The First Settlement: Emberfields
**
The Valkyrie drifted low through morning haze, sails whispering against Breath-heavy air. From below she was no bigger than a bone-ship, violet runes smudged by mist. Inside, she was bigger than she had any right to be. Corridors lengthened to meet their feet, handrails slid toward Khalen's right side, doors eased wider as if expecting a burden. The ship was listening.
Khalen stood at the helm rail, sleeve rolled up past the stump of his left arm. The phantom fingers flexed at nothing. A cup lay in pieces near his boot where his grip had just… failed.
"Still dropping things," OH said from the cradle, crystal skull lit from within. "You know, a Breath conduit in that arm would solve this. Maybe a flamethrower. You'd be memorable."
"I don't need to breathe fire at breakfast," Khalen said.
"You say that now."
From above, Lys called, "Smoke ahead. Settlement smoke, not beast smoke."
Therrin joined her at the viewing slit, notebook in hand. "Volcanic band. That has to be Emberfields. They farm out of hot soil and half-melted slag. Tough people."
"Friendly?" Khalen asked.
"Until we arrive in a myth," Lys said.
The haze peeled back. A valley appeared, scored with red-orange fields that glowed from beneath. Wind-vanes spun, etched with wards. Low houses hugged the rock. The moment the Valkyrie's shadow crossed the first field, a bell rang. Then a second. Then every slagbell in the valley.
The valley broke into motion.
Wardstones were dragged out. Children were yanked behind walls. One man just stood there, staring straight up, like he was trying to decide whether the sky had finally decided to bite.
"Peaceful," OH said. "Just currently screaming."
"Drop slow," Khalen said. "Show them the crew."
The Valkyrie obliged before he finished the gesture, lowering until her belly was a breath over the ridge. Her runes dimmed from battle-violet to warm amber. The shift made a few of the ward-tenders flinch anyway, watching the color the way you watched a kiln, not fear of magic, fear of heat too close to their fields. A gangway unfolded, its edges glowing like poured emberlight.
Below, the villagers froze. Not because they recognized the ship, but because what came out of it were people.
A boy bolted from the line, sprinted toward the shadow like he meant to jump and grab it. He disappeared over the lip of the field.
"Core," Khalen hissed. "He fell."
But a moment later, a stitched canvas balloon jerked up out of the mist, bone frame creaking, the boy clinging to it white-knuckled as it bobbed back to safety.
OH laughed. "Improvised lift. These people are my kind of problem."
Khalen let out a breath. "I panicked for nothing."
"Yes," OH said. "Look at you, not panicking. Actual growth. Now come on, let's go make introductions."
Below, wardstones lowered. Fear was still there, but so was that hard practical curiosity you only saw outside the big cities. A woman at the front lifted her hand, not in worship, just to see if the sky-men would answer.
"Let's make sure they know we walk on dirt same as them," Khalen murmured.
And for the first time in centuries, a flying ship put down in front of people who had never been told it was possible.
The Valkyrie hovered above the valley like a lantern hung in the sky where no lantern should be. Her light spilled over ash fields and turned the volcanic soil to embers.
Khalen stepped onto the extended gangway. Wind tugged at his cloak, showing the missing arm. His stance was solid, but his pulse wasn't. This was the first time in months someone hadn't met him with teeth.
"Try not to look like you came to collect taxes," OH said. "They scare easy."
"I'm missing a hand," Khalen said. "I look broke."
"Then you're one of them," OH said, satisfied.
The villagers had gathered now, a rough semicircle of farmers, scavengers, and ward-tenders. They held tools because that's what was in reach, not because they thought it would stop a ship. The boy with the balloon was back, hair wild, breathless, eyes shining like he'd touched a star.
An elder stepped forward. Her cloak was patched in places with glowing ward script, clearly re-inked every year, brink-ink laid over old lines with a steady hand. She didn't kneel. She just stared up at the three of them.
"You fell from the mist," she called. "What are you?"
"Human," Khalen said at once. "From the prison colony west of the Spine. We fly, but we still bleed."
A murmur went through them. That answer made sense. A spirit wouldn't mention bleeding.
The elder's eyes flicked to the skull on his belt. "And the voice?"
OH chose that moment to flare. "I am what kept your great-grandmother's city lit before it drowned," he said in his most impressive timbre. Half the villagers flinched. "But presently, I am portable."
Khalen muttered, "Tone it down."
"I am building mystique," OH murmured.
The elder did not bow. Emberfields had lived too long without guardian gods for that. Instead she nodded once. "Then you eat with us."
She lifted a small bowl from the stone beside her, black ash mixed with crushed salt. "Palm."
When Khalen hesitated, she added, blunt as rock, "It's not a blessing. It's so our wardlines know you're not a beast wearing skin."
Lys offered her hand first, as if daring the valley to argue. The ash left a dark crescent on her skin that glittered faintly, like heat caught in powder.
Khalen followed, and the grit felt honest.
Lys exhaled. "That was easier than I thought."
"Not easy," Therrin said, watching the crowd. "Practical. They saw we aren't raiding and feeding us is cheaper than fighting a flying ship."
Khalen stepped down the last span of the ramp. The villagers stared openly at his arm, at the faint glow under his skin where channels ran. To them he looked wrong, but not monstrous. Just someone who'd touched the deep too long.
"Captain Khalen," he said. "This is Lys. That's Therrin. We're not taking anything."
The elder's mouth curved. "Then you're already different from the Guild."
That got a laugh from the villagers. The tension thinned. Someone shouted for the fires to be lit.
The boy darted forward, pointing up. "Can I see inside?"
Lys grinned. "Maybe later."
Khalen glanced back at the Valkyrie. Her runes pulsed soft, almost… pleased.
Witnesses, he thought. Not just survivors.
**
Night in Emberfields was color.
They ate at a long stone trough carved right into the cooled volcanic flow, sigils along its edge lighting whenever someone laughed or slammed a cup. Lantern fungus swung overhead. The Valkyrie sat above the settlement, wings folded, her belly lights set low like a campfire watching from the cliff.
Plates came out: ash-baked roots, sticky flamefruit, thin cuts of sky-eel that tasted like rain on metal. The flamefruit came scored with a narrow ward-slit down its side, so the heat bled out slow instead of bursting bitter. Everyone at the table ate it that way, like anything else was how you lost teeth. They brought out the shisha pipes last.
Not gutter-pipes like in the colonies. These were art. Colorful crystal and basalt, coiled with copper wards, filled with liquid Breath that swirled colors depending on who held it.
"It strengthens the lung," the elder said, passing one to Khalen. "But only if you have more will than smoke."
Therrin, of course, took it first.
He drew in deep.
He hacked so violently vapor shot out his nose in orange spurts. The whole table roared. Lys almost fell off the bench laughing. "You good?"
"Research," Therrin wheezed. "Aggressive research."
Khalen took his turn. The vapor went gold when it neared him, like it recognized the heat. He inhaled slow. Warmth ran through him, not blazing like his own fire, but steady, vascular. For a heartbeat, his phantom hand was back. He could feel each finger.
He let the breath out in a slow red curl. The villagers went quiet for a moment, watching the color.
"You carry fire, but it doesn't eat you," the elder said. "That's rare."
"Had a good teacher," Khalen said, tipping his head toward the skull.
"Obviously me," OH said. "You're welcome."
They ate. They argued over which year's embergrain was best. They told him the storm that made the western field glow. They asked Lys if the ship could carry a mountain.
"Not yet," she said. "Ask her in a year."
The music after was all drums and steps. Every beat activated some tiny ward etched in the floor, sending little ripples of light under their feet. It was defensive sigilwork turned into a party.
Khalen watched it all with that quiet, aching sort of admiration. "They made joy out of wards."
Lys puffed her shisha pipe, blew a ring that popped into sparks. "You sound surprised."
"I fought to survive," Khalen said. "They're surviving to live."
OH's voice lowered. "If this is what you built without me… maybe I don't mind what the world became."
"Write that down," Lys said. "The ancient skull paid a compliment."
Therrin, still clearing his throat, muttered, "I'll put it in the archive."
The Valkyrie glowed faintly above them, rune-light pulsing in time with the drums like she was learning the rhythm.
Dawn came red over black soil. The valley steamed where the fields met the cold.
Khalen sat on the ramp with a cup, watching farmers begin their day. Below, wards were being redrawn, not because the old ones failed, but because here they did not trust anything left idle. A teenager knelt with a bone stylus and a tin of glowing paste, tongue caught between his teeth. He did not draw the sigil like art. He drew it like a farmer sharpening a blade, quick, practiced, and tired.
OH spoke low. "I listened last night."
Khalen didn't look up. "To them?"
"To everything. Air, soil, storm traces, your ship." OH's light shifted, almost distracted, like he was trying to listen through cloth. "The frequencies are wrong."
"Wrong how?"
OH paused, then spoke again, as if aligning his own words to the pattern. "Every seven minutes the Breath here stutters. Everything… catches. Just for a heartbeat. Like the valley forgets to breathe, then remembers." His runes spun, mapping it in light. "I heard it once before the Titan buried me."
Khalen frowned, eyes on the fields below. Even from here, he could see a moment where a ribbon of steam held too still over the hot soil, then resumed its climb. "So something out there is… doing it on purpose."
"Something is suppressing," OH corrected. "Imagine you are trying to sing and every seven minutes someone shoves your head underwater. You do not forget the song. You just stop singing loud."
Lys came down the ramp, hair still damp from the ship's washroom-that-existed-today. "You two plotting the world's salvation before breakfast?"
"We found a repeating Breath interference field," Therrin said, arriving with instruments. "So yes."
He set down a crystal plate. It vibrated on its own. At exactly seven minutes, the tone dipped, and Khalen felt it in his teeth more than his ears.
"There," Therrin said. "Not natural."
"Which means?" Lys asked.
Khalen watched the valley another second, waiting for the next catch. "Either something old never shut off," he said, "a ward-engine, an ancient instrument, whatever the ancients called a machine, or someone found it and turned it back on."
OH's light dimmed, thoughtful. "When I was pulled apart to power cities, I wasn't the only Voice. If one of my fragments survived topside… it could have kept humming. Could have kept people small."
"So you didn't do this," Lys said.
"For once," OH said, "no."
That sat between them. The villagers below kept living, unaware.
Khalen sipped his drink. "Then we keep listening as we go. If this thing is everywhere, we'll hear it change."
"And if it changes," OH said, "we'll know someone else is awake."
Later that morning, the Valkyrie drifted above the valley, slowly turning her bow toward the east.
Inside, Khalen padded through the corridor. The floor smoothed under his bare feet. A handrail slid just a bit closer to his right, as if politely offering support. He huffed a laugh. "You're doing it again," he said.
"She is accommodating your imbalance," OH said from a ceiling rune. "It is very cute."
Khalen ran his fingers along the wall. Breathlight moved under the surface in veins. "You said she wasn't truly sentient."
"She isn't," OH said. "She's responsive. You fed her a core that remembers entire cities. You gave her your flame. She's building behavior from want."
He stepped into the main chamber. Yesterday it had been low and wide. Today it was vaulted, floating orbs shedding pale light. Lys's hammock was gone, replaced by an actual bunk. Therrin's workbench had been pushed farther from the cooking pit, probably because the ship was tired of alchemical smoke.
Khalen stopped and just… smiled. "You're spoiling us."
The hull gave a soft pulse.
"See?" OH said. "She likes praise."
Outside, Emberfields was shrinking behind them. People stood on the ridge and waved. The boy with the balloon held it high like a banner. The Valkyrie dipped her nose in answer.
Khalen watched them go, hand on the rail. "I like them."
"They liked you," OH said. "That is rarer."
He glanced around the chamber again. "You think she'll keep doing this? Changing?"
"Of course," OH said. "So will you."
Khalen's phantom hand flickered, but there was no pain. Only heat. "Then let's go see what's next."
The Valkyrie turned, sails catching new currents. The ship hummed, Emberfields fell behind, and the world ahead waited, unmapped, and listening back.