The wind never slept in the High Aerie.
It howled through the jagged peaks of the Ironspine Mountains, carrying scents of pine resin, distant thunder, and the faint iron tang of blood from the valleys far below. For sixteen seasons the nest had clung to the highest ledge like a scar on the stone—woven from thorn branches, molted feathers, and the stubborn will of generations. Here, fledglings learned one truth before their eyes even opened: the sky was not a gift. It was a battlefield claimed by talon and wing.
Aetos was the last to hatch.
His two siblings had already spread their wings and vanished into the gray dawn mists weeks ago. One had returned once, dropping a limp hare at the nest's edge before departing without a glance. The other never returned at all. Their mother, a lean golden eagle named Thalira, watched the empty sky with the same cold patience she used when hunting. She did not mourn. Eagles did not mourn. They adapted, or they fell.
Aetos remained.
He was smaller than his siblings had been at this age, his down still flecked with the pale streaks of youth, but his eyes—amber flecked with molten gold—saw everything. They saw the way the wind curled around the peak like a living thing, the way sunlight shattered into blades on distant snowfields, the way a single raven spiraled lazily over the next ridge, scouting for weakness. Most of all, they saw the world beyond the nest: endless ridges folding into blue haze, rivers like silver threads stitching the earth, vast plains where herds moved like slow dark rivers of their own.
He saw possibility.
Thalira perched on the outermost spur of rock, her shadow long and sharp across the nest. Her primaries were notched from years of stooping dives; one talon bore a pale scar that ran the length of her leg. She turned her head, fixing him with one unblinking eye.
"You stare at the horizon again," she said. Her voice was low thunder. "The horizon does not feed you."
Aetos shifted on unsteady legs. His wings—still too heavy with new feathers—dragged slightly against the stone. "It could," he answered. "If I reach it."
A soft chuff escaped her beak, not quite laughter. "Many have reached for it. Few return."
"Then I will be the one who returns with more than scraps."
Thalira tilted her head, studying him as if measuring whether to push him from the ledge herself. After a long moment she spread her wings halfway—a warning, a reminder of size and power.
"Tomorrow at first light," she said. "You leave the nest. Whether you fly or fall is your choice. But do not return empty-taloned. The aerie has no use for dreamers who starve."
She launched without another word. Her wings caught the updraft and she vanished into the clouds like smoke.
Aetos waited until the echo of her wingbeats faded. Then he stepped to the edge.
The drop was three hundred wingspans straight down to broken rock. Beyond that, the slope tumbled into pine forests, then open valleys, then… everything. The wind pressed against his chest, insistent, almost eager. His heart hammered—not with fear, but with something sharper. Hunger. Not for meat. For more.
He spread his wings.
They trembled. The new primaries caught the wind unevenly, threatening to flip him sideways. He adjusted, instinct more than thought, tilting the leading edge until the air pressed up instead of tearing sideways. Balance. Pressure. Lift.
He leaned forward.
And let go.
The world tilted.
For one terrible heartbeat gravity won. His stomach lurched as the ledge dropped away. Wings flared instinctively, feathers spreading like fingers grasping at nothing. Then the updraft hit him full force—a warm fist of air rising from the sun-warmed stone below. It shoved him upward so hard his talons scraped the lip of the nest one last time.
He was airborne.
Not gliding. Not falling. Flying.
The wind roared in his ears, tore at his feathers, filled his lungs with cold fire. The nest shrank beneath him to a dark smudge on gray rock. The Ironspine peaks unfolded like a map drawn in stone and shadow. Far below, a river glinted like molten silver. A herd of ibex scattered across a scree slope, tiny brown shapes fleeing the sudden shadow passing overhead.
Aetos laughed—a sharp, wild cry that echoed off the cliffs.
He banked left, testing the turn. The world tilted again, but this time he rode it. He found a thermal—a column of rising heat—and spiraled upward, wings spread wide, letting the air do the work. Higher. Higher still. The peaks that had loomed over him all his life now lay beneath his talons like broken toys.
From up here the world was not jagged and hostile. It was open. Endless. Divided only by lines no one had yet dared to cross.
He saw it all.
A flock of ravens mobbed a lone hawk two ridges over—petty squabbling over a single thermal. A pair of vultures circled a distant carcass, patient as death itself. Far to the east, where the mountains finally surrendered to rolling steppe, a vast mixed gathering moved: wolves, wild horses, scattered antelope herds, even a few solitary bears. They flowed together and apart like water finding its level, no true unity, no true direction.
No one ruled them.
Not yet.
Aetus felt something shift inside his chest—something that had been coiled there since the day he first opened his eyes. It was not fear. It was certainty.
The sky was too vast for scattered flocks and lone hunters. It needed order. It needed vision. It needed someone who could see farther than the next meal, the next ridge, the next season.
Someone like him.
He folded his wings and dove.
The wind screamed past his head as he plummeted, faster than falling, faster than thought. Mountains blurred. The river rushed up to meet him. At the last possible moment he flared, primaries snapping open, and leveled out inches above the rushing water. Spray stung his face. Fish flashed silver beneath the surface—too quick for most, but not for eyes that had already mapped the currents.
He climbed again, slower this time, savoring the burn in his flight muscles. The sun was climbing too, painting the peaks gold. His own shadow raced across the stone below, huge and dark and unbroken.
For the first time in his life, Aetos felt small only in comparison to what he could become.
He turned west, toward the unknown valleys beyond the Ironspine—the lands where no golden eagle from his aerie had ever claimed territory. Somewhere down there were allies waiting to be found, rivals waiting to be broken, horizons waiting to be crossed.
He did not know their names yet.
But he would learn them.
And then he would take them.
A sudden shadow crossed his path—a larger eagle, wings broad and scarred, riding the same thermal. Thalira. She matched his altitude without effort, her gaze locked on him.
"You flew," she said. No praise. No surprise. Only fact.
"I flew," Aetos answered.
She tilted slightly, letting the wind carry her closer. "And now?"
"Now," he said, voice steady despite the ache in his wings, "I begin."
Thalira regarded him for a long heartbeat. Then she banked away, climbing toward the highest peak without looking back.
Aetos watched her go.
Then he turned his gaze to the endless blue ahead.
The first soar was over.
The conquest had just begun.