The storm outside had stilled, but the silence aboard Starwake rang louder than cannonfire. The echo of Sylrae's last words lingered like an enchantment in the air—intimate, beguiling, calculated. Kaelen stood motionless, the velvet pouch still in his hand, the weight of memory heavier than the chain it held.
But beneath the surface, something was off.
Sylrae's quarters were too clean. No dust on the maps. No smudge on the cloudwine glass. No scent of ozone from the aether-batteries that powered the nav-systems—systems that should have been warm, recently run.
He turned slightly, catching her reflection in the polished brass of the navigation plate. Her gaze was locked—not on him—but on the door behind him.
"You expecting someone else?" he asked quietly, the old steel returning to his voice.
Sylrae's smirk faltered for a fraction of a second. Just enough.
"No," she said. Too fast. Too smooth.
Kaelen dropped the pouch, the soft thud swallowed by a second sound—one he wasn't supposed to hear. A shift. A breath held too long and then released. Not hers.
He moved.
Spinning, he drew the stiletto from his boot in a single, fluid motion. It struck metal. A hiss of pain, a shadow collapsing from the ceiling's crossbeam—a cloaked figure thudding to the floor, clutching a bleeding forearm.
"Aether-shrouded, Kaelen!" Sylrae snapped, drawing her pistol as she stepped back, her expression unreadable.
The intruder coughed and removed their hood. A young man—no older than twenty, his face smeared with ash-runes, eyes glowing faintly with aetheric light. Not Corsair. Not Zephyrite.
Something... else.
Kaelen crouched beside him, blade at his throat. "You've got ten seconds. Who sent you?"
The youth trembled. "I... I wasn't sent. I followed the signal. The flare. The one you lit."
Kaelen's eyes narrowed. "That was months ago. You're late."
"No... no, not that flare." The boy looked between them, panicked. "Another. Last night. From the Throne's remains."
Sylrae's knuckles whitened around the grip of her pistol. "Impossible. The forge was destroyed."
The boy shook his head, sweat beading on his brow. "Then explain the sigil it formed—across half the sky. I saw it. Others did too. The same mark that's been carved into the old vault doors. The mark of the Bound."
Kaelen froze. He hadn't heard that name in years.
"Show me," he said.
The boy reached into his sleeve, withdrew a folded, soot-marked scrap of parchment. He opened it, and there it was: the sigil. A circle bisected by seven lines, woven like branches. One for each Skyborne citadel. One broken.
Kaelen rose, eyes darkening.
"Sylrae," he said, voice low. "Warm the engines. Double crew. No names spoken aloud. Not until we know who else saw this."
She nodded, already moving.
"And the boy?" she asked.
Kaelen looked back at him—young, afraid, but touched by something. Something ancient.
"We keep him alive," Kaelen murmured. "But lock the lower hold. Triple aether seals. If the Bound are stirring, the sky's about to bleed."
A sudden tremor rattled the hull. Far off, the wind howled—not with force, but with intent.
And beneath it all, from somewhere deep within the storm-riddled heavens, a voice long dead whispered Kaelen's name.