The world of Caelum was a shattered masterpiece, a collection of floating islands suspended in the upper atmosphere, tethered together by colossal chains of forged starlight. Below these islands churned the Astral Deep, a swirling, violent nebula of purple gas and crushing gravity where nothing could survive. Thane was a cloud-fisher, one of the daring few who sailed small, buoyant skiffs over the edges of the islands to cast deep-sea dredges into the upper layers of the Deep. He wasn’t fishing for fish; he was fishing for lumium, the glowing, buoyant ore that kept their skiffs aloft and powered their cities.
On a blustery morning that smelled of ozone and cold iron, Thane was perched on the prow of his battered skiff, the Wind-Runner. He was miles from the bustling docks of Isle Zephyr, anchored to a small, uninhabited rock in the outer drift. He wore thick leather gauntlets, his muscles straining as he gripped the heavy winch handle. The cable attached to his dredge was vibrating violently, humming with a frequency he had never felt in his ten years of fishing. It wasn’t the dull, heavy thud of lumium ore. It felt alive.
“Come on,” Thane grunted, his boots slipping on the dew-slicked deck. The winch groaned, protesting the immense weight. Below, the purple clouds of the Deep began to part, illuminated from within by a piercing, blindingly white light.
With a final, agonizing heave, the dredge breached the cloud line. Tangled in the iron netting was not a rock, but a perfect, geometric octahedron, glowing with the brilliance of a captured star. The moment it cleared the nebula, a shockwave of pure, warm energy washed over the skiff. The ambient chill of the high altitude vanished, replaced by the scent of blooming jasmine and fresh rain. Thane dropped the winch handle and stumbled backward. It was a Star-Seed. The old wives’ tales whispered that these were the seeds the ancient gods used to grow the islands themselves.
Before Thane could process his discovery, the sky above darkened. He looked up to see a massive shadow eclipse the sun. A dreadnought of the Obsidian Fleet, the personal armada of Lord Vesper, broke through the clouds. Vesper was a warlord who ruled the lower isles, obsessed with harnessing the dark energy of the Deep. Dropping from the dreadnought’s hull were dozens of Void-Gargoyles—monstrous, bat-winged creatures carved from black stone, animated by dark magic.
They had sensed the Seed.
“Cast off! Cast off!” Thane yelled to himself, frantically kicking the release lever on his anchor. The Wind-Runner lurched as the gargoyles descended like a swarm of locusts. One of the beasts slammed onto the deck, its claws gouging the ironwood. It hissed, reaching a stony hand toward the glowing Seed in the dredge.
Thane grabbed his harpoon, leveling it at the monster. But before he could thrust, a blur of silver and blue streaked out of the sky. A figure slammed into the gargoyle with the force of a falling meteor, sending the beast tumbling over the edge into the abyss.
Thane blinked. Standing on his deck was a woman in dented, silver plate armor. In her hand was a longsword crackling with blue lightning. But the most striking thing about her was her back. Where a proud Aero-Paladin should have had majestic, ethereal wings, there were only jagged, blackened iron shackles, cursed to keep her grounded.
“Start the engine, fisher!” the woman commanded, her eyes locking onto the approaching swarm. “Unless you want to feed the void!”
Thane didn’t argue. He slammed the throttle forward. The Wind-Runner shot forward, diving into the treacherous, rocky maze of the asteroid belt separating the islands, as the sky behind them filled with shrieking monsters and the booming cannons of Vesper’s dreadnought.
