For a second, nobody moved.
Raku stood at the edge of the clearing, dripping pond water. Osio hovered just behind his shoulder. The drone floated awkwardly in the air like it had wandered into the wrong party.
The man with the spear watched them all, steady and unreadable.
Lila stepped forward, breaking the tension.
"They fell from the Veil," she said. "Near the old pond. They're surface-born. The drone followed them."
The man's gaze shifted to her. "You checked for cracks?"
"Yes," Lila said. "No fresh tears. The forest would be louder."
Raku didn't know what that meant, but it didn't sound like something he wanted to meet.
The old woman from the platforms shuffled closer to the railing. Up close, Raku could see the deep lines in her face and the way her eyes still managed to be sharper than most teenagers he knew.
"Arin," she called to the man with the spear, "if you stand there glaring any longer, your face will get stuck that way. Let the boys breathe."
So that's Arin, Raku thought.
Arin exhaled through his nose, then hopped lightly down from the upper platform to ground level. For someone with gray in his hair, he moved like someone half his age. He walked toward them, spear tipped down but not harmless.
Up close, his eyes looked tired, not cruel.
"Raku De Costa," Raku said before he could stop himself. "Osio Bonodefasi. We, uh… didn't mean to invade."
Osio added, "We can leave a review that says 'fell in by accident, one star' if it helps."
Arin gave Osio a long look, then turned his attention back to the drone. "Does it always hover like that?"
"It's kind of new to the whole 'no ceiling' thing," Osio said.
The drone's little red light blinked faster, as if offended on purpose.
Arin lifted his spear and tapped the drone's side with the blunt end. It wobbled, corrected itself, and backed off a meter.
"Hm," Arin said. "It doesn't like being touched."
"Same," Osio muttered.
The old woman clucked her tongue. "Bring them up," she told Arin. "If they survived the fall, the Hole isn't finished with them. No use leaving them where anything can chew on their ankles."
"Inside?" Arin asked. "With that thing?"
"We have rope," she said. "And I've lived long enough to be more afraid of hunger than of cameras."
Arin hesitated, then gestured with his spear. "Fine. Come."
He jabbed the spear at the drone again. "You stay above the floor level," he told it. "You break anything, I harvest you for parts."
The drone drifted higher, as if it understood.
"Did he just threaten a robot?" Osio whispered.
"He threatened you too," Raku pointed out.
"Yeah, but I'm used to that."
They followed Arin and Lila up a rope ladder that swayed just enough to be legally concerning.
Osio went first, grumbling under his breath about "quality assurance" and "fall damage." Raku climbed after him, watching the glowing forest slide away below. The drone rose smoothly alongside the platforms, keeping pace like a curious pet.
Up on the main deck, Luma felt less like a village and more like someone had convinced a treehouse to evolve.
Walkways crisscrossed between massive trunks. Small houses were built into the branches and on platforms—woven wood, scavenged metal, old fabric for shutters. Some had wind chimes made from faded scraps of plastic and glass. Baskets dangled from ropes, moving slowly up and down with people hauling supplies.
As they walked, people went back to pretending to mind their own business. Which meant they were absolutely watching from the corners of their eyes.
A boy about ten leaned against a post, chewing something. He pointed at Raku and Osio.
"Sky-people," he said under his breath, like he was naming a kind of bug.
"Don't stare," his mother said, tugging him away. "It's rude."
He kept staring anyway.
Osio leaned closer to Raku. "I feel like when you walk into a new MMO town at level one and everyone knows you're poor."
"Try not to say that out loud," Raku said.
Arin led them to a larger platform that served as a sort of central square. A firepit sat in the middle, smoke drifting up and disappearing into the dark above. Benches encircled it. The old woman was already there, having somehow taken a different path and beaten them.
She patted the spot next to her. "Sit," she said. "You look like wet socks."
Raku and Osio sat.
Up close, the old woman smelled like herbs, smoke, and something sharp Raku couldn't identify.
"You have a name, Grandma?" Osio asked, then immediately looked like he regretted the wording.
She gave him a sideways look that was almost amused. "Around here they call me Nana," she said. "You may do the same if you're polite, and something else if you're not."
"Nana," Raku repeated. "Thank you for… not throwing us back down."
"She tried," Arin said. "Once. When I was your age."
Nana smacked his leg. "You landed in my stew pot, Arin. It was either throw you back or starve. I chose to make you useful."
Lila leaned against a post, arms folded, watching the exchange quietly.
Arin planted the butt of his spear on the wood. "Let's start with this," he said to Raku and Osio. "You're in Luma now. Bright layer. Not the top, not the bottom. We're alive because we pay attention and because we don't pretend the Hole is a joke."
"Too late," Osio murmured.
Arin's gaze sharpened. "You think this is funny?"
Osio's own expression shifted into something smaller. "I think if I don't make jokes, I'm going to remember falling through thirty floors of death," he said. "So I'd like to be unfunny later."
Arin studied him for a moment, then gave a small nod, like he understood more than he wanted to admit.
"Fair enough," he said. "Laugh if you need to. But listen when I say stop."
"Deal," Osio said.
Arin pointed his spear downward, toward the forest floor.
"You saw the glow," he said. "Felt the air. That's the Hole's skin, boys. Cracks open in it. Sometimes small. Sometimes big enough to swallow three villages and half a river."
"That sounds… bad," Raku said.
"Mm." Arin tapped the wood with his spear. "Things come out of the cracks," Arin said. "Things with too many claws, too many teeth, and not enough fear."
Raku's chest tightened. "That—that thing was from here?"
"Pieces of here," Nana said. "Someone up there has been fishing in the wrong pond."
Raku thought of the scientist saying "anomaly sample." He wondered how many times they'd dropped monsters on kids before him.
Arin continued. "We've had peace for a long while. Cracks stayed small, the beasts stayed deep. Lately…" He glanced toward the far trees, jaw tightening. "The forest whispers differently."
"We hear more echoes," Nana explained. "More old things waking up. More weight in the roots."
Raku didn't fully understand, but his skin prickled anyway.
"So you… what?" Osio asked. "You hunt these things?"
"We avoid them if we can," Arin said. "We fight if we must. We don't go down." He jerked his chin toward the darkness below. "Lower paths are not for people like us."
"People like us?" Raku repeated.
"People who still want to sleep at night," Nana said dryly.
A brief quiet settled.
The drone drifted closer to the edge of the platform, lens whirring as it tried to focus on everyone at once.
Nana shot it a look. "And you," she said, "are trouble."
Raku rubbed the back of his neck. "It just… followed us. We didn't summon it or anything."
Arin eyed the drone. "We've seen dead metal fall before," he said. "Never one that kept moving."
Nana waved a hand. "If it wants to follow, let it. Luma has survived worse than floating eyes."
"It could lead other things here," Arin argued.
"So could noise," she said, then looked at Osio pointedly. "Or certain people."
Osio raised both hands. "I can be extremely quiet. I can be a whisper. I can be… background ambience."
Raku gave him a look. "You're literally the opposite of background anything."
"Character development arc," Osio whispered.
Nana pushed herself up with a small grunt. "Enough lecturing. These boys need dry clothes and a place to stop shaking where they think I can't see it."
"I'm not—" Raku began, then realized his hands were indeed trembling slightly in his lap.
Of course she noticed.
Lila stepped away from the post. "I'll take them," she said. "They can use the east platform. Nobody stays there now."
Arin gave a small nod. "Fine. They stay for tonight. We see after that."
"See what?" Raku asked.
"Whether the Hole sends anything after you," Arin said plainly.
Osio swallowed. "You say that like it's a normal thing people say over dinner."
"In Luma," Nana said, turning to go, "it is."
Lila led them along a narrower walkway toward the quieter side of the settlement. The drone trailed behind at a polite distance, still recording, still blinking its little red light like it was trying to decide if all this counted as good content.
"Do you get many 'sky-people'?" Raku asked.
Lila shrugged one shoulder. "Used to," she said. "When I was small, they came once every few seasons. Some stayed. Most went back up."
"How?" Osio asked. "Is there… a ladder? Elevator? 'Sorry we fell into the void, can we get a ride back' service?"
Lila shook her head. "The paths shift," she said. "Cracks open up. Some climb. Some find doors. No one does it the same way twice."
"Has anyone gone back recently?" Raku pressed.
She hesitated.
"Not in my memory," she said. "The last few dropped. None climbed."
That sat in his stomach like a stone.
They reached a smaller platform built around a thick trunk. A simple hut sat there, walls woven from bark and old tarp, roof patched with overlapping leaves and metal scraps.
"This was for visitors once," Lila said. "Now it's for you."
She pulled back the curtain over the entrance.
Inside was simple but solid: two low sleeping pallets with woven mats, a small shelf, a hook for hanging things, a lantern made from a glowing stone in a net of twine.
Osio stepped in and spun slowly. "Okay, but this is kind of nice. If you ignore the 'we might get eaten by cracks' thing."
"We don't get eaten by cracks," Lila said. "The things that come out do that."
"Wow," he said. "So comforting."
Raku dropped onto one of the pallets. The bed creaked but held. His body instantly tried to clock out.
"Rest," Lila said from the doorway. "Nana will bring food. Don't go exploring. Don't touch anything that glows too much. And if you hear the forest go quiet, wake Arin."
"What does quiet sound like?" Raku asked.
"You'll know," she said. "You just fell from the sky and lived. The Hole has your scent now."
"That sentence was extremely calming," Osio muttered.
Lila started to leave.
"Hey," Raku said.
She paused.
"Thanks," he said. "For not leaving us down there."
She looked at him for a moment, eyes reflecting the lantern light.
"The forest catches who it wants," she said. "The rest is what we do with them."
Then she let the curtain fall and was gone.
Osio flopped onto the other pallet face-first. "I miss gravity behaving," he said into the mat.
"You say that like it ever did," Raku replied.
Outside, the settlement murmured with low voices and creaking wood. Somewhere, a baby cried once, then went quiet. Something with too many legs clicked along the underside of the platforms.
The drone settled just outside their doorway, hovering there like a silent guard or a gossiping neighbor who didn't know when to leave.
Raku lay back and stared at the patched ceiling.
Mom in the kitchen.
Osio on the school roof.
A gorilla hitting the wall.
The ocean that wasn't an ocean anymore.
He let his eyes close for a second.
A low, distant rumble rolled through the forest.
It wasn't thunder.
The boards under him vibrated very slightly, like something far below had turned over in its sleep.
Osio lifted his head. "Please tell me that was your stomach."
"I really wish it was," Raku said.
The rumble faded.
The glow outside dimmed for just a heartbeat, then returned.
Raku sat up, suddenly wide awake.
Somewhere deeper in the Hole, something had shifted.
And it had noticed they were here.