The first thing Luka learned about the Sky-Renders was that hunger made them wild.
The upper sky, once a kingdom of thunder and freedom, was now little more than a prison where even the wind seemed starved. The flock circled in ragged loops, eyes flickering with a desperate blue hunger. Their wings, veined with pale, flickering light when he first arrived, now seemed duller, heavier. Renders snapped at one another midair, fights breaking out and ending in raw, wounded silence. It wasn't malice; it was survival.
Dakin was no exception.
He kept close to Luka, too close sometimes, the vast muscle of his body wound tight as if every movement cost him. His scales no longer shimmered; they lay flat and lifeless, catching only the barest hints of violet when the sun scraped through the clouds. The blue fire that once raced along his spine was now guttered, a sickly glow licking at his edges.
Dakin's patience thinned by the day. He grew restless, snorting and pacing, his golden eyes never leaving Luka for long. Sometimes, in the coldest hours, he would press his muzzle against Luka's shoulder, half a plea, half a warning. Luka could feel the tremor in him, a desperate hunger for flame, for something only he could give.
But Luka felt it, too—the way the flame that had burned in his veins when he first touched this sky now flickered and faded. His scars, once a living blue, had dimmed to cold ink. He tried to summon the warmth, the light, but it slipped through his fingers like water. He was meant to heal this place, he'd thought. Now he wasn't sure if he could even save himself.
The Sky-Renders had no words for comfort. Their society, if it could be called that, was more a living storm than a kingdom. The matriarch, old and scarred, led by presence alone. Renders deferred, not out of fear, but a kind of primal memory: the strongest guided, the rest endured. When they were sated, there was a wild, almost familial unity, a kind of music in the way they wove through the sky. But now, stripped of their flame, even that unity began to fray.
Fights broke out at dusk, all muscle and mist and ragged, desperate calls. Younger renders tested the edges of the flock, snapping, pulling away, some spiraling down to the lower skies and not returning. The matriarch watched, eyes heavy, her own fire nearly gone.
Dakin's need ran deepest of all. Luka saw it in every glance, every shudder. He remembered the first night, the way Dakin's touch sparked the blue fire, how they soared together, how the flame fed not just the render, but the whole flock. Whatever gift he'd carried into this world was spent, burned out by the sky's wound.
One night, hunger got the better of them both. Dakin snapped at Luka, not out of rage, but a blind, mindless ache. Luka stumbled back, fear and pain tangling with guilt. Dakin recoiled, shivering, his breath a smoky thread in the cold air.
They faced each other, raw, battered, broken in the half-light.
Luka, for the first time, did not reach out. He let the pain hang between them, a living thing. Dakin lowered his head, nostrils flaring, and Luka realized: they were both prisoners of this place, both exiles. The sky above was not home. Not anymore. He sank to his knees, feeling the ache of flame inside him, a memory now, not a promise. Dakin pressed close, a great weight trembling with need. They shivered together, child and beast, not heroes, not saviors, just survivors clutching at what little hope remained.
Above, the rest of the renders circled, silent, and haunted. The matriarch watched, her gaze steady as stone. Luka met her eyes, and in that moment, understood: the sky had been wounded on purpose. Someone, or something, was feeding on their weakness.
And if he did not find the source, if he did not mend what was broken, the flock. and he, would not survive.
Dakin hunched beside him on the crag's edge, ribs showing through the vapor-misted hide, the blue light in his mane little more than a flicker. He watched the distant sky, eyes gold and ancient, but clouded by something Luka hadn't seen before, fatigue, a deep ache settling into bone and memory alike.
Luka set his hand on the great beast's shoulder, feeling the tension trembling beneath the skin, the way a bowstring vibrates just before it breaks. "This cannot continue, Dakin," Luka said quietly, letting the words fall into the hush between them. "You are in pain, all of you. We need to find the source. I feel it too. Something is blocking the flame. No... not blocking. Consuming."
Dakin turned, jaw clenched, mist curling from his nostrils in a cold, weary sigh. For a moment, they were two orphans of the same wound, bound by more than need. Around them, other Sky-Renders circled listlessly, their flights slow and uneven, no longer the wild choreography Luka had witnessed days before. Some drifted to the higher ledges, where thin moss clung to stone, others simply hung in the air, wings barely moving, their heads turned as if listening for a sound that never came.
A strange silence gripped the heights, the kind that gnaws at thought and hope alike. Even the younglings, once riotous, always chasing storms, were subdued, clinging to the shadows of their elders, eyes wide, their blue fire all but spent.
Luka shivered, remembering how the sky had greeted him on that first impossible ascent: light, color, song, and flame. Now, all that remained was this hunger, raw and aching, as if the world itself was being hollowed from the inside out.
He pressed his forehead against Dakin's neck, the beast's breath slow and ragged. "I don't know what's doing this, but I can feel it. Something is taking more than its share, feeding on the flame, leaving nothing for you. If I don't help... you'll all fade."
Dakin didn't answer in words. But he turned his head, pressing his brow to Luka's, the gesture old as kinship. Through the thin membrane of touch, Luka felt not just pain, but the wild, unspent hope buried beneath it, a question: Will you find the fire? Will you bring it home?
Below, the clouds boiled, restless and gray. Somewhere in the heart of all that emptiness, something was waiting. And Luka, for the first time, realized that hunger was not just the absence of flame. It was a summons.
They would have to fly from island to island now—searching, desperate—each ruined temple rising out of the clouds like the vertebrae of a fallen titan, each cave a wound that might still bleed with answers. But Dakin was failing. Luka could feel it in every jolt of muscle beneath him, every rough landing, every breath that sounded more ragged than the last.
The other Sky-Renders watched from a distance, circling listlessly, too starved even for their old, wild songs. Whatever strength Luka's arrival had sparked in them was spent, burned away in the first days of hope. Now only hunger remained, hunger, and a terrible, growing silence in the air where the flame should have lived.
Luka's heart hammered with helplessness. He knelt beside Dakin as the great beast sagged to the earth, sides shuddering. Something in the sky was wrong. The flame wasn't merely gone—it was being consumed, leeched away by a hunger that was not their own. If he did nothing, Dakin would fade. They all would.
So Luka did the only thing left to him.
He drew his knife and, with a trembling breath, pressed the blade against his own palm. The pain was sharp and clean; blood welled up—thicker, brighter, touched with a flicker of impossible blue. He extended his hand toward Dakin, offering his own life in the oldest, simplest gesture there was.
Dakin recoiled, eyes wide, pupils like molten gold, tail lashing in disbelief. He stared at Luka's bleeding palm with something between awe and sorrow. His head dipped, uncertain as if saying without words: You would hurt yourself? Give your essence, your power, your life, to me?
Luka's voice shook, but his resolve did not."If that's what it takes to keep you alive, I'll do it. We can't just wait for the sky to forgive us. Let me help you, Dakin. Let me give what I can."
For a moment, Dakin only watched, motionless as the ruined stones around them. Then, gently, he leaned forward, pressing his snout to Luka's hand. But he did not drink. Instead, he traced the wound with his tongue, sealing it with a whisper of cold fire, blue light that burned away the pain but left Luka trembling, as if a piece of himself had been both taken and given back at once.
Dakin's eyes, bright with gratitude and grief, met Luka's.
The boy understood: Dakin would not take what was freely offered, not out of pride, but out of a love that would not let Luka be diminished for his sake. They stayed like that a long moment, boy and render, both changed by what they would not let the other lose. Above them, the clouds roiled, restless, the islands of the sky growing darker.
"We'll find it," Luka said softly. "Whatever's consuming the flame, we'll find it and end it. Together."
And far above, something shifted in the emptiness, a shadow passing over the ruined peaks, hungry and watching.
* * *
Dakin gathered what little strength remained, every sinew trembling as he unfurled his battered wings, wider than storm sails, veined with pale blue fire now guttering at the edges. The sky shadows shimmered across his hide, making him look both ancient and impossibly fragile. With a low, hollow sound, half growl, half sigh, he lowered himself, neck curving so Luka could climb astride.
"Are you sure?" Luka whispered, his voice almost lost to the silence above the clouds.
Dakin only bowed his great head, the golden eyes softer now, resolute. Luka pressed his blood-sealed palm to the beast's flank in a silent promise, then swung himself up. For a heartbeat, the boy and the render were motionless, outlined by the dim, colorless light leaking through the mist.
Then, with a final, shuddering breath, Dakin launched them skyward.
The world fell away beneath them, first the broken stones, then the drifting flocks of sky-renders, their bodies coiling listlessly through the thinning blue. The air here was cold, metallic, and heavy with the absence of flame. Every wingbeat was an act of defiance, every rise a prayer to skies that barely remembered their names.
They soared higher, above the tangle of floating isles that made up the broken archipelago of the upper world. Some were mere fragments, trailing long ribbons of mist; others were vast, tangled with the ruins of temples and the pale bones of forgotten bridges. Luka's breath caught in his throat at the sight of an entire world suspended in uncertainty, each island a memory waiting to be lost or found. The light was different here. Sun bled through the fog in shards, limning the ruins in pewter and shadow. Luka saw islands so close together their roots braided in the vapor, others drifting alone like ships exiled to the farthest ocean. And on one, only one, there was a glow.
It was faint at first, just a whisper of brightness leaking through the mist, but as they circled closer, Luka saw it: a heart of gold and blue fire pulsing at the center of a ruined temple, its walls half-swallowed by vines and ancient sky-growths. The light flickered, desperate, a heartbeat fighting not to be extinguished.
Dakin turned toward it, muscles bunching beneath Luka's legs. The other renders, sensing something, drifted after, a ragged procession drawn to hope. Even the wind seemed to hush as if the sky itself waited to see what would happen next. Luka tightened his grip, heart pounding with dread and anticipation. Whatever they found on that glowing isle, hope or hunger, ending or answer, it would change them all. And this time, he would not let the sky take more than he could give.
The island's trembling eased into a strange, pulsing rhythm, like a heartbeat made of stone and mist. Luka, still perched on Dakin's back, squinted through the curling vapors drifting across the island's spine. And there it was: a ruin, but unlike anything carved by Asirian hands, or sketched in the old books Dellos used to whisper over late into sleepless nights.
No spiraled glyphs. No clean, soaring lines of mountain shrines. This temple was all broken angles and leaning spires, pieces jutting out like jagged bones from a grave half-swallowed by the clouds. Columns twisted in impossible directions, surfaces marked by a script that writhed when Luka tried to focus on it, letters that seemed to shift like smoke, resisting the mind's grasp.
He felt Dakin's neck muscles coil tighter beneath him, the sky-render's breath ragged and hot. The other renders circled closer, wings half-unfurled, scales flickering with weak pulses of blue that guttered in the rising gloom. Luka's chest tightened. The hunger he'd felt radiating from them before now seemed to bleed from the ruin itself, like an open wound that drank in the light instead of giving it. A deep, sick certainty prickled the edges of his thoughts; this place did not belong here.
He thought of the old stories Dellos had read by the flickering fire: the world that came before the flame, the first tongues that tried to cage the sky, the old Sovreg marks that had no name but ruin.
Luka slid from Dakin's back, boots crunching on the trembling earth. The sky-render made no move to stop him. His golden eyes tracked Luka's every step, bright with a warning Luka did not have the strength to obey.
He walked forward, each step pulling him closer to the ruin that shouldn't be, the ruin that watched him back. And from the open doorframe, if it could be called that, Luka felt it: something pulling at his chest, like a hook tugging at the vein of flame that ran beneath his skin. Something here was feeding. And it would not stop until it was fed in full. The island's tremors stilled at last as if the old ruin had exhausted its last protest. Luka stepped forward, his boots crunching over glassy shards of broken cloudstone. Dakin kept close, wings half-furled, vast flanks heaving with each breath; there was fear in his gold eyes, but also something older. A knowing. A promise he would stand watch even if the sky fell apart around them.
The temple loomed ahead. Not Asirian, older. Its stonework was impossibly smooth, grown rather than carved, the arches sweeping like the curve of a Render's wing. Thin lines of tarnished alloy traced the seams, cold veins in the living rock. Luka laid his palm against the entrance slab—dusty, warm, humming with echoes he could not read.
Inside, darkness. No torch to light. Only the faint sheen of the flame under Luka's skin, casting soft pulses against the walls. Shapes stirred in that shy glow, murals half-worn by time and wind. He stepped closer, breath caught in his throat.
There, an image scratched deep into the stone: islands, like this one, drifting above a vast plain. Beneath, another layer, mountains crowned with flame, the peaks bleeding upward, fracturing. Layers upon layers, each higher than the last, each drifting away like scales shed from a sleeping beast.
And winding through it all—the Sky-Renders. Not beasts, but guardians coiled around the floating masses. On one wall, they fed at the base of the flame-roots, wings spread wide as if drinking firelight. On another, they were thin, transparent, sleeping in high storms, dreaming the flame into stillness.
The cycle. He felt it, though he couldn't read the glyphs. This sky was once land—land that rose and rose until the stars took it. And the Renders were never just dragons or windsongs. They were the balance, the keepers, the takers, and the stewards.
Dakin nudged him forward, claws clicking on the old floor. Ahead, a massive tablet split down the middle. Luka knelt before it, brushing dust away. Symbols. Old Sovreg. Burned into the alloy lines like veins of frozen lightning. His mind cracked open, catching pieces of old memory, no, not his. Something was placed in him long before.
He saw them—the Sovreg. Their slender shapes bent over the flame-roots, siphoning fire into engines, into chains. On another panel, they fled, splitting themselves in two: ash-bound figures crawling into the deep ground below, sky-born keepers fleeing to the highest peaks. The Renders watched, coiled silently around the flame, eyes closed.
Luka's heart drummed. His skin prickled with the sick chill of knowing too much.
And then the vision bled in. Not a dream, a truth.
The flame burst through the murals. The walls peeled back like eyelids. He saw the Sky-Renders as they were: vast rivers of wing and bone and thought, not feeding for hunger alone but to keep the flame from drowning the world. He saw Dakin among them, bright and proud, young once, fanged and laughing in a storm of light. And he saw the wound, the tear in the cycle where the flame bled uncontrolled, poisoned by old Sovreg fear. The Renders starved because the Sovreg sealed them from their oldest task—to feed, to balance, to let the cycle breathe. Luka staggered back, vision searing his skull, the old walls alive with whispers in a language older than stone.
He turned to Dakin, great and terrible in the ruin's hush, eyes like dawn fire. Luka pressed his palm to Dakin's snout, his voice raw:
"I see you now. I see what you are. The flame must move again. We do this together."
And Dakin bent low, not bowing, but aligning, beast and boy woven into the same promise. Outside, the sky flickered once, like an old heart remembering how to beat.
* * *
The island they landed on shuddered beneath them, but did not lift, not yet. Dakin tensed, his wings trembling as if bracing for a deeper storm. Luka pressed a hand to his scales.
"We're not done. One last place, old friend. One last secret."
He climbed on Dakin's back again, this time, the Render's body flared with a soft, starved blue, the veins of flame within him flickering but incomplete. Half-fed. Half-hollow. They rose, slowly, their ascent cutting through drifting banks of mist, suspended rivers, and strange arches of stone that bent toward them like the ribs of some long-buried giant. Luka felt it in his bones: a pull, a magnetism as if the sky itself wanted him to find it.
Far above, half-swallowed by the swirling pale haze, a final island drifted the highest. Unlike the others, it held no trees, no clear ruins, just a single black maw at its heart, an opening in the rock that breathed mist like an old wound refusing to heal.
Dakin hovered at the edge of it, talons scraping stone. Luka slid off his back, boots touching down on cold stone that felt wrong.
The air here tasted dead, with no flicker of flame in it, no song of the Render's kind, only a faint hum, mechanical, patient, hungry. He stepped inside. The cave swallowed the sky behind him—no stars, no mist, only darkness veined with pulsing veins of iron and old Sovreg alloy. They glowed faintly like arteries feeding something that should not be alive.
In the center, half-buried in old roots and cracked stone, the machine. It was no crude engine: it pulsed like a heart, spun like a clock, hissed like a snake. A sphere of dark metal floated above an obsidian dais, wires, and conduits vanishing into the cave's bones, drinking deep of the hidden flame leaking through this sky's dying roots. Luka reached out, fingers brushing cold alloy, it recoiled. A wave of force slammed into his chest, memory and dread flooding him: visions of the Sovreg, clad in veils of gold and iron, feeding the machine with the last scraps of their flame, binding it to the sky's marrow to slow the cycle's spin.
It worked too well. The sky did not shed itself. The flame did not flow. The Sky-Renders starved, and the world below sickened. And now this hidden tooth kept gnawing, centuries after its makers crumbled into ash.
Behind him, Dakin growled low, the sound echoing in the dark like a funeral drum. He felt it too, the theft, the violation.
Luka's breath steamed in the stale air. His blood itched, the blue fire under his skin burning for release.
"We end this," he whispered. His voice sounded alien in the metal hush. "You are done feeding on what was never yours."
He stepped forward, veins in his hand flaring bright as if the flame itself guided him. Dakin pressed closer, a living wall of ancient hunger and righteous promise. Together, boy and Render faced the parasite heart, the wound, the ancient chain that must break if the sky is to lift true again. The cavern shudders when Luka steps close, Dakin's breath a low rumble behind him, wings curled tight to keep the trembling rock from caving in. The air here is thick, not stale, not dead, but awake, like lungs that forgot they knew how to breathe.
Then the walls begin to move. What seemed to be plain stone fractures into a billion flecks of dust and glittering ash, not falling, but spinning, arranging themselves midair like ink dropped in water.
A tapestry forms, alive.
At first, he sees them: the Sovreg in their prime, tall, crowned in flame, their eyes endless and hungry. He sees the splitting, the schism that tore them apart:
One faction, terrified of the cycle's cost, fearful that the shedding would fling them to the stars, scattered like sparks.
The other, older, faithful, believing the shedding was not death but rebirth, the world's only truth.
And when the machine rose, the hunger machine, it was the fearful ones who chained the flame.
The swirling dust reshapes. Luka sees the Sky Renders, drawn in lines of ember and smoke, guardians of the cycle, feasting and preserving in balance. They are wounded when the machine rises. Some flee, some starve, some rebel, but they cannot destroy the trap.
Then, a shape like a cradle carved of starlight. A figure curled inside. A child. The Sovreg's last confession: a boy weaved of both factions — part hunger, part keeper — a failsafe sealed in a sleep deep within the mountain's bone. A child, the flame would never consume because he was the flame, distilled and dreaming.
He sees himself, the lost boy in the snow cave, found by Dellos's trembling hands. He sees the fire that did not burn him, the warmth that welcomed him. He sees every sky that cracked open for him, every dream that led him here. And then, the final image: A sphere of living alloy, the heart of the hunger machine, thrumming like a dying star. He sees his own hand, split open, blood glowing blue, brighter than any flame. He sees the blood soaking the sphere. The flame answered.
The vision collapses, and dust falls like a breath held too long, drifting to the cavern floor. Luka stands there, palm trembling above the sphere, Dakin's eyes wide, waiting.
He knows, now. This is not a sacrifice.
It is awakening.
The cavern is trembling now, not with threat but with promise. The machine hums louder, a hungry animal sensing the inevitable. Its conduits shudder, the ancient alloy flickering with pulses of stolen flame, greedy for more.
Luka looks down at his palm, the thin line of the old wound, the faint shimmer of blue flickering under his skin like a trapped star. He closes his fist and feels the heat gather in his veins, the echo of every sky he has crossed, every Render's breath that held him aloft. He meets Dakin's gaze, not a beast's gaze, not anymore, but a sentinel's, a brother's, an ancient promise given wings. Dakin lowers his massive head until his brow presses Luka's. The boy can feel it, the silent plea, the trust. Do it.
Luka draws the knife. This time, the pain would not make him flinch. He turns to Dakin, arm outstretched, blood shimmering like liquid sky.
"You closed this wound once," Luka says, voice low but unwavering. "You refused what was mine alone to give. Now you open it again. Not for you. Not for me. For all of us."
Dakin lowers his massive head, golden eyes bright with the oldest trust. Then, with a single, careful motion, his tongue passes over Luka's palm, not to heal, but to release. The wound opens wider, the blue fire pouring free. Luka's hand trembles, not in fear, but in welcome.
The flame answers, not with fury but with a steady, deliberate pulse, like a heart remembering its first beat. Blue light seeps from the wound, brighter than the machine's stolen glow, brighter than any Sovreg chain could hold back forever. It moves, not toward the Render, but toward the waiting heart of the machine, a river that will not be chained again.
He presses his hand to the sphere. It shrieks, not in sound, but in a pulse that shudders through the stone, the old conduits, the metal ribs clutching the cave's heart. The hunger recoils, then claws at him, trying to drink him dry. Luka holds firm, fingers spread wide, forcing the flame outward. Not feeding the machine, freeing what it has hoarded.
Dakin roars, and the sound of a shattering wave that rattles the stalactites, echoes through the open sky outside. Blue fire races from Luka's palm into the alloy sphere. Sparks of it pour down the conduits like rivers reversing course. The machine flickers, resists, then cracks, thin fractures snaking through its blackened shell.
The flame chooses, not the cage, but the keeper. It rushes up Luka's arm, a second heartbeat. For a moment, he thinks he might vanish in that torrent of fire. But he holds. He is the flame, and it knows him. It remembers its shape. A cycle, not a prison.
The sphere crumples inward with a sound like a dying star exhaling. The conduits splinter. The roof shakes, but the sky above does not swallow them. Instead, a warm wind floods in through the jagged opening, carrying a rising hum that trembles in Dakin's bones.
Outside, the waiting flock lifts its heads as if waking from a centuries-long dream. Threads of living blue ignite along their spines, crackling and pure. The flame flows again, not trapped in alloy and fear, but breathing through scale and wing and storm.
Luka pulls his hand back, panting, skin raw but whole. The blue still glows in his veins, but lighter now, shared. Balanced. He stumbles. Dakin catches him in a curl of wing and breath, his eyes blazing with new hunger for the sky that has been given back.
The cave shudders one last time, an old scar healing. Above, the highest sky shifts. Clouds peel apart like petals kissed by fire. Luka feels it, the island lifting, the cycle resuming. The land will shed. The sky will rise. The hunger will balance.
And in the heart of it all, the flame hums in Luka's blood, not consumed. Awakened.
He looks at Dakin, voice raw and laughing all at once:
"It's yours again. Yours, mine, and all of theirs."
And far below, the new wind rises, carrying the promise of a world that remembers how to breathe.