KRRRRNK—CLANG—
The cage climbed.
Each violent jerk of the chain sent bodies staggering. Salt wind screamed through the bars, flinging brine into eyes and mouths. Below, the black sea churned like boiling tar; above, the clouds formed a bruised, living ceiling, lit from within by slow pulses of crimson lightning.
THOOM… THOOM…
The links overhead groaned—ancient iron singing a song of rust, weight, and exhaustion that felt older than the world itself.
Leo wedged himself into the corner where two bars met the floor, knees drawn tight, one hand locked around the iron ring that hid the Shadow Shard. Twenty-three bodies pressed close, swaying with every lurch. Terror-sweat and blood thickened the air, sour and suffocating.
Across from him, the girl with the broken spear still hadn't let go.
She stood with her back to the bars, legs braced like a sailor in storm seas. Her knuckles were bone-white around the splintered shaft. Her eyes—pale gray, almost silver—never stopped moving.
Counting.
Measuring.
Watching the sky.
A boy no older than fifteen retched in the opposite corner. An older man with a crooked nose tried to steady him—and earned a savage elbow to the ribs from a scarred woman desperate for space.
No one spoke above a whisper.
Sound felt dangerous here, as though noise itself might draw the thing hauling them upward.
KRRRAAANG—
Another lurch.
The cage tilted hard.
Someone screamed as they slid toward the open bars.
Leo moved without thinking—lunged, caught a wrist, hauled the man back just before he pitched into empty air.
The man—broad-shouldered, missing two fingers—stared at him with wild eyes. Then he nodded once, gratitude shaking through him, and crawled away.
The girl had seen everything.
Lightning cracked closer this time.
KRAAASH—!
For a heartbeat the clouds burned away, and Leo saw it.
The thing pulling them.
A colossal abomination of leathered wings and rusted chains fused directly into its flesh. Each wingbeat was a storm. Its harness was not worn—it had grown into it.
One milky eye, large as a moon, rolled downward and fixed on the cage.
It knew they were inside.
It simply didn't care.
Yet.
The girl moved.
She stepped over sprawled legs and crouched in front of Leo, close enough that he could smell salt crusted into her short black hair.
"You're not panicking," she said softly, almost conversational. "Good."
"You aren't either," Leo replied.
She angled the broken spear so the jagged point caught the crimson light.
"Name's Aurelia Vale," she said. The name carried weight—steel wrapped in fire. "And you?"
"Leo."
"A simple name," Aurelia murmured, tasting it. "Sharp. Easy to remember."
Her eyes narrowed. "You've killed something already. Recently. Mountainside, wasn't it?"
He didn't ask how she knew. Some Awakened read violence the way others read faces.
He nodded.
Aurelia flicked a glance at the others—some praying, some weeping, some already hollowed out—then back to him.
"We're livestock," she said flatly. "Or worse. They're taking us to the Crimson palace to be opened and read. That's what the old slaves said, before the Spell claimed them."
Cold pooled in Leo's gut. "And you believe that?"
"I believe what I see." She tipped her chin toward the clouds. "That thing up there isn't carrying us to safety. And the palace isn't a palace."
The chain groaned again.
The cage slowed.
Then stopped.
They hung there—hundreds of meters above the sea.
The wind died.
Silence spread, heavy and wrong.
Then the voice returned.
Vast. Lazy. Amused.
"First toll."
CLACK—
A section of the cage floor—three bars wide—simply vanished.
Four slaves fell before anyone could scream.
One managed to grab a bar—
CRUNCH
His fingers shattered as a descending counterweight slammed into place where the floor had been. Blood sprayed downward, vanishing into the dark.
The cage lurched upward again, faster now. Impatient.
Aurelia didn't flinch—but her grip on the spear went white-knuckled.
Inside Leo, the shadows coiled, restless, eager.
"That will happen again," she whispered. "Every hour until we reach the palace. They thin us. Weak ones first. Then the loud ones. Then whoever's left."
She met his eyes, steady as winter steel.
"I'm not reaching the palace, Leo. And I'm not waiting to be chosen."
A pause.
Just the creak of iron and the distant slap of waves.
"I need hands that can fight," she continued. "And you look like you know how to use yours."
Leo glanced at the iron collar biting into his throat. Then at hers.
Identical.
Seamless.
Owned.
"You're planning a rebellion," he said quietly. "In a hanging cage. With no weapons. Against something that eats mountains for breakfast."
Aurelia smiled.
It wasn't kind.
"Exactly," she said. "They'll never expect it."
Lightning split the sky again. In its glare, Leo saw others watching now—fear giving way to something fragile and dangerous.
Hope.
The scarred woman crawled closer, lips pulled back in a feral grin.
"I'm in," she rasped. "Name's cassia Holt. I've broken skulls for less reason than not becoming bird feed."
The broad-shouldered man with missing fingers nodded. "Aulus," he muttered. "I'll stand."
Whispers spread.
Hands found hands in the dark.
A circle formed around Aurelia and Leo—small, trembling, growing.
She leaned in until her lips brushed his ear.
"The collars are bound to the chain," she breathed. "Break the chain, break the collars. There's a master link—thirty meters above us—where the harness meets the main line. One link. If it snaps, the cage drops."
The shadows inside Leo surged, tasting iron, tasting intent.
"And then?" he asked.
"Then we fall," Aurelia said calmly. "Better to drown free than arrive in pieces."
She pulled back, silver eyes burning.
"Choose, Leo. Die on their schedule… or gamble on ours."
Above them, another section of floor rattled, preparing to claim its toll.
Leo looked around the circle—faces condemned together by chance, now bound by choice.
He touched the iron collar at his throat.
The shadows answered instantly, climbing the bars like black ivy, whispering hunger.
Leo smiled—small, sharp.
"Tell me where to cut."
Aurelia's answering grin was a promise and a war cry all at once.
High above, the winged colossus felt the shift in its cargo and tilted its vast head, curious.
Far below, the black sea opened its jaws.
The rebellion had already begun.