Long before memory could stitch the wounds of history, before even the first shivering sunrise on those distant peaks, Asirios was a world balanced between the possible and the lost. Out here, on the outskirts of the galaxy, it drifted like a half-forgotten marble, gravity itself uncertain, never quite sure whether to hold its children close or let them slip into the waiting dark.
On the star-map, Asirios is little more than a smudge, a rumour on the galaxy's worn edge. But for those who have survived its long, hard winter, it is everything. A land of sharp mountains and deep sky valleys, where winter is a promise kept and the clouds bleed blue at dawn. Once, there were forests and wild rivers, laughter echoing across endless fields. Now, only the peaks remain: islands of stone above a poisoned sea of cloud, mountains so high they graze the breathless blue, drifting in a sky swept clean by the wind.
High above the poisoned valleys, where the air sharpened into knives and winter's blue fire never died, the Asiris survived. Not by chance. Not by mercy. By ritual, by blood, by a stubbornness old as stone. The Asiris are not quite human, not anymore. Tall and spare, bodies sculpted for hunger and thin air, with chests broad enough to cradle two hearts, each thudding out an ancient rhythm, a drumbeat for those who refuse extinction. Their skin is the colour of old snow, their hair flows pale as dawn, and their eyes burn cold blue or mossy green, haunted by memories of a world before the fall.
Each Asiris bears the marks of forced evolution. The invasion by the Volroks, those crawlers and poison-breathers, drove the last survivors to the planet's crown, where breathing is pain and every step is an act of defiance. The lowlands belong to the Volroks now. Down there, the air is a soup of toxins and ash, thick enough to eat the lungs from a grown man, thick enough that only the mad or the desperate descend.
Here on the peaks, the villages cling like frost to stone, half-buried in snow, half-sheltered in labyrinthine caves. Fire here is blue and bright, a living thing, pulled from the hidden veins of the mountain, a flame that heals, burns, powers, and remembers. It is worshipped and feared, as capricious as the winds that tear across the summits.
To survive, the Asiris have become kitemakers, wind-walkers, and storytellers.
They ride giant kites, stitched from the bones and hides of sky-creatures, across the gulfs between mountaintop isles. There are Navigators, those rare souls born with the Sight to read the shifting wind and Jumpers, the fearless couriers who leap between worlds, dangling on silken lines, carrying hope, news, and food.
And then there are the Flame-Tenders, keepers of the sacred fire. It is said the blue flame chooses its own, sometimes with mercy, sometimes with ruin.
Every six moons, the thaw. The lake breathes, exhaling fog and forgotten things. Skybeasts, those strange, feathered mammals, flood the valleys in raucous migration, blackening the dawn as they spiral from summit to summit, hungry and wild. Their passage marks the beginning: harvest. Kites dart after them, guided by Navigators who know the wind like a prayer. The village comes alive with song and warning, children chasing sun-warmed feathers, and elders tallying stores with worried eyes.
Then darkness. The world dims, and smoke and dusk settle in for another endless season. The beasts vanish, drawn to some secret refuge, some say deep within the mountain itself, through cracks no Asiris has ever dared descend, into the "Night Labyrinth." Others whisper the sky beasts cross the cloud sea to distant, sunlit peaks, or even descend into the poisoned world below, transformed by the toxic wind into something else, something not even the Volroks hunt.
Harvest isn't just food. It's every hope and memory stitched into the kites, every bone hoarded, every ancient canister and circuit board scavenged from the old ruins below when the poison lifts just enough for the bravest to dare. Kids become jumpers, jumpers become legends, and every home stockpiles what little joy they can.
It's also the season of questions.
Where do the skybeasts hide their sun?
What secrets sleep beneath the mountain's black heart?
Danger never sleeps. The Volroks rule below, but above, stranger things hunt the night. A burning fog that devours flesh, and the Sky-Renders, winged predators that vanish children from lonely paths and feed on blue flame itself.
But stories have a way of finding cracks in any cage.
In the last blue village, in a cave warmed by a fire that should not be, a boy named Luka stares into the flame, hearing secrets only he can understand.
* * *
Some worlds crawl. Some worlds soar. On Asirios, you learn to do both, or you vanish.
Only the daring, the desperate, and the chosen are called Children of the Sky.
To be born here is to wake cradled by the impossible, lungs aching from your first breath, already bargaining with the thin, biting air. Kindness is not native to these heights; warmth and mercy arrive only in the smallest, rarest measures. Childhood is brief, and every lesson is written in hunger and cold.
The wind is the first teacher. It carves you hollow, sings through bone before you even have a name, laced with the memory of vanished seas. There was a time, so the elders say when rivers tumbled down green slopes and laughter lived in the open fields. Now, all that's left is wind and want, and stories traded for sunlight that never returns.
Villages cling to the ridgelines, bone and hide pressed tight to stone as if the rock itself could remember how to keep its children warm. Blue clay seals the seams, and snow-moss oil keeps out the worst of the cold, but it's the labyrinth beneath—the ancient tunnels veining the mountain—that holds the fragile hope of survival. Down there, the blue fire watches over all: healer, judge, memory-keeper. For the Asiris, it is the fire's touch that marks you, sometimes as a calling, sometimes as a scar.
The people of these heights are the product of desperate generations—sculpted by poison, pared by hunger, each ribcage built for endurance, each heart beating a little faster, a little louder, for what has been lost. Their skin remembers old snow; their eyes carry the river's memory. Even the way they wear their hair, pale and long, tangled like mountain fog, is a refusal: if the wind must take something, let it be on their own terms.
They split their families by necessity, not cruelty: fathers raise sons, teaching them to read the wind's moods and the mountain's temper; mothers guide daughters in the quiet arts of healing and hope, the keeping of flame and story and the fragile thread of joy that must be stitched through every season. At twelve, the children are separated, not by desire but by the sharp arithmetic of survival. Siblings hug in the dawn, whispering the secrets they've not yet learned how to keep.
But the world is not always satisfied with tradition. Sometimes a daughter is born with wind in her veins and stubbornness in her jaw, a Vyris—a word spoken with awe and discomfort, both pride and warning. These are the girls who dream of kites and flying, who scale the rooftops at dusk, who ignore the pain of scraped knees and the sharper sting of disapproval. Most are reined in by custom, returned to the hearth by mothers who remember their own failed rebellions. But not all. Every legend begins with a girl who refused to be taught fear.
Asyana was such a legend in the making. Small for her age but wild as a gale, she wore her hair in wind-knotted braids, copper-blonde and always tangled, face freckled by sun and wind and never quite clean. Her laughter was sharp, and bright, a challenge thrown at the mountain itself. She moved like she was daring the ground to let her go, all wiry muscle and restless energy, reckless with hope, and too stubborn by half. What set Asyana apart was not just her fearlessness but her refusal to be invisible: when the other girls hid their dreams, she flung hers like a kite into the teeth of the wind.
To be a Navigator is to be marked by the Sight, a way of reading the air that no one can teach and fewer still can fake. Navigators are rare, often born with eyes a little too bright, a little too wild, given to long silences and sudden laughter. They command the kites, vast creatures of bone and stitched hide, trembling with the memory of flight. Navigators speak little, but when they speak, people listen.
Reyland was the youngest Navigator in three generations. Tall and spare, with the kind of stillness that made even the oldest elders uneasy, he carried his authority lightly, as if the wind itself had chosen him for its confidant. His eyes, icy blue, almost silver, seemed to catch every subtle shift in the sky, every secret the wind tried to hide. He was not quick to laugh, but when it came, it was honest, sudden, and rare as summer rain. He lived at the edge of things, haunted by visions only he could see, and some whispered that he dreamed of flight even while awake. What set Reyland apart was his patience: he waited for the world to reveal itself, and when it did, he rode the wind with a grace no one could match.
The Jumpers are their partners and rivals, both brazen and brave and not quite sane. It is the Jumpers who leap from peak to peak, dangling on silken lines or, for the truly gifted, wearing wings stitched from skybeast hide, sails that catch the high winds and let a child become a rumour in the clouds. Couriers, thieves, messengers, legends. You become a Jumper the first time you trust the wind not to kill you and survive long enough to want to try again.
There is a ritual to all things here, but none more sacred than the Night of Becoming. Once a year, when the blue flame's pulse matches the rhythm of the twin hearts of the mountain, the children of twelve winters gather in the great cave. There, before the entire village, the flame chooses its own, sometimes in mercy, sometimes with cruel, playful indifference. A tongue of blue curls from the hearth, licking the air until it finds its mark. A shoulder touch means a Navigator. A hand warmed, a Jumper. A kiss to the brow. Destined to tend the flame itself. Sometimes, the flame ignores a child altogether. Those are the hardest fates, but even the unchosen find work; nothing goes to waste, not in a world this thin.
The blue flame is more than warmth; it is memory. It is said to remember every sorrow, every sacrifice, every child lost to the wind or the fog. When a life ends, there is no burial. Only the Wind's Edge, the highest ridge, where the dead are laid beneath a shroud of blue fire. The wind claims the body, and the flame claims the story. Mourning is noisy, stories poured out like old wine, each tale a prayer that the lost will linger a little longer in the light.
Love is rare, but not absent. Weddings are simple, held at dawn as the wind stills and the flame burns its calmest. Two stand before the heart fire, hands joined, hair braided together, wrists bound by a ribbon stolen from an elder's robe. Promises are made, not in words but in the act of standing together in a world built to separate and scatter.
Festivals, when they come, are a rebellion against scarcity: brief summer, thawed lake, sky beasts flooding the dawn, every cave echoing with laughter and music. Kites are flown by everyone, for one glorious day, and the blue flame is left untended, burning wild and high as if daring the gods to do their worst.
But there is always a danger. Below, the Volroks prowl, crawlers and poison-breathers, waiting for a mistake, for a child to stray too low. Above, the fog burns, hungry for the unwary. Sometimes a sky-render, a winged beast with a taste for flame, swoops down, and a child is lost, another story added to the silence.
Yet the village endures. The Asiris endure. Each season, hope is knotted into the ropes of the kites, tucked into the seams of coats, and whispered into the blue fire at dusk.
Only rarely, in the hush of deep night or the wild revel of the festival, does someone use the old name: Children of the Sky. Not as a boast. Not even as a promise. But as a simple, stubborn fact, written in frost on the cave walls, sung into the bone and blood of every Asiris still standing on the last, impossible peaks of the world.
* * *
But the flame is untameable. Everyone knows this, though there is one who claims otherwise: Ardentul, the high priest, the spiritual guide, the so-called Flame Whisperer. In the hush of the great cave, he moves like a shadow, voice rolling through the smoke, speaking as if the blue fire itself listens only to him.
Not all Asiris believe. They keep their doubts tucked behind frozen lashes, glances that flicker with disbelief when Ardentul calls down the flame or weaves his stories of what only he can command. To question Ardentul is to question the mountain, the flame, the fragile order that keeps them breathing on these impossible peaks. So they remain silent. But the fire knows when it's being lied to.
Yet no flame burns forever without shadows.
For all his honeyed words and sermons, Ardentul's power is built on fear as much as faith. He is more than a priest, he is a judge, an oracle, and the hand that draws the line between belonging and exile. Those who have questioned the flame, or dared to suggest that it cannot be tamed, found themselves cast down from the high villages, names erased from the songbooks, faces remembered only in whispers.
Some say it is worse than death: to be sent below, into the poisoned fog, or left to wander the frontline alone, stripped of name and story. The exiled are neither mourned nor mentioned, except as warnings to restless children.
In the winding caves, mothers hush their little ones with trembling fingers.
"Not a word, child," they whisper as blue fire dances in the hearth, "not even the wind can carry your secrets away from Ardentul."
Children learn the weight of silence early, how to keep their questions wrapped tight beneath winter furs, and how to spot the flicker of fear in a parent's eyes when the priest's name is mentioned.
Doubt is an ember smothered in every home.
Still, hearts and minds will sometimes gather in the quiet, on the wind-blasted ledges behind the village, or in the deep caves where the blue flame cannot listen. There, the bravest among them will mutter, barely above breath, about the old ways, about the time before Ardentul, when the flame was wild and the mountain answered to no one. Some remember faces now gone, the exiles, who tried to speak a different truth and paid the price.
Ardentul's influence is everywhere, as much a part of the village as the snow or the stone. He is both loved and feared, the line between protector and tyrant blurred by years of ritual and repetition. He claims the flame listens to him, that it chooses at his command, but the fire has never been truly tame.
Some still believe the mountain will one day answer to a different voice.
But the mountain remembers what Ardentul would rather forget:
Change does not come from priests, nor from ritual, but from those the world would least expect. In a village where silence is survival and obedience means life, a boy named Luka sits apart. He is neither Navigator nor Jumper, not yet marked by the blue flame, not yet chosen or cast out. But Luka hears things in the fire that others cannot.
He does not fear the flame, nor does he trust the priest. In his chest, the twin hearts drum a different rhythm, one that calls not for obedience, but for something else:
Curiosity.
Doubt.
Hope.
And tonight, as the fire flickers and the wind changes, Luka's story, quiet, unwanted, almost forgotten, will begin to burn.
Luka was not like the others.
Some whispered he wasn't truly Asiris at all, that when he was born, the twin hearts did not drum their ancient rhythm in his chest. He was frail, small for his age, a shadow in the crowd of rough-and-tumble mountain children. Yet his eyes, God, his eyes, held a depth that unsettled even the oldest among them. There was something in the way he looked at you, as if he saw not the face you wore for the world, but the secret self you tried to keep hidden, the part of you you'd forgotten how to name.
He was the kind of child who turned silence into a mirror. The village gossips, their tongues sharpened by cold and boredom, called him "an anomaly," "a half-made thing," "star-touched." Children avoided him, some out of fear, others because the elders had warned them: "Best not to linger near that one. The fire might decide to claim him." But Luka never seemed to mind. He moved through the world quietly, listening more than speaking, his presence unsettling and oddly calming at once. To meet his gaze was to be weighed and found wanting, but also, if you let yourself feel it, somehow forgiven.
Not everyone feared him. Some, a precious few, loved him fiercely.
His father, Dellos, loved him most of all.
Dellos, the Jumpers' leader—mentor, legend, a man of rough hands and a voice as steady as bedrock. He had been the first to leap from the highest peak and survive. The stories said he'd once crossed blades with a Sky-Render in midair, the beast's wing slicing his arm to the bone. The scar was still there, jagged and pale, running from shoulder to elbow like a reminder that flight was never without cost. The other Jumpers said, half in jest, that the Sky-Render still called to him through blood and memory, that sometimes at night you could see him standing at the edge of the world, staring into the darkness, waiting for a shape in the wind.
Dellos was a man of few words and many scars. He never spoke of the nightmares, nor the visions that followed. But when it came to Luka, he was all heart, gentle, watchful, unyielding in his defence. He alone saw Luka's difference not as a curse, but as a sign. He'd once told the other Jumpers, when they muttered about the strange child in his care:
"The mountain keeps what it needs. And sometimes, it sends someone who sees farther than the rest of us can fly."
So Luka grew, not in strength, but in sight. In a world that valued muscle, flight, and the ability to ride the razor wind, he was an oddity, fragile, yes, but anchored by something deeper, some quiet flame that refused to be snuffed out by fear or exile.
He spent his nights in the company of the blue flame.
Where others saw only heat and hunger, Luka saw a living thing—restless, ancient, aching with stories it could not quite remember. Most evenings, after the village had settled into its cold, hard sleep, he would slip from his bed and curl near the hearth, knees drawn up, eyes wide in the flickering blue light.
He did not speak, not much, anyway. Instead, he listened. To the crackle and pop, to the slow, rhythmic hiss that seemed to rise and fall in time with his breath. To the silences between, where something almost like a voice seemed to whisper, just beneath hearing, promising secrets or sorrow or both.
No one paid him much mind. "He's odd, that one," they'd say. "Talking to the fire as if it could answer back." And so, he was left alone, his quietness a kind of shield, his strangeness a cloak no one cared to lift.
But Luka did hear. Sometimes it was music, soft, lonesome notes that shimmered along the stone walls. Sometimes, on rare nights, it was words, old and tangled as roots, half-remembered lullabies from a world before the poison came. On those nights, his two hearts, awkward, never quite in step, would beat in sudden unison, a deep, true note that made him ache for reasons he could never explain.
Silence was his companion, not his curse. In the hush between flame and dark, Luka found a new kind of language, one that belonged to no one but him: the private grammar of the blue fire, the patient grammar of waiting, of hoping. Even if no one else would ever understand, it was enough. For a little while, in the light of the living flame, Luka was whole.
That night, the flame burned brighter. So bright it cast shadows where there should have been none, painting ghostly shapes on the cave walls. No one understood what fed the flame. It needed no fuel, no kindling, no careful tending. It was as if the mountain itself exhaled light as if the very air contained some secret hunger only the fire could taste.
Most believed it was faith that sustained the flame, ritual and recitation, the unyielding creed Ardentul thundered from his stone pulpit. Luka, though, believed otherwise. He sat close to the heart fire and wondered if maybe the flame fed on subtler things: stray thoughts, the ache of memory, the weight of hope. Most of all, he thought it fed on acceptance, not the brittle obedience Ardentul demanded, but the quiet surrender of letting go, the silent merging of what was and what could never be.
He closed his eyes, surrendering himself to the hush, letting the blue light seep through his skin and down into the marrow of his bones. The flame pulsed, a heartbeat older than the mountain, more patient than the wind. And then, in that moment between breaths, the fire showed him everything.
Worlds spun behind his eyelids, planets blooming and withering in cycles older than language. Suns were born and died, scattering ash and possibility. He glimpsed forms he could never name, shapes woven of light and shadow, vast and impossible, each one singing a song that pierced the silence of his soul.
He felt himself lifted, flying not with wings but with wonder, tumbling through the endless vault of stars. Fear vanished, replaced by awe so pure it tasted sweet on his tongue. For a moment, Luka forgot his loneliness, forgot his difference. There was only the wild joy of becoming small in the face of immensity, of knowing, for the briefest instant, that he belonged to something grander than suffering, deeper than doubt.
He smiled, and the flame smiled back, its light dancing in his eyes. When he opened them again, the cave was unchanged—cold, quiet, ordinary. But Luka was not. He was changed, a little. Not with answers, but with a question so beautiful it would echo in his hearts for the rest of his days.
* * *
The Navigators were the village's chosen, the high-born of the high world. To become a Navigator was to be named by the wind itself, your veins blessed with the Sight, a gift rarer than spring and twice as fleeting. Their eyes held the blue fire, clear as a winter dawn. They were law and legend, part priest, part hero, the living boundary between disaster and survival.
To host a Navigator in your home was to invite luck itself to your table. They asked for nothing, but were given everything: a bowl of the last broth, a seat by the blue flame, even a family's only memory-talisman, pressed into their palm as if it might ward off the next storm. Yet they wore their power with an easy humility, never lording, always serving, their words measured, their presence a benediction.
Luka had dreamed of the Sight since he could crawl. As a boy, he'd watched the Navigators walk the ridges, kites trailing like shadows, and prayed to the blue flame for even a taste of that impossible clarity. But it never came. The flame always turned its gaze elsewhere, and Luka, despite all his hope, remained earthbound.
The Jumpers, though, were a different breed. Where the Navigators were purity, the Jumpers were chaos, reckless, irreverent, wild as a storm and twice as dangerous. They courted the void with every leap, trusting only the cunning in their hands and the strength of a well-knotted rope.
Villagers eyed them with a mixture of awe and suspicion. Some called them thrill-seekers, fools, or worse. They laughed at danger, thumbed their noses at the rules, and played pranks on elders and Navigators alike. To many, they were a necessary nuisance, the only ones bold or desperate enough to carry news and goods from peak to peak, to risk the shifting wind and hungry fog.
And yet, in the silent hours when the world shrank to firelight and fear, everyone knew: without the Jumpers, the villages would wither, alone on their icy islands. The Navigators might guide, but it was the Jumpers who dared.
Even Ardentul, who claimed to command both fire and fate, could only barely keep them in line. Sometimes, he didn't even bother to try.
Out beyond, where the wind's teeth are sharpest, the world belongs to the Navigators and the Jumpers.
Reyland stands on the highest outcrop, cloak snapping, a kite's bony frame trembling at his feet. To the untrained eye, the sky is only chaos, currents swirling, clouds racing, gusts tumbling in invisible wars. But Reyland feels it in his bones: the language of the wind, the subtle shifts and warning shivers. His breath slows. Every nerve waits for the silent moment, the pulse of perfect calm hidden inside the storm.
The kite, huge, delicate, stitched with care and reverence, waits for his signal. Reyland's fingers ghost over the reins, eyes half-shut. He listens, not with ears, but with the old, private sense the flame gave him. And then, there: the faint updraft, a hush, a promise. He runs, feet scraping frost, and with a leap as precise as prayer, launches the kite into the blue.
The whole village pauses, just for a heartbeat, to watch the Navigator become sky. Reyland is a shadow against the stars, lines taut, body balanced between terror and ecstasy. He guides the kite with tiny movements, reading wind like scripture, turning each shiver into flight. Below, the crowd murmurs. To them, it is a miracle; to Reyland, it is home, a moment where he and the wind are the same.
Not far away, Asyana crouches on a ledge, her own kite writhing in the gusts, smaller and patched with a dozen repairs. She grins, wild, eyes blazing. Rules never sat well on her shoulders; she trusts her hands and her nerve more than the old stories. She watches Reyland's flight, admiration and rivalry twisting inside her, sparking mischief.
With a laugh sharp as cold water, she sprints and leaps. For a split second, she falls, wind roaring, blood pounding, and then the kite catches, yanking her skyward. Asyana whoops, tilting her body, diving into the wind's open throat. Where Reyland seeks harmony, she courts chaos. She rides the currents like she's chasing the edge of the world, weaving wild, spinning, daring gravity to try her patience.
The two cross in the sky, one calm, the other wild, both essential. Their kites arc and spiral, stitching bright lines against the dusk. Down below, children squeal, elders nod approval, and the blue flames burn a little higher. No one speaks; the wind tells all.
For Reyland, every glide is a quiet conversation with fate, a balancing act, what to trust, what to risk, and how much to yield. For Asyana, each leap is defiance, a living argument with the mountain and with history itself. They land, wind-drunk and grinning, kites fluttering around them like loyal beasts. For a moment, they lock eyes: challenge, respect, something wordless and electric..
Luka, in his heart, had always longed for the grace of a Navigator, but some secret part of him, the part that listened to the flame, understood the wild courage of the Jumpers too. He stood between these worlds: not quite wind, not quite storm. Just Luka, waiting for something unnamed to choose him.
He understood the Jumpers—oh, how he understood them—especially through Dellos, his father. Dellos was nothing like the swaggering, wild-eyed boys who leapt from cliffs, all laughter and bravado; yet he carried within him the same storm-lit courage. He had the steadiness of a Navigator and the daring of a Jumper, braided together in a way that made him both legend and anchor.
To Luka, Dellos was the world's best-kept secret. A hero in plain sight, never demanding notice, always there in the hush between disasters. Since Luka's mother had gone, lost to the poisoned wind, or to sorrow, or to some secret only the flame knew, Dellos had become both mother and father, shield and guide. He bore the weight of four hearts, and sometimes, it seemed, the grief of two worlds.
Dellos struggled, yes. There were days he failed, nights when he'd return home late, the mountain's ice still in his beard, shoulders heavy with worry. But he never surrendered. His love was a stubborn, wordless thing, offered in the fixing of a broken kite, the mending of a torn sleeve, and the silent passing of the last bowl of stew.
Once, on a night when the blue fire burned low and Luka's loneliness pressed in close, Dellos leaned over and whispered, his voice so soft the flame itself seemed to listen:
"The hardest thing is not jumping into the abyss, Luka. It's raising a child so that the child can find happiness in a world like this."
Luka carried those words the way other children carried charms or secrets. It was a kind of promise, a torch passed hand to hand: You are not alone in the dark.
And that... that made Luka feel seen, and understood, and sometimes that is all you need.
Sometimes, in the small hours when the cold gnawed at the stones and dreams grew thin, Luka would wake and lie still, listening. The room would be dark but not silent; the steady rise and fall of his father's breath was a lullaby old as the mountains, a living promise that he was not alone, not really, not yet. That simple music, the weight of safety, the unspoken bond, was enough to tether Luka to this fragile world.
But on other nights, when the wind howled a little sharper or the blue flame burned lower, Luka would slip from his mat and crawl to the mouth of the cave. He'd tip his face up to the fractured sky, searching the stars for answers or omens, for something only he could sense. Out there, beyond the peaks and frozen clouds, he always felt something staring back, a presence vast and unknowable, heavy as fire and old regrets. It was a pressure, a hunger, a yearning that sat behind his ribs and pulled at the edges of his mind.
He could never name it, not really. It was just... the ache, the old ache. The one that crept into the marrow when you were different, or when you longed for something you couldn't remember. The ache of knowing you were both cherished and apart.
When it became too much, Luka would turn back to the cave, drawn by the pulse and glow of the blue flame. He'd kneel there, hands folded, head bowed, letting the warmth crawl into his bones. Only the flame could mend the cracks. Only the flame, for a little while, could make the ache bearable.
* * *
All her life, Saera had breathed the only air she'd ever truly known: thick, humming, laced with life and memory. To outsiders, it would sting like poison. For her, it was home, as intimate as her own skin. Only in dreams did she remember something else: the honeyed warmth of Volkera's sky, the way her lungs had once filled with sweetness, not survival. But even those memories were losing their edges, fading like a lullaby half-forgotten by morning.
She remembers the night Volkera, her home planet, died. She was only a child then, too young to know what survival would cost.
She remembers.
The sky, splitting open with a comet's scream, white fire blooming where city domes once glowed. The streets were swallowed in shadow and flame, the sirens a shriek inside her skull. Rudger's hands, broad, warm, trembling as he scooped her up and ran, cloak whipping, voice breaking as he sang the old song, the one meant to calm, the one that sounded like a promise.
"We'll find the sky again, little flame. I swear it."
Most did not make it. She saw them vanish in the stampede, mothers clutching children, engineers dragging relics and memory-engines, warriors refusing to run. When the world cracked, the lucky fled beneath, into the planet's veins, into emergency tunnels no one believed would ever matter. The unlucky—Saera still sees their faces, flickering in the blue glow of her lab, half-smiling, half-ash.
They travelled for what felt like centuries. The elders tell the story now, how the exodus was orderly, heroic, a chorus of unity in the dark.
But Saera remembers the silence, broken by the scrape of feet, the choked coughs, the ragged hush of prayers.
Her father, once a council voice for peace, was the only reason they survived. Rudger, who shielded her from falling stone, who shared his rationed air, who whispered hope when the elders' songs grew thin.
They emerged, at last, on the surface of Asirios, a world of wind, strange scents, and air that bit like vinegar. The first breath almost killed them. Some, it did.
But Volrok hands are clever, stubborn as frost. The Ash Mothers, grim and luminous, commanded the building of the new world:
Airmakers. Fog-shapers. Cities sunk into the valleys, domes raised in haste, engineers bent to the task of taming the unkind. The air changed, became theirs. Not poison, but survival.
And so, the Volroks endured, and became something new. Skin darkened, eyes sharpened, voices learned the songs of machines and thunder. And always, on the horizon, the cold peaks, and the faint, forbidden blue of fire flickering in the heights.
Saera grew among cables and codes. Most days began and ended with the low hum of the city's circulators, the hot sting of solder on her fingers, and the steady blink of warning lights on her workbench. Her hands were deft and stained, she learned to build before she learned to grieve. Air purifiers, memory caches, drone hulls: all patched together in a world where nothing could be wasted and every breath was a negotiation. There was comfort, but never peace.
She moved through the city like a shadow cast in gold and green. Her hair, long, black as circuit silk, alive with an uncanny shimmer, sometimes seemed to float behind her, drifting in unseen currents, swaying as if it possessed a mind of its own. When the bioluminescent lights flickered in the corridors, it looked almost alive, catching colours and holding them, a living veil that whispered her moods. Sometimes, when she was lost in thought, a strand would coil around her wrist, almost protective.
Her eyes were something else, big and deep, golden irises laced with veins of shifting green, catching the light and holding it, searching out every shade and secret in a room. There was always something watchful in them, a depth that unsettled even the Ash Mothers when she looked their way.
Rudger, her father, raised her with the kind of love that demanded resourcefulness. From him, Saera inherited a boyish swagger, a loose-hipped confidence in the city's engine rooms, and the fearless way she scrambled across gantries or slung her toolkit at her side like a badge. Among the other engineers, she laughed loudest and worked hardest, never backing down from a challenge or a wager.
But sometimes, late at night, when the hum of the city faded, she would sit cross-legged on the floor of her small, cluttered room, staring at the faded pictures of her mother taped above her bunk. In those quiet hours, the bravado would slip away, replaced by a searching stillness. She'd trace her mother's face with a fingertip, memorising every smile line, every shadow, every echo of a world lost.
She belonged to both her father's grit and her mother's memory, a bridge between the world that was and the world she hoped to build.
When she feels the city thrums beneath her feet, floor panels vibrating to the rhythm of ancient engines, the distant thump of an Ashcrawler lumbering home through the poisoned dusk. She paces the high walkways above the commons, glancing up from her datastick to squint at the mountain peaks, jagged against the red sky. The glass is cold beneath her palm. Outside, the wind wails, but inside the city's bioluminescent glow drowns out the dark.
She likes to sit cross-legged on the grated floor of her workroom, bare toes brushing the frayed edge of a memory blanket. She plugs her earpiece in, looping forbidden songs, her mother's tongue, over the drone of the monitors. Her hands move automatically, calibrating a telemetry rig, and soldering the antenna's fine wire. Her mind, though, drifts: to the flicker of festival lights rising through the upper levels, to the muffled laughter below, to the memory of her father singing old lullabies when he thought she was asleep.
But she can't fix Rudger. He is a puzzle she keeps coming back to, a circuit that never quite connects. Once, his voice filled the council chamber, ringing out for coexistence: "Let us speak. Let us learn. This planet should not be lost to war." She can still picture him: tall, broad-shouldered, presence like thunder, back unbent before the Ash Mothers, hands open in stubborn hope, eyes bright with the conviction that words might yet save them all.
Now, that same figure seems weathered by grief. The years have pressed his shoulders forward, as if the weight of the city, of failure, rests there. His hair is iron grey and clipped short, practical but unruly, never quite tamed by the comb or the city's routines. Deep lines bracket his mouth, more pronounced when he tries to smile, and a permanent furrow has settled between his brows. His hands, once steady on the controls of a crawler or raised in debate, now tremble sometimes, never in the workshop, but in the quiet, when he thinks she isn't looking.
His eyes, once bright, are darker now, gold-tinged with ash, haunted by memories he doesn't speak aloud. Yet the old fire still glows at the core, banked but not extinguished, a stubborn ember that refuses to die out entirely. Around others, he moves with a careful authority, his words weighed and deliberate. But with Saera, the mask slips, and there's tenderness in the way he checks her work or brings her a ration of tea at the end of a long night. Sometimes, when he thinks she's asleep, she hears him singing the old song, soft and rough, a lullaby for both of them, drifting through the vents. He is a man caught between the world he tried to build and the world he must now survive, a once-great engine running on memory and love, every day a quiet act of defiance against despair.
She glances at the wall clock. Rudger is late, and every minute knots her stomach tighter. She toggles through Asiris signal fragments on her screen, listening for patterns, anything new, static, the shape of a story, a stray name.
The door slides open with a soft hiss. Saera doesn't need to look up; she knows his gait, the tired scrape of boots, the ache in every footfall. She hears the way he breathes before he speaks, heavier now, each inhale measured, as if the city's air takes something in return.
"Saera," he rasps, voice half-gravel, half-concern. "You should rest. You've been at this for hours."
She doesn't stop soldering, eyes fixed on the flicker of her drone's status light. "Just about done, Father. The peaks are noisy tonight, the signal's messy." She winces as a spark snaps her thumb. "I need to finish this before the festival crowds the bands."
He steps closer. In the glow of her workbench, his face looks older, creases deepened by worry, jaw shadowed with fatigue. He hesitates, then lays a hand on her shoulder, his thumb tracing a small circle as if recalling a tune from when she was small.
"You're too much like your mother," he murmurs. "Always searching for the edge of things. Never satisfied."
She flashes him a crooked smile, eyes tired but fierce. "If we stop searching, we wither. You taught me that."
Outside, digital lanterns flicker to life, rows of them rising past the high windows, their code signatures glowing violet and blue, each a memory made visible for a moment. The city's bioluminescent veins pulse, bathing the walkways in shifting colour. Far below, someone laughs—a sharp, lonely sound in the machine hush.
Rudger sighs, sitting on a battered stool beside her, his body heavy as a stone in a stream. He leans in, voices low. "The council's restless. The Ash Mothers... they want more force. More machines. Less room for hope." He rubs his forehead, the old pain showing.
She bites her lip, setting the soldering iron aside. "I hear them. I see the upgrades. But force won't heal what's broken." She looks up, searching his eyes. "Do you remember the old world, Father? The real sky?"
He chuckles, but the sound catches. "I remember the taste of rain. The way your mother sang you to sleep. How I thought the world would always turn for us." He shakes his head. "Foolish, maybe."
Saera leans closer, voice quiet but burning. "Hope isn't foolish. We lost the sky, but we didn't lose ourselves, not yet."
He looks at her, really looks, as if trying to memorise her features against the push of time. "You're all I have, Saera. But I worry. This obsession with the Asiris, with their flame…"
She interrupts, softer, urgent. "If we don't try to understand them, we'll keep making the same mistakes. You taught me to build, but you also taught me to listen."
Rudger's hand tightens on her shoulder, torn between pride and fear. "Be careful, little flame. The Ash Mothers see more than you know. And the Children of the Sky…" He falters, the warning ancient in his mouth.
She finishes for him, with a whisper: "They're not our enemies. Not to me."
The festival's light pulses brighter outside, the lanterns float upward, code-strings shimmering, names and memories riding the poisoned wind. Saera turns to the window, watching her own reflection blur in the glass, fire-lit and uncertain. Her jaw sets. One day, she will reach those peaks. One day, she'll build a bridge that no wall, no law, no history can destroy.
Tonight, as the first festival signals pulse through the city's network, Saera slips a coded fragment, a note, a melody, into the system, launching it skyward, hoping it finds a listener in the blue fire far above.
And far on the peaks, the Children of the Sky burn bright against the dark, unwittingly answering the call.
* * *
"You need to go outside, Luka!"
His father's voice echoed down the stone corridor, stern and full of affection. "Any more of this and you'll become a gurok: living in caves, pale, and half-blind, scratching about for lost memories!"
Dellos stood in the entryway, arms crossed, hair still wild from the wind, eyes twinkling above a smudge of cave dust. He looked every bit the Jumper legend, except, of course, when he was busy trying to drag his son toward the living world.
Luka hesitated, fingers tracing the soft warmth of the blue flame in its bowl. "Guroks don't have to worry about falling, you know. They're safe down here."
Dellos snorted, grinning. "Safe, yes. But have you ever seen a gurok fly? Or laugh? Or taste fresh moonberry wine?"
He strode over, ruffling Luka's hair as if he were still a child, not almost twelve and aching with the weight of difference. "Come on, tonight's not a night for hiding. Even the flame's restless. The whole village is waiting."
Luka managed a reluctant smile, letting his father's energy pull him up and into motion. "Just don't make me dance," he muttered.
"We'll see!" Dellos said, laughter booming off the stone. "Let's show the Children of the Sky how it's done."
The cave mouth yawned wide, spilling Luka and Dellos into the fierce light and sound of festival night. The cold wind bit, but the warmth of flame and laughter chased it back. The entire village had gathered on the high plateau, pressed close along the ledges and clustered around bonfires that burned blue and wild, casting a light that made faces seem ancient and new all at once.
Every sense was fed. The air was thick with the tang of veylam smoke and roasting skybeast—fat sizzling on flat stones, skin crisping, sending up a scent so rich it made even the elders' mouths water. Great clay bowls overflowed with talra berry moonshine, tart and bright, passed from hand to hand with grins and old toasts. Somewhere, children shrieked as they chased each other with handfuls of blue ash, faces painted like wind spirits.
Above it all, kites soared, huge and elegant, bones and hide stitched with care, their tails trailing sparks of blue flame. Navigators danced them on the wind, looping and diving, threading between the peaks as if the sky itself had joined the revel. The bravest Jumpers performed for the crowd, leaping from stone to stone, capes flaring, lines whistling. Each leap brought a rush of cheers, a gasp, a song.
The festival was more than a celebration. It was a rebellion against hunger, loss, and the long ache of exile. It was how the Asiris remembered the dead, every lantern, every story told, every name sung into the fire was a refusal to let go. Tonight, no one hid in the caves. Tonight, the Children of the Sky claimed the world for their own, if only for a little while.
At the heart of it all stood Ardentul, the high priest. He moved with deliberate grace, his robes layered in blue and bone-white, eyes deep-set and watchful. His face was carved by years and duty, his hair bound back with a braid of silver wire; rumour said it was a trophy from the first flame he ever tended. As he passed, people fell silent, parting to let him through, some with awe, others with the careful deference of those who have learned that faith is both shield and sword.
He stopped at the largest bonfire, staff held high. The blue flame flared, hungry and impossible, as if eager to prove it answered only to him.
"On this night, as on every night of memory, we honour the lost and the living," Ardentul intoned, his voice rising and falling like a winter hymn. "We burn our sorrow and our hope together, so the flame might remember us when we are gone."
Luka hung back, half-shadowed by Dellos' bulk, watching as the priest's words drifted over the crowd, binding everyone in a single moment. He felt the ache in his hearts, the old ache of being almost, but not quite, part of things. Still, he was here, and the night was wide.
Nearby, a sudden burst of laughter split the reverence. Asyana, wild-haired and eyes bright as the blue flame, dodged through the crowd, trailed by a cluster of younger children. She wore her jumper's harness slung loose, cape streaked with soot, a smile on her lips that dared the world to catch her.
She collided with Luka, grabbing his arm with a conspiratorial wink. "Come on, stone-dreamer, let's get you some real sky under your feet. Tonight's for the living!"
Before Luka could protest, another figure approached—a tall, calm presence in ceremonial blues and whites, face pale as moonlight, eyes startlingly clear. Reyland, the Navigator. His every movement seemed to carry a piece of the wind; when he nodded, even the air grew respectful.
"Even the Children of the Sky need to remember to breathe," Reyland said, voice soft but carrying. His gaze lingered on Luka, seeing more than most, then flicked to Asyana with a small, approving smile. "Try not to break your neck, Asyana. You're too valuable to lose just yet."
She made a show of bowing, mock-respectful, eyes glinting. "No promises. But if I go down, at least I'll take half the mountain's boredom with me."
Luka found himself grinning, tension easing. Dellos nudged him, pressing a warm mug of moonberry wine into his hands. "Go on, lad. This is your night too."
The blue flames flickered higher as Ardentul lifted his staff once more. "Let the lanterns fly for those we lost, and for the hope that remains. We are the last memory of the sky. Tonight, we make the world remember us."
One by one, villagers lifted their lanterns, frames of thin wood and skin, inscribed with names, hopes, and regrets. They dipped them in the sacred blue, watched as they caught, then sent them aloft. The sky filled with points of living fire, drifting up into the darkness, a river of memory and rebellion.
Luka watched, hearts thudding, the old ache mixing with awe. For a moment, he caught sight of Asyana silhouetted against the lanterns, hair wild, hands lifted, face full of fearless longing. Beyond her, Reyland stood apart, gaze fixed not on the sky, but on something far beyond, a future only he could see.
And high above, the blue flames and laughter defied the darkness. The Children of the Sky stood together, stubborn, beautiful, alive.
The bonfire's blue shadows flickered on stone as Dellos slipped away from the crowd, heart pounding, not with the rhythm of the festival, but with an old, wary habit. He found Ardentul standing alone at the edge of the gathering, watching the lanterns drift skyward, face half-lit by flame. For a moment, neither spoke. The only sound was the wind, the distant laughter of children, and the hiss of blue fire licking at bone.
Dellos broke the silence.
"You watch as if the sky holds answers, priest. Or is it the questions you fear?"
Ardentul's expression didn't change. "It's a holy night, Dellos. Even you must feel it. The boundary between the living and the lost runs thin."
"Aye," Dellos said quietly. "But sometimes it's not the dead that haunt us."
The priest's gaze flicked to Dellos, sharp and weighing. "Your son. Luka. He's... different."
Dellos' jaw tightened, but his voice was steady. "He is what the mountain made him. And what the world needs."
Ardentul's lips pressed thin. "Difference isn't always a blessing. The flame is wild. Those it favours, it can also burn. You remember the old stories."
Dellos shrugged. "Stories change. So do people. The village can weather a little strangeness."
A long silence, tension drawing taut as a kite line. Finally, Ardentul leaned closer, voice barely more than a breath. "I've seen the way he listens. The way the flame bends when he's near. That's not strangeness, Dellos. That's something else."
Dellos met his gaze, steel beneath the weathered calm. "If you're afraid, priest, perhaps you should remember—power is not the same as faith. You taught us that."
For the first time, a flicker of uncertainty crossed Ardentul's face. He glanced at the flame, shadows crawling in his eyes. "Faith is nothing without order. Without guidance. The mountain remembers what chaos costs."
Dellos stepped back, letting the firelight dance between them. "Order built on fear isn't order. And guidance isn't ownership. Luka isn't yours to use, Ardentul."
The priest's voice hardened, authority slipping into threat. "Every gift comes with a price. If your son becomes a danger to the village, to himself, I will have no choice but to act."
Dellos' smile was slow, fierce. "You'll do what you must. And so will I."
Another gust of wind scattered sparks between them. Above, lanterns drifted higher, each a memory, each a hope, each a warning. Ardentul turned back to the crowd, face once again the mask of a holy man, but his eyes stayed on Luka, watchful, calculating, afraid.
Dellos melted into the shadows, heart heavy but resolute. No priest, no prophecy, would decide who his son was meant to be. Not while breath still warmed his body.
The festival roared on, laughter and music echoing up to the cliffs, but Dellos' heart beat a different drum, a pulse of worry that wouldn't be soothed by blue flame or song. He scanned the gathering, eyes skimming the faces painted in firelight, but there was no sign of Luka. Not where he should be, not where he always was.
A cold hand gripped his chest. He spun, searching shadows.
"Where is he?" Dellos muttered, voice sharp as a blade.
Asyana popped up at his side, breathless from chasing children and trouble. "What's wrong, Dellos? Did you lose your winning smile or something more precious?" She grinned, but her eyes caught the edge of his fear and sobered.
"Luka," Dellos said, rough. "He's not here. Something's off. I feel it."
Reyland materialised from the crowd, his presence always quieter than his legend. "You've lost the boy?" he asked, eyes calm but narrowing, picking up the worry like a scent.
Asyana tried to break the tension, bumping Dellos with her shoulder. "You know, Luka probably found a gurok nest and decided to move in. Or maybe he's halfway up the northern crag, arguing philosophy with the wind." She shot a sideways glance at Reyland. "He's always chasing something invisible, that one."
But Dellos didn't smile. He turned away from the fire, heart pounding, gut heavy with dread. "He's never wandered off, not like this. Not tonight."
They split up, moving through the swirl of dancers and food stalls, calling his name, checking every shadowed alcove and huddled group. Reyland's voice was a low thread of reassurance, soothing elders, scanning the ledges with those sharp, sky-born eyes. Asyana darted ahead, shouting jokes into the wind, trying to keep the mood light but failing to mask the sharpness beneath her laughter.
At last, Reyland caught Dellos' arm, pointing to the far edge of the plateau, where the world fell away into endless night.
"There."
Luka stood at the brink, feet inches from the void, framed by the last flickers of blue lantern light. His posture was wrong, too still, too tense. He didn't turn, didn't move, only stared out into the dark, as if listening to something none of them could hear.
Dellos' fear spilt over. He rushed forward, calling out.
"Luka! Luka, come back from there!"
But Luka didn't answer. His eyes were wide, fixed on the horizon, on the last lanterns drifting higher, their light swallowed by the stars. His lips moved, silent as if speaking to something only he could see.
Asyana's bravado faltered. She stepped back, voice barely a whisper. "He's... not really here, is he?"
Reyland knelt, careful, gentle. "Luka. Listen to me. The wind's turning. The world's waiting for you to come back."
But Luka looked past them all, his gaze anchored somewhere beyond stars and firelight, seeing what none of them could. For a heartbeat, he was no longer a boy, not Dellos' awkward son, not the outcast child. He was something caught between worlds, filled with an old ache and a new, unnameable power. Blue glyphs writhed across his face and hands, pulsing with their own secret light, his eyes bottomless, midnight with a glint of something far colder.
Dellos saw only his son's small frame, outlined against the void, impossibly lifted from the ground. Panic overrode every instinct; he charged forward, arms out, calling Luka's name. But his hands slammed against air turned to stone, an invisible wall, humming with dread. He hammered, begged, but there was no give, no warmth, only the icy hush of something watching.
Asyana felt her bravado bleed out, replaced by a helpless terror she'd never known. She tried to laugh, to shout a joke, but the sound died in her throat. When she lunged for Luka, it was like reaching into freezing water; her hands met nothing but chill and emptiness. She fell to her knees, arms empty, heart pounding, eyes refusing to accept what she saw.
Reyland, who could read every current and storm, felt something shift in the mountain's pulse. The wind around them stilled, heavy, as if holding its breath. He reached for Luka with words, the way Navigators call down the wind, but his voice came out raw and thin. He had never felt so powerless.
Luka's eyes opened, burning with unnatural light, the blue glyphs crawling and shifting. His lips moved, but the voice was not quite his own, too old, too hollow.
"The song…from below…the song."
The mountain seemed to tremble. Shadows gathered at the cliff's edge, thickening, swirling, hungry. There was no scream, no plea. The darkness simply reached out, silent and sure, and Luka was gone. One moment he was there, alive and strange and shining, the next, only emptiness, as if the world had forgotten him.
Dellos' scream broke the night. He dove for the spot where his son had been, clawing at rock, at air, at nothing. Reyland grabbed him just in time, dragging him back from the edge, his own face a mask of shock and sorrow.
"No, Dellos. There's nothing left to catch. He's gone…he's gone." Reyland's voice was iron, but tears streaked his cheeks.
Behind them, the festival stilled. The blue flame guttered, shrinking in the cold wind. Lanterns, once bright with hope, flickered out one by one, the last light drifting, swallowed by the dark.
Asyana pressed her fists to her mouth, whispering into the void, "What was that? Where did he go?" The others had no answer—only the echo of Luka's words, and the sound of Dellos' grief breaking in the dark.
Above, the mountain was silent, the stars smothered, the fire all but out. And in every heart, a new fear kindled: that the world was now missing something vital, and nothing would ever fill that space again.