The alarm sirens on the Dreadnought were no longer screaming; they were dying. As the gravity-stasis fields collapsed, the massive warship began to groan, its structural integrity failing as it yielded to the relentless pull of the abyss.
Kaelen sprinted through the tilting corridor, the silver-haired girl—Nova—clutched against his chest. She was unnervingly cold, like a statue carved from ice and starlight.
"We're going to fall, Little Crow," she whispered into his mind. "The iron heart is stopping."
"Not today, kid," Kaelen gritted his teeth. He reached the jagged hole he'd cut in the hull. Outside, the sky was a chaotic swirl of purple lightning and falling debris.
A hundred yards away, dancing through the wreckage like a dragonfly, was a small, battered scout-ship: the Silver-Wing.
"Lyra!" Kaelen bellowed into his comm-link. "I'm coming out! Catch us or we're both Miasma-bait!"
"Kaelen, you idiot!" a woman's voice crackled back, sharp and panicked. "I told you to scout for Aether-Cores, not pick a fight with a mountain! I'm blind, not a miracle worker!"
Kaelen didn't wait for her permission. He leapt into the empty air.
As they fell, he felt the Void-Core in his chest flare. He didn't use it to fly—he used it to anchor. He reached out and "grabbed" the friction of the wind itself, slowing their descent just enough as the Silver-Wing banked sharply beneath them.
They slammed onto the wooden deck with a bone-jarring thud.
The ship's pilot, Lyra, stood at the helm. She was a slender woman with hair the color of sunset, her eyes covered by a tattered leather blindfold embroidered with silver thread. She didn't use her eyes to see; she moved with a fluid, uncanny grace, her hands flying across the brass levers as if she could feel the wind's very soul.
"We have company!" Lyra shouted, swinging the helm hard to the right.
A volley of harpoon-bolts whistled past them, fired from the Dreadnought's remaining defense turrets.
"Get us into the cloud-bank, Lyra! Now!" Kaelen scrambled to his feet, shielding Nova as a piece of the warship's wing tore through their portside sail.
"I can't!" Lyra cried, her voice strained. "The Dreadnought's collapse is creating a localized vacuum! We're being sucked into its wake!"
Kaelen looked at Nova. The girl was staring at the crumbling warship, her mercury eyes reflecting the destruction. She reached out a small, pale hand and touched the deck of the Silver-Wing.
Suddenly, the ship didn't just move—it jumped.
A ripple of silver light expanded from Nova's fingertips, coating the hull. The Silver-Wing became weightless, slicing through the vacuum as if the laws of physics had simply decided to stop applying to them. Within seconds, they were miles away, the dying Dreadnought shrinking into a tiny spark in the purple gloom.
Silence fell over the deck, broken only by the whistling of the wind through the torn sails.
Lyra let go of the helm, her shoulders trembling. She turned toward Kaelen, her blindfolded head tilting as if sniffing the air.
"Kaelen," she said, her voice dangerously low. "What did you bring onto my ship?"
"A chance," Kaelen said, his voice raspy. He looked down at Nova, who was now standing on her own, staring at Lyra with a curious tilt of her head. "She's a Living Core, Lyra. The Consensus was using her to power that entire fleet."
Lyra's face went pale. She reached for the heavy brass staff at her side. "You brought a Living Core here? Do you have any idea what that means? The Harbingers... they won't just hunt us. They'll erase the very memory of us."
"They were already doing that," Kaelen said, stepping forward. He showed her his glowing, indigo-veined arm. "The Burn is taking me, Lyra. I'm dying. You're blind because of the Consensus's 'tithe.' We're already ghosts. At least now, we're ghosts with a map."
Nova stepped toward the center of the deck. As she moved, the silver lines on her skin began to glow, projecting a three-dimensional star-chart into the air above them. It showed the floating islands, the Miasma, and five hidden points deep within the fog.
"The Valves," Nova said aloud for the first time, her voice like glass bells. "The Engine is failing. If we do not reach the Sunken Cathedral, the sky will close forever."
Lyra reached out, her fingers brushing the cold light of the holographic map. She couldn't see it, but she could feel the hum of power—the resonance of a world that was still worth saving.
"Great," Lyra sighed, leaning against her staff. "A dying captain, a girl made of stars, and a blind pilot. We're not a crew; we're a tragedy."
"Maybe," Kaelen smirked, his eyes flashing with the old fire. "But we're the only tragedy the sky has left. Set a course for the Iron Graveyard, Lyra. We need to disappear before the first Hunter finds us."