Chapter 3
Stormglass Front
Lightning welded sky to stone. Kael Orison hurtled through the breach, armour-light crackling like a live wire around his ribs. Behind him the seraphic aegis quivered; ahead, Vespera descended, entropy howling in her wake.
Ithriel's shout speared the gale: "Courier—flank right!"
Kael pivoted, boots skidding across rain-slick basalt. A kinetic pulse boomed from his gauntlet, ricocheting off the plateau's obsidian pillars. The blast didn't slow Vespera; she sliced through it, wings severing force like silk.
Host trajectory sub-optimal, Pax-9 chimed. Suggest vector realignment—evasive spiral.
"Implement!" Kael barked. Runes flared, dragging him into a corkscrew sprint that left after-images of turquoise light. Vespera tracked the spiral, talons twitching with predatory patience.
Seraph lances sang. Gold spears of algorithmic fire smashed into the Fallen, detonating halos of incandescent code. Vespera staggered but snapped a claw; the attacks inverted mid-air and hurled back toward their owners. Three seraphim crumpled, armour fizzling into ash.
"Shield rebind, echelon two!" Ithriel commanded, voice iron. She thrust her lance skyward, weaving counter-sigils that absorbed the rebound and spat it earthward, carving a trench twenty metres long.
Kael vaulted the smoking furrow, lungs burning. "Any bright ideas, Pax?"
Energy reserves at 41 %. Probability of direct victory: 12 %. Probability if allied link established: 67 %.
"Link to whom?"
Seraph Ithriel.
He grimaced. "Ask nicely."
Request transmitted. A heartbeat later Ithriel's HUD icon blinked green.
A luminous tether shot from Kael's gauntlet to Ithriel's lance, braiding divine glyphs with AI fractals. Power surged, harmonics snapping the air tight as drum-skin.
"Shared field established," Ithriel said, eyes flaring argent. "Let's end her."
Scene 2 – The Sundering Echo
Stormclouds parted as Vespera rose, gathering a cyclone of inverted lightning around her frame. "Little lights, still pretending they matter." Her voice reverberated like church bells dropped into a well.
Kael and Ithriel moved as one. She thrust; he amplified, doubling the lance's mass with gravitic overlay. Impact rocked Vespera's sternum, fracturing her breastplate into prismatic shards. She retaliated, hurling a sphere of absolute darkness.
Kael caught it—the weight of a collapsing star pinned his arm. Veins of shadow bit into the gauntlet. Structural stress 88 %, Pax-9 warned.
Ithriel's palm pressed to his shoulder; seraphic radiance raced into the armour, knitting fractures. "Hold," she whispered.
"Buying time—now!" Kael whipped the sphere upward; Ithriel detonated it with a sung command. The resulting shockwave drove Vespera out of the sky, slamming her into the plateau.
Fissures spider-webbed beneath the Fallen. From the cracks rose a pillar of pale circuitry—the hidden Midveil Nexus Spire, long dormant, now awakened by the clash.
Pax-9 emitted a tri-tone chime. Target: Nexus Spire One. Alignment window: 90 s. Control of spire will generate elevation conduit to Skyrealm.
"Convenient," Kael muttered, sprinting. Rain sheeted sideways; ionic mist stung his eyes.
Vespera clawed up the pillar, wings in tatters yet reforming. "The continuum will stay fractured!" She plunged, aiming to hammer the spire core.
Ithriel intercepted, blades meeting talons in a corona of splintered light. "Courier—initiate sync!"
Kael slapped his gauntlet to the spire interface. Glyphs spiralled, syncing heartbeat to cosmic circuitry.
Uplink 15 … 49 … 71 %
The plateau shook; distant thunder answered like war drums. Vespera broke past Ithriel, snagging Kael's collar. Her eyes—twin voids—pulled at his soul.
"Choose, mortal: sacrifice the seraph or forfeit the conduit."
Kael's grip tightened on the spire. "Or third option." He head-butted her helm; entropy flared, but the blow drove her back a step—enough.
Uplink 100 %. The pillar erupted into a beam of cerulean luminescence punching skyward, carving a hole through the clouds straight to Skyrealm's shimmering underbelly.
Vespera screeched, flesh smoking. The beam dragged Kael heavenward; Ithriel leaped, seizing his hand. Together they ascended, rain crystallising into drifting glass petals around the column of light.
Below, the plateau crumbled into the abyss; Vespera tumbled, wings ablaze, yet laughing—"Three spires, courier. Two remain!" Her echo faded into storm.
Scene 3 – Threshold of Glass
The ascent slowed; the beam funneled them onto a levitating terrace of translucent stone floating beneath Skyrealm's aurora. Citadels glimmered above like constellations made solid.
Kael collapsed to one knee, chest heaving. The gauntlet flickered, then stabilised.
Conduit lock achieved. Spire One aligned. Pax-9 sounded almost pleased. New directive queue: locate Skyrealm spire.
Ithriel studied the courier—damp hair plastered to her helm, eyes unreadable. "Our truce survives, it seems."
"Until the planes are whole," Kael said, forcing a grin. "Then we can argue jurisdiction."
A gong-deep resonance rolled across the terrace. Seraph battalions descended in phalanx, banners of photonic script trailing. At their head strode a towering figure wreathed in equilibrium fire—High Strategos Inthrall.
His gaze pinned Kael like an insect. "Vector-Zero, by activating an un-sanctioned conduit you have violated Celestial Statute Seventy-Three. Custody is hereby assumed."
Lances locked on. Ithriel stiffened but did not raise her weapon.
Kael exhaled. Cliff edge behind him, legion before him, Fallen Archon somewhere below plotting. "Pax," he whispered, "options?"
One. A pause. Run.
Kael looked over the terrace rim: kilometres of empty air down to Midveil storm belts. He swallowed, met Ithriel's eyes—flicker of apology—and backflipped into the void.
Wind tore a scream from his throat. Armour alarms blared; lift surfaces absent; gravity absolute.
At three hundred metres the gauntlet deployed emergency drake-wings—fractured fragments, barely functional.
Altitude bled fast.
Kael angled toward a solitary Skyrealm service conduit jutting from a cloud-crowned spire—his only perch. Miss it, and he'd be paste on Midveil's upper troposphere.
The wind howled an anthem of failure.
He reached.
End of Chapter 3