'lucky' one."
Silo nodded solemnly, then brightened. "Hey, maybe it's not so bad! Fresh air, sunlight, room to stretch. No guards yelling at us."
Reina gave him a glare sharp enough to cut stone. "You want to go back up and thank them?"
"Uh… I'll pass."
Luke barely heard them. He was still staring at the endless horizon, the way the fading light turned the sand to molten gold. For all its desolation, it was… beautiful.
"We're not dead yet," he murmured.
Elias turned to him. "Yeah, but what now? No food, no water, no idea where the hell we are."
Luke's gaze stayed fixed on the sky. "Then we start by moving. Somewhere. Anywhere but here."
Reina sighed. "You realize how big 'anywhere' is out here?"
Luke stood, brushing sand off his clothes. "We'll find out."
Silo grinned weakly. "Man, I can't tell if you're brave or just stupid."
"Both," Reina muttered.
Luke didn't respond. The sun dipped lower, and a chill began to creep through the air. He turned once more to the wall—its metallic skin glinting with faint reflections of the dying light.
They had been cast out. Forgotten. But the world beyond the Crown was still here, waiting.
And for the first time, Luke felt something he hadn't since the mines: possibility.