I woke to bells.
Three low notes passed through the walls of my room, each one separated by several seconds.
Not alarms.
I'd heard enough of those yesterday to know the difference.
These were calmer.
Deliberate.
I opened my eyes.
For a moment, I remained beneath the blanket and listened.
The Silver Leviathan hummed around me.
Engine Four no longer produced that uneven vibration I'd noticed after the Mana Current. Engine Six sounded normal too, or at least normal enough that I couldn't distinguish it from the others.
Raymond and his crew had apparently worked through most of the night.
I sat up.
Then I remembered what Miles had said.
Tomorrow, we enter the Sovereign Skies.
Sleep disappeared quickly after that.
By the time I stepped into the corridor, I wasn't the only one awake.
Crew members moved in both directions. Some carried equipment toward the upper deck while others disappeared down staircases leading toward engineering. Several wore heavier coats than yesterday.
Nobody ran.
Nobody shouted.
But the relaxed rhythm I'd seen after leaving Epoch was gone.
Arrival preparations.
I recognized the feeling.
It reminded me of the academy before a mission.
Everyone knew what needed doing, so nobody wasted time talking about it.
The door beside mine opened.
Theon stepped out.
His hair looked like he'd lost a fight with his pillow.
He stared at me.
I stared back.
"Good morning."
"Don't."
I almost smiled.
"Bad night?"
"I think my bed tried to throw me onto the floor."
"The ship was stable."
"Then the bed personally hates me."
Another door opened farther down.
Kai emerged looking annoyingly awake.
"Did you hear the bells?"
"No," Theon said.
Kai paused.
"You literally walked outside because of them."
"I don't want to talk yet."
"Why?"
Theon continued walking.
Kai looked at me.
I shrugged and followed.
One by one, the others appeared.
Varein.
Kazen.
Liam.
Arion.
Aelira.
Liraeth.
Seraphyne came last, closing her door behind her while fastening the collar of her coat.
Her eyes moved toward me.
"Did you sleep?"
"A little."
She narrowed hers.
"That's not an answer."
"It's the one you're getting."
"Hm."
She walked past me.
I watched her go.
Kai leaned closer.
I turned my head.
"Don't."
He immediately straightened.
"I didn't say anything."
"You were going to."
"I hate that everyone keeps doing that to me."
I left him complaining behind me.
The bells sounded again.
This time, the crew began opening the upper-deck access doors.
Cold air rushed into the corridor.
I stepped outside.
And stopped.
Last night, Hyperanos had been lights among the stars.
Now the sun had revealed what those lights belonged to.
Islands.
Hundreds of them.
Maybe thousands.
They filled the sky ahead.
For several seconds, my mind refused to understand the distance.
The nearest floating landmass was still far away, yet it was already larger than anything we'd passed during the ascent. Forest covered most of its upper surface. Cliffs descended beneath it for what looked like kilometers before narrowing into jagged stone.
Beyond it floated another.
Then another above that.
Some were little more than pieces of rock.
Others carried forests.
Mountains.
Lakes.
I slowly walked toward the railing.
The others had fallen silent behind me.
I understood why.
Hyperanos wasn't a place suspended at one height.
It had depth.
Islands existed above other islands.
Some floated far beneath the Silver Leviathan, partially hidden by thin layers of cloud. Others hung so high that I had to tilt my head to see them.
And between them—
Movement.
Ships.
Not one or two.
Dozens.
Small vessels moved between the islands, their sails catching currents I couldn't feel from here. Larger ships traveled along routes marked by floating structures that glowed faintly even in daylight.
Something passed beneath us.
Fast.
I leaned over the railing.
A narrow vessel with two curved wings swept below the Leviathan before banking toward a distant island.
There were people standing on it.
No one aboard seemed particularly impressed by the fact that there were nearly two hundred kilometers of empty air beneath them.
Of course they weren't.
They lived here.
I looked farther ahead.
That was when I saw the first town.
It sat along the edge of a smaller island.
Stone houses followed the natural curve of the land, their roofs layered in dark material that reflected the morning sun. Narrow towers rose between them. Fields occupied the island's center, divided into neat sections of green and gold.
Fields.
I blinked.
People farmed up here.
A windmill turned slowly near the island's highest point, except there were no cloth sails attached to it. Instead, several metal rings rotated around a central crystal.
Water ran between the fields.
I followed it.
The stream reached the edge of the island.
Then fell.
A waterfall poured directly into the sky.
There was no river beneath it.
No valley.
The water simply dropped into the clouds far below.
I watched until we passed too far away to follow it.
"Imagine dropping something."
Kai had joined me at the railing.
I looked at him.
"That's what you're thinking about?"
"Tell me you weren't."
"I wasn't."
"What if you dropped a sword?"
"It would fall."
"For how long?"
I considered it.
Then stopped.
I didn't want to.
"Long enough."
Theon approached from behind.
"Please don't test it."
"I wasn't going to."
Seraphyne joined us.
"That's exactly why someone needed to say it."
Kai looked offended.
I barely heard whatever came next.
Another island had appeared beyond the first.
This one was different.
A town wasn't sitting on it.
The town was inside it.
Buildings had been carved directly into the cliffs. Windows and balconies covered the vertical stone face in dozens of levels, connected by staircases, suspended bridges, and platforms that moved up and down without ropes.
At the island's top stood an enormous stone structure.
Old.
Even from this distance, I could tell.
Its walls were weathered and partially covered in vegetation. Tall pillars surrounded a circular central building, and something like a broken ring floated above it.
Actually floated.
Pieces of stone rotated slowly around the structure without touching anything.
And beside that ancient ruin—
A sleek silver tower rose into the sky.
Its surface reflected the sunlight.
Several small vessels entered openings along its side.
Old and new.
Standing beside each other like there had never been a reason to separate them.
"How old is this place?"
Theon's voice was quieter now.
I didn't know.
Apparently neither did anyone else.
Captain Miles answered from farther along the deck.
"Depends what you're asking about."
We turned.
He stood near the forward railing with a cup in one hand.
Kai frowned.
"The islands?"
"Older than any kingdom you're familiar with."
"The cities?"
"Some of them?"
Miles took a drink.
"Also older than any kingdom you're familiar with."
That didn't help.
Maybe that was intentional.
Liam looked toward the cliff settlement.
"How long has Hyperanos been inhabited?"
Miles lowered the cup.
"Recorded history goes back several thousand years."
Several thousand.
I looked toward the ancient structure again.
"And before that?"
Miles gave me a glance.
"That's where the arguments begin."
Then he walked toward the command platform.
I watched him go.
Of course.
One answer.
Three more questions.
Maybe that was simply how this place worked.
The Silver Leviathan continued deeper.
The small settlements gradually became more frequent.
At first, there were minutes between them.
Then less.
Individual villages became towns.
Towns became something larger.
Roads appeared across some islands, except they didn't always end at the cliffs.
I noticed the first one while looking toward a broad island to our right.
A stone road crossed through farmland before reaching the edge.
There should have been nothing beyond it.
Instead, the road continued.
Not physically.
A stream of pale blue mana stretched across the gap between islands.
Vehicles entered it from one side.
Then accelerated.
I leaned forward.
One carriage left the ground.
The Mana Current caught it.
It crossed several kilometers of open sky before gently descending onto the neighboring island.
My mouth opened.
Then closed.
Yesterday came back to me.
Darkness.
The Silver Leviathan screaming.
Purple mana dragging us toward something enormous.
A Mana Current had nearly killed us.
These people were using one as a road.
"You've got to be kidding me."
Raymond laughed somewhere behind me.
I turned.
He looked exhausted.
Dark marks sat beneath his eyes, and his coat was stained from whatever repairs he'd spent the night making.
But he was smiling.
"First controlled current?"
I pointed.
"They control those?"
"Some."
"How?"
"Very carefully."
"That's not an explanation."
"It's the short version."
He stepped beside me.
The controlled current glowed steadily between the islands.
No violent twisting.
No sudden changes.
Just movement.
"Natural Mana Currents are unstable," Raymond said. "Hyperanos learned to anchor smaller ones a very long time ago."
"How long?"
He scratched his jaw.
"Nobody agrees."
That answer again.
I looked at him.
Raymond noticed.
"Welcome to Hyperanos."
He laughed and walked away.
I turned back toward the current.
Jishu had impressed me.
Epoch especially.
The Green and Red Mage Towers supplied mana across an entire city. Vehicles flew. Roads climbed buildings. Engineering had been integrated into nearly everything.
But I understood something now.
Epoch felt like people constantly discovering new ways to make the impossible useful.
Hyperanos felt like people had discovered those things so long ago that they'd forgotten they were supposed to be impossible.
The distinction bothered me.
Mostly because I wanted to understand it.
The Silver Leviathan approached another island.
This one was enormous.
Not enough to be mistaken for a continent, but large enough that I couldn't see its far side.
A city occupied its eastern edge.
Properly a city.
Towers rose along the cliffs. Airships filled several enormous docking platforms. Bridges connected sections of land separated by deep fractures. Suspended structures floated above the streets, some carrying gardens, others buildings.
I thought this might be Astrea.
Then Miles ruined that idea.
"Port settlement," he said while passing.
I stared at him.
"That's a port?"
He glanced toward the city.
"One of the smaller ones."
Kai turned slowly toward me.
I didn't look at him.
"No."
"I didn't say anything."
"I know."
"But you were thinking it too."
Unfortunately, I was.
If that was considered small, I had absolutely no idea what Astrea would look like.
A deep tone passed through the ship.
The crew reacted immediately.
Remi's voice carried from the navigation platform.
"Approaching boundary."
The conversations stopped.
I looked forward.
At first, I didn't see anything.
Then the islands ahead shifted enough to reveal two structures.
My first thought was towers.
Then I realized how far away they were.
They were too large to be towers.
Two colossal pillars floated on opposite sides of an open passage through the islands.
Neither touched land.
Their bases narrowed into enormous points hanging over the clouds. Their upper sections disappeared into layers of stone rings and structures covered in glowing inscriptions.
Ancient runes.
Thousands of them.
Maybe more.
They covered every visible surface.
Ships moved between the pillars.
Every vessel followed the same route.
"The Sky Gate," Miles said.
I looked toward him.
"We have to pass through that?"
"If you want to enter the inner territories."
The inner territories.
So everything we'd seen so far—
The villages.
The towns.
The city.
Those were the outskirts.
The Silver Leviathan adjusted its course.
The two pillars slowly filled my view.
The closer we came, the older they looked.
Parts of their stone had cracked.
Some sections were missing entirely.
Yet the runes remained active.
Not repaired.
Not replaced.
Active.
I couldn't explain why that unsettled me.
Maybe because anything capable of functioning for thousands of years deserved a little suspicion.
Ships entered ahead of us.
The moment each crossed between the pillars, the runes brightened.
Then dimmed after they passed.
"Identification?" Liam asked.
"Partly," Miles answered.
"What's the other part?"
Miles smiled faintly.
"You'll feel it."
I didn't like that answer.
The Silver Leviathan entered the passage.
Nothing happened.
One second.
Two.
Then every rune ignited.
Pressure descended over me.
I inhaled sharply.
It wasn't physical.
My body didn't become heavier.
The deck didn't move.
But something pressed against my Core.
Water Aura stirred immediately.
Then White Thunder.
A spark jumped across my wrist.
I clenched my hand.
Around me, the others reacted.
Pink flame briefly flickered across Seraphyne's fingers before she extinguished it.
Wind curled around Varein's coat despite the air being still.
A thin haze of Mist appeared near Kazen's shoulders.
Theon's Earth Aura made the deck beneath his boot give a faint metallic groan.
Gold light flashed from Liam.
Fire gathered around Kai's hand.
Flowers briefly formed from Arion's Aura before dissolving.
Frost crawled across the railing beside Aelira.
Plasma snapped between Liraeth's fingers.
Then—
Nothing.
Every manifestation vanished.
The pressure disappeared.
I looked down at my hand.
White Thunder remained for half a heartbeat longer than the rest.
One thin spark.
Then gone.
Again.
First the Mana Current.
Then the dragon.
Now this.
I slowly curled my fingers.
Something about the upper sky kept making it react.
The Silver Leviathan passed beyond the pillars.
The Sky Gate dimmed behind us.
And the world opened.
I forgot about White Thunder.
For the moment.
Everything we'd seen outside the boundary had been preparation.
The islands here were larger.
Closer together.
Far more heavily inhabited.
Controlled Mana Currents stretched between them in enormous glowing networks. Ships entered and exited the streams at different heights. Bridges connected islands close enough to reach one another. Smaller platforms moved independently through the air.
One river flowed off an island above us.
Instead of falling—
It curved.
I stared.
The water traveled through open air in a glittering arc before flowing upward toward another island.
"How..."
I didn't finish.
There wasn't much point anymore.
A mountain floated upside down in the distance.
I decided not to ask about that either.
Temples stood on isolated islands.
Forests covered others.
One enormous island seemed dedicated almost entirely to farmland.
Another held what looked like a military fortress, with several rows of ships docked beneath it.
And everywhere—
People.
Hyperanos wasn't surviving in the sky.
It belonged here.
I finally understood the title.
The Sovereign Skies.
Not because the islands floated above the world.
Because the people here had built a civilization in a place the rest of the world could barely reach.
Remi called something from the navigation platform.
Miles answered.
The Silver Leviathan changed course.
I looked forward.
The islands ahead were becoming denser.
Larger.
The controlled Mana Currents all seemed to be moving in roughly the same direction.
Ships too.
Hundreds of them.
Everything was converging toward something hidden beyond several massive islands ahead.
Theon noticed.
"Where are they all going?"
Captain Miles looked back at us.
This time, he actually answered without making us drag it out of him.
"Astrea."
The name settled differently now.
I looked beyond the islands.
Nothing yet.
Just distant towers.
Clouds.
Moving ships.
But somewhere behind all of that was the capital of a civilization thousands of years old.
The place all these impossible roads seemed to lead.
Kai stepped beside me.
"How big do you think it is?"
I remembered the city Miles had called a smaller port.
"I've stopped guessing."
"Probably smart."
The Silver Leviathan continued forward.
Then the island directly ahead of us began sliding aside.
Slowly.
At first, I thought our angle was changing.
It wasn't.
The entire island was moving.
And through the widening gap—
Something appeared.
A tower.
No.
Only the top of one.
It rose above the island blocking the rest of my view, shining beneath the morning sun.
Then another structure appeared beside it.
Then another.
Miles walked toward the bow.
Crew members who had seen all of this before barely reacted.
Class 2-S didn't move.
Neither did I.
The gap continued widening.
More of the distant city emerged.
And for the first time since entering Hyperanos, I understood that everything we'd seen until now really had been the outskirts.
Because somewhere beyond those moving islands—
Astrea was waiting.
The island continued moving.
Slowly.
Almost painfully slowly.
The gap widened another hundred feet, then another, and the tower I'd glimpsed through it continued downward.
More of its body appeared.
White stone.
Gold running along its edges.
Windows catching the morning sun.
Then I saw the buildings around it.
And the island moved completely out of the way.
For several seconds, I forgot to breathe.
Astrea filled the horizon.
No.
That wasn't right.
It didn't fill the horizon.
It replaced it.
An enormous landmass floated at the center of the Sovereign Skies, so vast that my mind initially refused to understand that I was looking at an island.
The edges were there.
I could see them.
Barely.
But the land stretched so far in either direction that distance turned entire districts into indistinct shapes.
And covering almost all of it—
A city.
Not a settlement.
Not a collection of towers surrounded by empty land.
A city.
A massive one.
Buildings spread from one edge of the island to the other, interrupted by forests, waterways, enormous gardens, and stretches of green that seemed deliberately preserved between districts.
Closer to the outer edges, the buildings were smaller.
Homes.
Shops.
Warehouses.
Rows of pale stone structures gathered along winding streets.
Some had red roofs.
Others blue.
Others were covered almost completely in plants, with flowering vines hanging from balconies and gardens growing across rooftops.
Farther inward, the city rose.
Towers appeared between the neighborhoods.
Some were narrow and elegant, ending in pointed roofs or floating rings.
Others were broad enough that entire groups of buildings seemed to have been constructed around their bases.
Bridges stretched between them.
Not simple bridges.
Some crossed distances that should have required enormous support structures, yet nothing held them from below.
They simply extended through open air.
People moved across them.
Carriages too.
I could barely make them out from this distance.
My eyes moved higher.
Structures floated above the city.
Entire buildings.
Some rested on small platforms of stone covered in gardens. Others seemed to hang unsupported, connected to the districts below by narrow streams of light.
One enormous circular structure rotated slowly above a plaza.
Another building had several sections floating separately around a central tower.
And everywhere—
Ships.
Hundreds of them.
Maybe more.
They moved through the air above Astrea in organized layers.
Small vessels traveled close to the city.
Larger ones remained higher.
Cargo ships moved toward enormous platforms built along the island's edges.
Some vessels entered the glowing Mana Currents we'd seen outside the Sky Gate and accelerated so quickly that they became streaks moving across the capital.
I followed one.
It traveled several kilometers in seconds before leaving the current near another district.
Yesterday, one of those currents had nearly torn the Silver Leviathan apart.
Here, someone was probably using one to get to work.
I wasn't sure whether that was impressive or insulting.
Then sunlight struck something near the center of Astrea.
I raised a hand against the glare.
At first, I thought I was looking at another tower.
I wasn't.
Several enormous rings floated above the heart of the city.
They were so large that buildings stood beneath their shadows.
One ring rested vertically.
Another passed through it horizontally.
A third rotated diagonally between them.
There were more farther inside.
All of them turned slowly around a point that contained nothing.
No central pillar.
No mechanism holding them together.
Nothing.
Runes covered their surfaces.
Even from this distance, I could see the light moving across them.
Gold.
Then white.
Then a faint blue.
The rings shifted.
The air around Astrea changed with them.
Controlled Mana Currents flowing toward the capital bent slightly.
Some separated.
Others joined.
I stared.
"What is that?"
Nobody answered at first.
I looked toward Captain Miles.
He followed my gaze.
"The Celestial Crown."
"Crown?"
"That's what people call it."
Kai leaned over the railing.
"What does it do?"
Miles took longer to answer that one.
"Several things."
"Such as?"
"Stabilizes the central territory. Regulates Mana Currents. Helps maintain the capital's aerial routes."
Kai waited.
"And?"
Miles shrugged.
"Depends who you ask."
I frowned.
"You don't know?"
"I know what Astrea uses it for."
Miles looked toward the rings.
"That's different from knowing what it was built for."
I stared at him.
Before I could ask anything else, Raymond's voice came from behind us.
"Don't bother."
He looked far better than he had last night, although exhaustion still sat beneath his eyes.
"People have been trying to answer that question longer than Jishu has existed."
I turned back toward the Celestial Crown.
"How old is it?"
Raymond smiled.
"There you go."
"What?"
"That's always the next question."
"And?"
"We don't know."
Of course.
Raymond walked to the railing.
The smile faded from his face as he looked toward Astrea.
I'd seen him fascinated by the Silver Leviathan.
Proud of it.
I'd watched him work through the Mana Current while the entire ship threatened to tear itself apart.
But the expression he wore now was different.
Respect.
Maybe even envy.
"Jishu engineers have studied fragments of Hyperanos technology for generations," he said.
Theon looked at him.
"Fragments?"
"Things recovered from ruins. Broken mechanisms. Old stabilization arrays. Mana conductors."
"And you still don't understand them?"
Raymond glanced at him.
"Some."
He pointed toward one of the smaller vessels traveling through a controlled Mana Current.
"That?"
He moved his finger toward an enormous tower surrounded by floating platforms.
"Parts of that?"
Then toward the Celestial Crown.
"That?"
His hand dropped.
"Not even close."
Kai looked toward the capital.
"So Astrea is more advanced than Epoch."
Raymond shook his head.
"Don't compare them."
Kai looked at him.
Raymond rested both hands against the railing.
"Epoch is what we're building."
His eyes returned to the ancient rings.
"Astrea is what we're still trying to understand."
Nobody had much to say after that.
Neither did I.
The Silver Leviathan continued forward.
And Astrea grew.
That was the strangest part.
I'd thought seeing the entire capital from a distance would help me understand its size.
Getting closer made it worse.
The small buildings I'd seen near the outer districts weren't small at all.
They had only looked that way because of everything surrounding them.
Neighborhoods appeared where I'd thought there were simply patches of pale stone.
Hundreds of homes lined streets that curved naturally around hills and gardens.
People filled plazas.
Markets occupied entire squares beneath long cloth canopies.
Trees grew between buildings.
Children ran through courtyards.
At least, I thought they were children.
We were still too high to see clearly.
One district looked older than everything surrounding it.
The streets there were narrower.
Buildings leaned closer together, made from weathered gray stone rather than the polished white material common elsewhere. Small bridges connected upper floors across alleys.
And directly beyond it stood a tower covered in glass and gold.
Centuries separated them.
Maybe millennia.
Yet nobody had demolished the old district to make room for the new.
They had built around it.
The result should have looked chaotic.
It didn't.
Astrea had grown in layers.
That was the only way I could describe it.
Every age had left something behind.
A temple surrounded by newer homes.
An ancient arch built into a modern bridge.
Weathered statues standing beside mana lifts.
Old stone roads disappearing beneath elevated pathways before emerging again several blocks later.
Some buildings had entire sections made from different materials, as though generations had simply kept adding to them.
The city hadn't replaced its history.
It lived inside it.
A shadow passed over us.
I looked up.
An airship moved overhead.
Not another Leviathan.
It was narrower, with three long structures extending from its sides like wings. Dozens of windows lined its body.
Behind it came several smaller craft.
None paid us much attention.
Apparently a massive silver airship entering the capital wasn't particularly interesting here.
I turned toward the island's edge.
Waterfalls poured from Astrea.
Dozens.
Some narrow.
Some enormous.
One river crossed an entire outer district before reaching the cliff and falling into the clouds beneath.
Another never reached the edge.
The water lifted.
I blinked.
A stream rose from a lake.
It curved through the air.
Then separated into three smaller channels, each traveling toward a different section of the city.
No pipes.
No aqueduct beneath them.
Just water moving through open sky.
Farther away, an actual suspended aqueduct connected Astrea to one of the surrounding islands.
And there were many surrounding islands.
I had been so focused on the capital that I'd barely noticed them.
Some were almost touching the main island.
Others floated kilometers away.
All were inhabited.
One held what looked like an enormous academy complex.
Another was covered almost entirely in gardens.
A third contained rows of identical structures surrounding several training fields.
Smaller islands drifted between them.
Some carried only a handful of buildings.
Others supported single estates or temples.
Bridges and Mana Currents connected everything back toward the capital.
Astrea wasn't merely one island.
The city had spread beyond it.
"How many people live here?"
Arion asked.
Miles glanced toward him.
"A lot."
Arion waited.
Miles didn't elaborate.
I almost laughed.
Some things apparently remained impossible to get out of him.
The Leviathan began descending.
Slowly.
The city rose around us.
For the first time, we were entering its skyline instead of looking down on it.
Towers passed in the distance.
Balconies appeared along their sides.
Gardens grew hundreds of feet above the streets.
Mana-powered lifts moved vertically between platforms.
I watched one descend alongside a building before stopping at a bridge halfway down.
People stepped off.
Others entered.
The lift continued.
Normal.
Everything here was normal to them.
That might have been the hardest thing to understand.
A woman stood on a floating platform tending flowers while hundreds of kilometers of empty sky existed somewhere beneath her.
A merchant pushed a cart across a suspended bridge without looking over the edge.
Two children raced each other along a street while small ships passed overhead.
People sat outside cafés.
Workers repaired rooftops.
Guards stood at intersections.
Laundry hung from balconies.
Someone had apparently decided to paint an entire house bright yellow.
I stared at that one for a few seconds.
I didn't know why.
Maybe because after the Celestial Crown, the floating towers, the waterfalls and impossible technology, seeing someone's ugly yellow house made the city feel real.
Seraphyne noticed where I was looking.
"What?"
"Nothing."
She followed my gaze.
"The yellow one?"
"Yeah."
"It's terrible."
"Yeah."
"Maybe they like it."
"They shouldn't."
She covered a laugh with one hand.
Theon looked over.
"What are you two talking about?"
"Nothing," we said together.
That only made Seraphyne laugh harder.
A deep horn sounded from the bow.
The Silver Leviathan changed course.
Ahead of us, an enormous section of Astrea's outer cliff had been transformed into a port.
Dozens of docking platforms extended from the island at different elevations.
Some held ships smaller than the one we'd passed earlier.
Others supported vessels comparable to the Silver Leviathan.
Mana cranes moved cargo between platforms.
Floating lifts carried passengers upward toward the city.
Hundreds of people moved through enormous terminal structures built directly into the cliff.
And beneath all of it—
I saw the underside of Astrea.
My amusement disappeared.
Stone extended downward farther than I expected.
But it wasn't untouched.
Structures had been built into it.
No.
Not built.
Embedded.
Massive metallic shapes disappeared into the rock.
Ancient rings surrounded sections of the island's underside. Lines of pale light ran between them. Enormous pillars extended downward into nothing, ending in structures whose purpose I couldn't guess.
Some were clearly damaged.
One ring had broken in half.
It still floated.
I looked toward Raymond.
He was already watching them.
"You don't understand those either?"
"Some."
"You're saying 'some' a lot."
"Because I enjoy being correct."
Fair.
The Silver Leviathan descended toward an empty platform.
Crew members gathered along the lower deck.
Raymond disappeared toward engineering.
Remi's voice came through the communication system.
"Approach stable."
Miles answered from the bow.
"Docking speed."
The engines softened.
For the first time since leaving Epoch, I felt the Silver Leviathan descending toward actual ground.
Except calling it ground still felt dishonest.
The platform grew beneath us.
People waited along its edges wearing long coats marked with an emblem I didn't recognize.
A circle surrounded by several wing-like shapes.
Hyperanos' crest, maybe.
The ship moved sideways.
Metal arms extended from the platform.
One connected.
Then another.
A heavy impact traveled through the deck.
Not violent.
Solid.
The engines lowered further.
The constant vibration I'd lived with since Epoch began disappearing.
One engine quieted.
Then another.
Another.
Until finally—
Silence.
I hadn't realized how accustomed I'd become to the sound.
For almost the entire journey, the Leviathan had been humming beneath me.
Now it was still.
We had arrived.
Crew members began opening the lower exits.
Class 2-S gathered near the stairs.
Nobody needed to tell us.
Kai stood beside Theon.
Varein and Kazen were ahead of me.
Liam adjusted the strap carrying his sword.
Aelira and Liraeth spoke quietly.
Arion was still looking through one of the windows.
Seraphyne stood beside me.
"So."
I looked at her.
"We survived."
"Don't say that yet."
She frowned.
"Why?"
"The mission hasn't started."
Her expression flattened.
"You really don't know how to enjoy anything."
"I enjoyed the yellow house."
She stared at me.
Then shook her head.
"Hopeless."
The lower door opened.
Noise entered immediately.
Voices.
Machinery.
Distant horns.
The rush of ships passing somewhere outside.
And underneath all of it, the sound of a city.
We started walking.
The ramp extended from the Silver Leviathan.
Sunlight poured through the opening.
Varein stepped out first.
Then Kazen.
The others followed.
I reached the top of the ramp.
And paused.
Astrea looked different from the ground.
More overwhelming.
From the Leviathan, I'd been able to pretend I was looking at a single thing.
A city.
Down here, there was too much.
The docking platform alone was larger than some training grounds at Lionhearth.
Ships rested along neighboring platforms.
People moved between them carrying luggage and cargo.
Beyond the port rose the city.
Streets climbed gradually away from the cliff.
Buildings crowded around plazas.
Towers rose behind them.
Floating platforms crossed between districts overhead.
The Celestial Crown turned far in the distance, enormous even from here.
And above everything—
More islands.
I stepped onto the ramp.
Walked down.
One step.
Another.
Then my boot touched stone.
I stopped.
Nothing happened.
That shouldn't have surprised me.
Still.
I pressed my foot down slightly.
Solid.
Normal stone.
Theon stepped down behind me.
"Something wrong?"
I looked toward the edge of the platform.
The clouds were visible far beyond it.
"No."
I looked back down.
Nearly two hundred kilometers of empty air existed somewhere beneath the stone under my boots.
Yet it felt exactly like standing anywhere else.
"Just strange."
Theon followed my gaze.
He understood.
"Don't think about it."
"Wasn't planning to."
"You definitely were."
I ignored him.
The rest of Class 2-S joined us.
People passed without staring.
A few glanced at our weapons.
Others looked briefly toward the Silver Leviathan.
Then continued with their day.
Nobody seemed particularly interested in ten students from another continent.
For them, this wasn't the edge of the impossible.
It was home.
I looked toward the city again.
Astrea stretched farther than I could see.
Somewhere inside it were answers.
Probably more questions.
And somewhere beyond the capital was the reason we'd traveled all this way in the first place.
Our mission.
A bell rang from somewhere deep inside the city.
Then another answered from a different district.
The Celestial Crown shifted overhead.
Golden light traveled across its ancient rings.
For just a moment, I felt something stir inside my Core.
A faint spark of White Thunder touched my fingertips.
I looked down.
It vanished.
Three times now.
The Mana Current.
The dragon.
The Sky Gate.
And now Astrea itself.
I slowly closed my hand.
Maybe coming here hadn't just taken me beyond the world I knew.
Maybe something in these skies had already noticed me.
I raised my eyes toward Astrea.
Then followed the others into the capital.