The first thing I noticed was the ground.
It didn't feel like stone.
It didn't feel like metal either—at least not the kind used in Lionhearth. There was no roughness, no chill seeping up through my boots, no subtle vibration from hidden strain. It was smooth, warm in a way that suggested constant use, and perfectly still despite the fact that we were standing far above the world I'd grown up in.
Arion tested it by stamping his foot once.
"Yeah, no," he muttered. "This is wrong. Things this high up are supposed to sway at least a little."
"They don't need to here," Aelira replied, crouching slightly to press her palm against the surface. Runes shimmered faintly beneath her touch, complex and layered, nothing like the clean instructional arrays we'd trained with. "The stabilization is built into the city itself."
I straightened and finally lifted my gaze.
Epoch stretched outward and upward in every direction, a living structure of layers upon layers, where streets didn't end so much as transition—paths rising into the air, splitting and reconnecting across vertical distances that would've terrified any sane city planner back in Okrith. There were no walls. No clear boundaries that said this is the edge. The city simply kept going, folding height into function.
Above us, traffic moved through the sky like it belonged there.
Brooms glided past in loose formations, riders leaning casually as if they were coasting down familiar roads. Sleek skiffs floated along invisible lanes, their undersides glowing faintly as they adjusted altitude by fractions of a degree. Larger cargo platforms drifted slower, wide and flat, hauling containers stacked higher than most buildings I'd seen growing up.
No one looked impressed.
No one looked scared.
This wasn't spectacle. It was routine.
"…Are we allowed to just stand here?" Arion asked, glancing around as if expecting someone to yell at us for blocking traffic.
Liraeth shook her head slowly. "If we weren't, something would've already moved us."
That earned a short, uneasy laugh from him. "Comforting."
We'd entered Epoch on foot through a wide transit skyway—a massive, suspended thoroughfare that connected distant layers of the city like a bridge between worlds. There had been no guards stopping us, no banners announcing arrival. Just a subtle shift in air pressure, a faint warmth underfoot, and then suddenly—this.
Kazen tilted his head, eyes tracking a cluster of vehicles weaving through each other with impossible precision. "Look at the spacing. They're not reacting to each other."
"They're being directed," Kai said quietly. "The city handles the corrections."
"And people just… trust it?" Arion said.
"Yes," Seraphyne answered.
Her tone wasn't impressed. Just observant.
I became aware then that she'd fallen into step beside me without saying anything. She wasn't looking at the sky traffic or the buildings. She was watching people—how they moved, how they stopped without hesitation at intersections that had no visible signs, how paths subtly shifted to accommodate them before collisions ever became possible.
Epoch didn't respond.
It anticipated.
We started walking.
The city accepted us immediately, the flow of movement adjusting without pause. Walkways broadened slightly to accommodate our group. Light traces appeared at the edges of our vision, barely noticeable unless you focused, guiding foot traffic without being intrusive.
Arion leaned closer to me. "I feel like if I trip, the ground's going to be disappointed in me."
I snorted despite myself.
The deeper we went, the more Epoch revealed its scale—not through distance, but through density. Above us, walkways layered over each other like stacked blades, some transparent, others solid, each carrying people and vehicles at different speeds. Below, open air dropped away into structures embedded deeper still, entire districts suspended beneath us.
Then the shadow passed.
It wasn't sudden. It wasn't dramatic. Just a gradual dimming as something huge moved across the sky.
I looked up.
A Leviathan-class aircraft drifted overhead, so massive it made the nearby buildings feel like minor supports rather than architecture. Its hull was dark and reinforced, etched with thick runic bands that pulsed slowly as six engines—larger than Lionhearth's main training halls—kept it aloft with steady, disciplined force.
It wasn't graceful.
It was functional.
The ship docked midair at a distant platform, locking seamlessly into a suspended framework that looked less like a station and more like part of the city's skeleton.
Arion stopped walking.
"…That's an aircraft?" he asked.
"Yes," Aelira said, eyes shining now despite her effort to remain composed. "A long-range Leviathan. Possibly inter-continental."
"It's bigger than most castles."
"It carries them," she replied without missing a beat.
I couldn't look away.
This wasn't like the ships back home. This wasn't even like the more advanced vessels I'd read about in passing. The Leviathan didn't feel like a machine meant to travel.
It felt like infrastructure.
A moving piece of the world.
Kazen broke the silence. "If that's normal here…"
I finished the thought quietly. "…then Lionhearth is small."
No one argued.
We kept moving, the city unfolding into lived-in spaces that made the scale even harder to process. Markets hovered between layers, stalls suspended on floating platforms where vendors sold food, tools, and strange magi-tech devices whose purposes weren't immediately obvious. People bartered with calm efficiency, payments exchanged through glowing panels or quick gestures that transferred currency invisibly.
Arion tried to buy something skewered and steaming from a vendor.
He stared at the hovering interface for a full five seconds before looking helplessly at Aelira. "It's judging me."
"It's asking for confirmation," she corrected, then paused. "…Actually, no. You're right. It is judging you."
She stepped in to help while Kai wandered a few paces away, eyes narrowed in concentration as he studied traffic patterns near a vertical junction.
"This whole place," he muttered, mostly to himself, "runs like a battle formation."
Liraeth nodded. "Except no one's shouting orders."
That stuck with me.
In Lionhearth, structure was enforced. Discipline drilled into your bones until obedience became instinct. Here… structure was simply assumed. People moved confidently because the city had proven, over time, that it deserved trust.
I rolled my shoulder slightly, then paused.
My aura felt… clean.
Not stronger. Not restrained. Just smoother, like it wasn't fighting the air around it the way it usually did. I focused inward briefly, letting a faint current circulate through my core.
The sensation returned immediately—gentle, precise, like hands guiding rather than gripping.
Aelira noticed my pause. "You feel it too?"
I nodded. "It's not suppressing anything."
"No," she said softly. "Epoch stabilizes ambient mana. You don't have to fight to keep control."
That alone felt revolutionary.
We wandered without direction for a while, letting curiosity lead. At one point, we took a wrong turn onto a narrower skyway that curved downward at a strange angle. Arion complained the entire way… until the path gently rerouted itself, widening and blending back into a familiar route without ever forcing us to stop.
"The city just corrected us," he said.
Seraphyne smiled faintly. "Without embarrassing you."
"Impossible," he replied. "I'm embarrassed anyway."
As the city gradually opened up again, the airspace widened. Traffic lanes grew thicker. Structures ahead took on a more industrial edge—reinforced platforms, massive docking frameworks, engine housings large enough to swallow ships whole.
I felt it before I saw it.
The pull of scale.
We stepped onto a broad observation span, and the view ahead silenced everyone at once.
The Leviathan station dominated the horizon—an enormous, suspended complex of hangars and support rings, layered vertically and horizontally in a way that made it hard to tell where one structure ended and another began. Multiple Leviathan-class aircraft were docked within it, their forms varied but uniformly immense, engines dormant yet powerful.
Then I saw it.
The Silver Leviathan.
It stood apart from the others, its hull gleaming even in the diffuse light, refined lines setting it apart from the darker, industrial vessels surrounding it. Six massive engines rested along its body—two high, two midline, two below—all idle, all humming with quiet potential.
It didn't feel like a ship waiting to depart.
It felt like a declaration.
No one spoke.
Not because we were afraid.
Because some things deserved silence.
Epoch stretched around us, vast and alive, and for the first time since leaving Lionhearth, I felt something unexpected settle into my chest.
Not pressure.
Not doubt.
Anticipation.
Anticipation didn't feel like excitement.
It felt like standing at the edge of something you couldn't measure yet, watching it move without you.
Arion was the first to break the silence, and even he sounded quieter than usual, like the station had stolen some of his volume.
"So that's where they keep the flying castles," he muttered.
"It's not a castle," Aelira said automatically, then hesitated, eyes still locked on the distant hangars. "…Actually, no. That might be the closest comparison we have."
Kai shifted his stance, gaze tracing the station's layered frameworks. "It's a fortress built for air traffic. Every line is functional. Every opening is deliberate."
Liraeth's hand rested near her shield strap, not out of fear—more like a reflex when something large enough to matter entered her awareness. "And every approach is controlled. Even without gates."
Kazen leaned forward slightly, eyes narrowed. "Look at the air lanes. They widen before the docks. Then compress. Like a funnel."
"Like a choke point," Liam corrected.
I didn't answer. My eyes had caught on something smaller—easy to miss beneath the station's scale. Thin threads of light ran along the edges of the approaches, not bright enough to glow like a beacon, but consistent enough to guide the human eye without commanding it.
Epoch didn't shout instructions.
It offered the correct choice and waited for you to take it.
The span beneath our feet widened ahead, leading into a broad pedestrian route that curved toward the station without ever feeling like a straight line. It was a deliberate curve—one that forced you to see the station from multiple angles, letting your brain slowly accept its size rather than breaking under it all at once.
We started walking again.
The city shifted around us as we moved, changing character without warning. The sleek, market-heavy layers fell behind, replaced by spaces designed less for comfort and more for throughput. Rail lines overhead ran thicker here, carrying heavy cargo pods that moved with calm inevitability. Service skiffs drifted in slow patterns, their undersides emitting faint pulses as they synced to the station's rhythms.
The people changed too.
Less casual clothing, more uniformity. Not soldiers—workers. Technicians with tool harnesses, handlers with slim tablets that projected shifting maps of lanes and dock assignments, pilots moving with the quiet focus of people whose lives were measured in timing and clearance.
No one looked at us.
Not because we didn't stand out.
Because in Epoch, standing out didn't demand attention.
Arion watched a team of workers direct a cargo platform into a loading slot without a single shouted command. Their gestures were minimal, almost lazy—yet the platform slid perfectly into place, aligning with clamps that rose from the floor like it had always belonged there.
"That's cheating," he said.
"That's coordination," Liraeth corrected.
"That's magic," he insisted.
Aelira shook her head. "It's not magic the way you mean it. It's integrated."
She pointed toward a line of runes etched into the edge of the docking groove. The markings were subtle, layered into the material itself, not painted or carved after the fact. They weren't a spell cast once—they were a permanent rule of the space.
"The station tells the platform where to be," she continued. "The platform tells the station what it can do. And the people just… cooperate with the system."
Arion stared at her. "You're saying the floor is giving orders."
"I'm saying the floor is smarter than you."
"That's—" he began, then stopped. "…Fair."
Kai's attention drifted upward again, catching a line of small craft moving through the open air between two support rings. "Even their minor traffic is disciplined."
"Minor?" Liam echoed.
Kai nodded once. "Those are personal transports. See how they shift when the cargo lane opens? They don't wait for permission. They already know the pattern."
It struck me then how little noise there was.
Not silence. Epoch was never silent. But there was no mess in the sound—no overlapping chaos, no shouting, no clanging. Even the heavy movements were cushioned, controlled. The city made space for impact before impact existed.
We passed under a broad archway that felt more like a structural brace than an entrance, and the air changed again—warmer, denser, filled with the faint metallic scent of heated runic metal and stabilized mana. My aura responded automatically, tightening a fraction as if bracing for turbulence.
But there was no turbulence.
Just a constant, low alignment.
Seraphyne was still beside me. She had stayed quiet since we first saw the station, but not absent. I could feel her attention shifting between the environment and the group—especially me, when she thought I wouldn't notice.
"You're taking it in," she said, voice low enough that only I could hear.
"I'm trying," I replied.
"That's different than you usually are."
I glanced at her. "Usually I'm trying to stay ahead."
She looked forward again, expression neutral. "And now?"
I exhaled slowly. "Now the city is ahead."
That earned the faintest shift in her mouth—almost a smile, almost not.
Arion jogged ahead two steps, then slowed, suddenly cautious as the walkway transitioned into a transparent segment. Beneath us, open air revealed a lower transit layer where larger craft glided through a docking corridor like whales swimming through a channel.
He stared down, then looked back at us. "Okay. No. Who decided walking on glass above death is normal?"
Kazen didn't even glance down. "It's not glass."
"Then what is it?"
"Something that doesn't break," Aelira answered.
Arion hesitated. "That doesn't narrow it down."
Liraeth stepped onto the transparent section without flinching. The structure didn't even shiver. "If it broke, the city would replace it before we stepped on it."
"That's not comforting," Arion said, following anyway.
"It should be," Liam replied.
We crossed into a wide public concourse that served as the station's outer boundary—a place where civilians could watch arrivals and departures without interfering with function. The space was vast, but not decorative. The floor was patterned with faint lines that marked zones and movement channels. Seating rose in smooth curves along the edges, designed to hold crowds without creating obstacles.
Above, the sky was cut into geometric frames by the station's support rings.
Through those frames, a Leviathan-class aircraft drifted in, slow and enormous, guided by invisible lanes and subtle light cues. It didn't roar. It resonated. The air itself seemed to stiffen around its engines as it descended toward an open hangar mouth.
The hangar adjusted to it.
The opening widened by fractions. Side braces shifted. Alignment lights bloomed briefly, then dimmed once the craft matched the slot's angle.
No one applauded.
A child leaned on a rail and waved at the ship like it was a passing carriage.
Rain's world—the world I'd measured everything against—felt suddenly small in my chest.
Not humiliating.
Just… limited.
Aelira's eyes were bright again, and this time she didn't hide it. "Look at the docking harmonics. They're not dampening the engine fields—they're synchronizing them."
Kai frowned slightly. "That's dangerous."
"It's controlled," she countered.
"It's controlled until it isn't."
Liraeth didn't take sides. She was studying the hangar perimeter, the guard placements, the emergency routes that weren't marked but still obvious once you learned how to see them. "They have more failsafes than Lionhearth has training dummies."
Arion snorted. "That's not hard."
I stepped toward the edge of the concourse and rested my hands lightly on the rail.
Farther in, deeper past restricted access boundaries, I could see the true body of the station—layered hangars stacked vertically, each with its own traffic lanes, each with craft moving in and out like blood through a heart. It wasn't just a place ships stopped.
It was a place ships were managed.
And then I noticed something else.
A subtle change in civilian flow.
People moved as usual, but the density shifted. Not panic. Not excitement. A quiet reorientation, like a current changing direction. Conversations didn't stop, but heads turned just enough to acknowledge something without making it an event.
A path opened in the airspace beyond the concourse.
Two cargo lanes widened and slid aside. Smaller craft redirected smoothly, as if they'd been warned seconds ago.
Something was coming.
Arion noticed the movement first, because Arion always noticed anything that even resembled drama. "Okay, now that looks important."
Kai's eyes narrowed. "They're clearing a corridor."
"For what?" Liam asked.
Kazen answered without looking away. "For something bigger than the rest."
We watched as the corridor extended deeper, the station's infrastructure subtly reshaping—support rings rotating by degrees, alignment lights brightening faintly along a single route. It was like seeing a complex stance shift before a strike.
The station braced.
A Leviathan-class craft emerged from the distance.
Not the one we'd seen earlier.
This one was sleeker, its hull lighter, engineered rather than reinforced. It wasn't silver—more like pale steel, polished but practical. Six engines glowed along its body in the same configuration—two high, two midline, two below—each pulsing with contained mana, controlled and quiet.
It moved with the calm authority of something that didn't need to prove it could fly.
It simply did.
Arion let out a slow whistle. "That's… not even the big one, is it?"
Aelira shook her head, almost reverent now. "No. That's a high-class carrier, though. You can tell by the stabilization arrays."
Kai's gaze tracked the craft's approach. "It's aligned perfectly before entering the dock."
"Because the dock aligned to it," Seraphyne said.
Her voice was still calm, but there was something different in it now—interest sharpened by instinct.
The carrier slid into its hangar slot like a blade returning to a sheath. Engines dimmed one by one, and the hangar sealed with seamless precision. The corridor of cleared airspace remained open.
It hadn't been for that.
The station continued preparing.
That was when the first glint appeared.
A reflection—not from glass or polished steel around us, but from something far deeper in the station's core. It was a clean, unmistakable silver that caught light differently, as if the metal itself held brightness rather than borrowed it.
I felt the attention of the concourse shift again.
Not excitement.
Recognition.
Even locals, who treated Leviathans like routine, gave that silver glint a fraction of their awareness.
Arion swallowed. "Okay. So. That's—"
"The Silver Leviathan," Aelira whispered.
The name landed differently when the city itself seemed to acknowledge it.
The corridor widened further. Support rings rotated. Alignment lights sharpened. And then the ship emerged fully into view, gliding from the station's interior like something being revealed rather than arriving.
It was larger than the carriers.
Larger than the industrial Leviathan we'd seen earlier.
But what made it overwhelming wasn't just size.
It was refinement.
Its hull was pure silver—smooth, seamless, and impossibly clean, like a weapon polished to ceremonial perfection but built for real war. The two-deck structure was visible even from this distance, a raised command section and a deeper body that suggested weight and capacity beyond what my mind could comfortably estimate.
Six engines lined it in the pattern we'd been told, but they weren't just engines.
They were runic cores housed in armored frames—two mounted near the top spine for posture control, two embedded midline for forward drive, two anchored beneath for ascent. Each one pulsed with contained mana so stable it barely looked alive… until you paid attention long enough to realize the air around them was subtly bending.
The ship didn't roar.
It resonated—low and deep, a controlled hum that felt less like sound and more like presence.
Even from here, I could sense the aura-pressure it carried—not aggressive, not oppressive, simply heavy, like standing near a mountain you hadn't noticed until you were already at its base.
Arion didn't speak.
Kai didn't speak.
Liraeth's posture straightened slightly, instinct responding to scale.
Seraphyne's eyes flicked toward me for a heartbeat, checking something without asking.
I didn't know what she saw.
Maybe she was seeing the same thing I was.
Not just a ship.
A statement.
A promise of distance, of height, of worlds beyond the ones we'd trained for.
The Silver Leviathan drifted toward its berth, and the station moved around it like a body accommodating a heartbeat—lanes clearing, structures aligning, systems synchronizing with quiet discipline. The ship slid into place and locked in without impact, like it had always belonged there.
For a moment, the concourse was quiet in a way that felt natural.
Not forced.
Not fearful.
Just respect—for something that made even Epoch's scale feel smaller by comparison.
I exhaled slowly, not realizing I'd been holding my breath.
The world was larger than Lionhearth.
Larger than Okrith.
And standing there, with the Silver Leviathan suspended in front of us like a silver horizon made real, I felt the shape of what came next settle into my chest—not dread, not doubt.
More Anticipation.
Because whatever waited beyond Epoch, whatever waited above the sky itself…
This was how we would reach it.