The warning bell tore through Ren's sleep like a blade through cloth.
He was on his feet before breath finished its first curse, fingers fumbling for the pendant on the bedside table.
Outside, the cliff answered with a chorus—footsteps, shouts, the slap of ropes.
Ren's lungs filled with cold air.
The pendant burned faint against his palm, an ember that should not have been awake.
"Li!" someone called. "East! East—shields down!"
Ren shoved his feet into boots, every joint a note of complaint.
The scar along his jaw tightened as if testing him.
The village had no time for hesitation; the bell kept demanding.
Lanterns swung in the alleyways, throwing quick maps of shadow.
Farmers grabbed tools; fishers heaved gaffs.
Women clipped belts of rope; old men slung lanterns on poles.
The market square filled with a metallic clank—tools becoming weapons.
"Where's Kira?" Ren asked, voice raw.
His question hit the night like a thrown stone.
"Down at the forge!" Li answered from the doorway, cloak half on. "Bring something that cuts hard—don't let those things take the terraces."
A child screamed and then laughed.
Someone shoved a basket of Heavenly Grains into a crate and sprinted.
Smoke bled from the eastern terraces, a thin ribbon at first, then a ribbon thickening into anger.
"We've got incoming from the ridge!" a man shouted, breath white in the air. "Metal on the clouds—skiffs with bone plating!"
"Pillagers," a woman spat, tightening a strap. "They'll strip the terraces clean."
Ren tightened the pendant against his chest with the crook of his thumb.
The metal of the bedside table bit under his fingertips as he grabbed a spare hook.
Each step toward the east sent pebbles skittering down the cliff face like nervous insects.
Kira waited at the alley mouth, hair singed at the edges, goggles slotted into place.
Her hands moved fast—distributing carabiners, looping quick-training knots around belts.
"Ren!" she snapped, throwing a coil into his hands. "Help set the anchors. No heroics—anchor first!"
"Anchors first." Ren's words snapped like he intended them.
He doubled the knot just as Kira watched, eyes not soft but precise, like a blade testing metal.
The village formed a line along the east edge—a human chain of rope and will.
Ren took his place, breath fogging the night, fingers finding bite in weathered hemp.
The pendant hummed against his palm as if listening.
The first glow came from above: not aurora, not lightning, but the hungry flare of engine flames tearing cloud.
"Kira—what are those?" Ren asked, throat tight.
"Not storms," she said, voice low enough for only him. "They're ships. Sky-robbers. They came from the Ancestors' Precipice."
Her jaw clenched.
"They don't follow rules."
A gust pushed at Ren; the rope cut into his palm and sang.
The village line tightened as one body, a rope-muscle flexing to hold what lay behind them.
The first hull cleaved the cloud like a whale through mist, metal ribs glinting, jagged plates welded with bone.
Three vessels rode the wind, each a mouth of rust and stitched shells.
Sparks spit from their undersides.
Projectiles—brilliant motes of light—slashed across terraces and detonated in showers of splintered wood.
"Fire!" someone screamed.
A farmhouse tile exploded into shards that rained like brittle leaves.
Kira barked orders, voice sharp as flint.
"Left flank! Ropes down—then climb! Secure the elders and the grain stores. No one above the terraces!"
Ren sprinted along the ridge.
The air smelled of burnt kelp and something sweeter—oil and hot metal.
The sound of the ships was not just wind; it was a grinding, teeth-sounding rumble under the clouds.
Wooden beams cracked under projectiles; a child's lamp popped like a trapped insect.
At the first fallow, a startled farmer pushed a cart, his hands raw and shaking.
"They took the east barn!" he gasped. "They took the nets!"
"Hold this!" Ren shoved his spare hook into the man's palms and hauled the cart behind a stone wall.
A shower of sparks peppered the ground near Ren's boots.
Heat licked at his calves.
"Ren! Over here!" Kira's voice cut across smoke.
She hooked a line to a ruined beam and flung it up. "Climb! Now!"
Ren grabbed the rope; the fibers bit into his hands.
He hauled himself up, boots scraping splintered wood.
On the terrace above, a family clustered with a charred thatch between them.
A woman pressed a child to her chest; the child's face was smeared black, eyes wide like two moons.
"We'll get you down!" Ren shouted.
"Don't stay!" the father snapped, brandishing a pitchfork. "They'll swarm!"
Ren's hands bled a little as rope scraped skin raw.
A plank under his boot cracked, splinters tickling his ankle.
A ladder of ropes descended from one hull.
Figures dropped—clad in patched metal and bone, faces hidden beneath scavenged masks.
They moved like scavengers who had learned not to waste breath on mercy.
A volley of grapnels hammered into a distant roof; pirates slid down ropes, talons for hands.
One figure halted, raising a horned helmet to the light; its laugh was a wire-snap sound.
Ren jumped forward, planting his hoe into the earth and swinging the blunt end.
Steel met wood, a beam screamed, and a pirate staggered.
"Back!" Ren barked, chest heaving hard. "Back, now!"
Kira darted, blades flashing at her belt, catching a pirate's sleeve and twisting until a coil of rope fell away.
A child coughed and coughed; ash lined their lashes.
"You'd make a good souvenir," one pirate hissed toward the clustered villagers, voice bubbling through a gas-mask respirator.
Another kicked a crate, scattering Heavenly Grains into the mud—the white kernels sparkling like trapped stars.
Ren shoved a falling beam, putting himself between the family and the pirates.
A pirate's boot slammed into his ribs.
Wind knocked out of him like a bell struck.
A pain lanced across his side; he coughed, tasting iron.
The family scrambled through a narrow gap Ren made with his shoulder.
"Get them!" a pirate snarled. "Take what you can carry!"
Ren rose with a mouth full of grit.
The pendant pulsed against his chest, warmth blooming slow and dangerous.
Kira pressed her forehead to her hands for half a breath, then threw a line to Ren.
"We move!" she ordered, voice small and fierce. "This terrace—now!"
The pirates descended in a scatter of ropes and boots, quick as disease.
Men with bone-crested shields rammed through fence lines.
A crate exploded; jars of fog-fish burst like dying lanterns.
Ren grabbed the hoe again, bracing against the oncoming press.
"Hold the path!" Li shouted, planting his feet beside Ren. "Keep the family moving!"
Ren shoved a pirate back; the hoe's handle splintered.
Splinters dug into his palms.
A pirate with a serrated cleaver lunged, and Ren rolled, grabbing a length of rope and heaving it around the pirate's legs.
The pirate crashed with a groan.
Kira ducked under a falling beam and shoved a child into Ren's shoulder.
"Go!" she hissed. "Get them to the anchors!"
Ren hauled, every tendon singing.
The village line held but frayed—ropes burned, knots torn.
Vision narrowed at the edges.
Breath turned shallow.
He remembered the promise to Kira—fix the glider—and the pendant's earlier flare.
A pirate with a gas mask and a saw-belt cut through a post, smoke curling around the blade.
He stepped into the light.
Then turned, slow and deliberate, as if smelling prey.
Silence swallowed the immediate noise for a heart-beat.
A pirate, enormous, with a gas mask and a rotating saw, turned to Ren.
His eyes, visible through the mask, held no humanity, only greed.
"More spare parts," he snarled, raising the saw.