For days, perhaps weeks, the sun had lost its old logic. Luka lived inside a hush that felt like grace.
The flame, once a gnawing ache beneath his skin, now flowed freely. He could feel it, a living pulse in his veins, answering the music of the Sky Renders. Their flock no longer circled in hunger, but danced across the arching sky in lazy, braided spirals. In the dawns, their wings shone blue-gold, scattering dew into fire. At dusk, they skimmed the cloudtops, trailing comet-tails of light, every motion woven with wild kinship.
Luka became one of them—not a Render, not quite, but something new, a creature with one foot in the sky and the other in lost childhood. Dakin carried him high above the world, the bond between them growing so close that a thought was enough to steer, a gesture to change course. Sometimes, Dakin would dive, and Luka—who had once clung in terror—would simply let go. For a moment, he would float, arms spread, body surrendered to the thin blue currents, drifting between gravity and song. He learned the trick of the air, how to read the shape of the wind by the taste of it on his tongue, how to swim the rising thermals, how to fall and be caught, always, by Dakin's waiting wing.
Sometimes, the other renders joined him—younglings weaving beneath his outstretched arms, matriarchs watching with what might have been approval. He learned to sleep curled in the crook of Dakin's back, to eat the strange, sweet fruit that grew on the floating islands, to listen to the old, wordless songs that filled the nights with gentle thunder. For the first time, Luka was not an exile. He was part of a world that accepted him with the simple, merciless indifference of wind and fire. He was becoming.
But peace, on Asirios, is a trick of the light.
It started as a slow, almost imperceptible change. The islands drifted upward, not in jolts, but in a ceaseless, gentle climb. Each morning, the clouds beneath them grew thinner, more diffuse, until, on certain days, they seemed to float above the weather itself. Sunlight warped, harsher, closer, casting sharp shadows and painting the stones in strange, impossible hues. Luka found himself squinting at noon, shivering at midnight.
The birds were the first to leave, flocks of razorwings vanishing into the mists below. Then the wind-sprites, the glowing moths, the fragile white-furred creatures that used to nest in the temple ruins. Some vanished, some simply died. Luka buried the fallen when he could, feeling a strange guilt, as if every fading life was a consequence of his own hand.
He tried to ignore it at first. He rode Dakin longer each day, flying farther, higher, seeking new islands, new wonders. But with each passing sunrise, the air thinned. His breaths grew shallow, each inhalation burning in his chest. Stars became visible at noon, sharp pinpricks against a sky growing too dark, too vast. At night, the constellations spun wildly, unfamiliar, as if the world itself was slipping loose from its moorings.
He watched the renders for a sign of panic, but they remained as they had always been: calm, patient, accepting. Even as the younger ones began to fall behind, wings growing ragged, scales dulled by hunger and altitude, the matriarch only led them onward, her great eyes reflecting the fire of distant suns.
One night, Luka sat beside Dakin on the edge of a shattered island, the clouds far below, the sky above so full of stars it hurt to look at. He pressed his head to Dakin's warm flank, heart aching.
"The Sky is dying. You are going to die if you stay here. Why aren't you angry?" he whispered, voice lost in the wind. "Why aren't you afraid? I freed the flame for you. I thought I was saving you, but now... I've doomed you all. Doesn't this mean the end?"
Dakin only watched him, eyes deep and gold, old as the sorrow in them. The other renders gathered close, their bodies a living circle of silence. Their song, once wild and full of hunger, was now a low, patient hum—wordless, impossible to understand. Luka shouted into the wind, begged for answers, and wept when none came. The world drifted upward, and with it, hope began to thin like the air.
He wandered the island alone, haunted by the silence, by his own guilt, by the feeling that he was becoming a story without a happy ending. Every step took him past ruins older than memory, temples that crumbled beneath the weight of time and truth. He pressed his palms to the stone, desperate for some answer, but found only the old, unyielding silence—the kind that turns doubt into a wound.
The peace that had seemed so complete was only the hush before the storm.
* * *
Dakin awoke to an emptiness sharper than hunger. The boy was gone.
He circled the island three times before admitting it. Luka's scent, his weight, his soft breath at dawn, all vanished. The other Renders watched him with sidelong eyes, shifting in the blue mist. Dakin let out a thunderous call, a sound meant for storms and kin alike. It echoed across the sky, bouncing from island to island, unanswered. The flock murmured, wings ruffling in concern. Even the matriarch cocked her battered head, but offered no comfort.
Dakin searched the ruins. He flew low, skimming the broken spires where Luka sometimes sat to watch the sunrise, searching for footprints, for hope. Every empty ledge, every half-buried archway, became an accusation. You let him go. You lost your flame-brother.
He dove through thunderclouds, desperate, calling with every note of his ancient, wordless song. Each island in the rising chain of sky felt emptier than the last. Hunger gnawed him, but he ignored it. The flock's song turned mournful, the old unity fraying with worry.
He remembered the way Luka had looked at him the night before—eyes shadowed, shoulders bowed, searching for something Dakin could not name. The pain in the boy's voice, the question he could not answer.
Dakin thought, wings aching as he soared through the cold sky. Let me find you before the world lets you go.
Luka moved through the high islands like a ghost, leaving no trace but hope and sorrow. The world rose around him—temples, statues, shattered crowns of old Sovreg kings. His lungs burned with every breath; his heart beat a stuttering, lonely rhythm. But he would not turn back.
He staggered inside, the hush of the place thick as velvet, broken only by the hush of his own pulse. The walls seemed to breathe—soft, wet moss glimmering beneath whorls of blue fire. Murals shifted as he moved, as if the stone remembered each step.
He reached out, brushing the damp surface with trembling fingers. The images rippled and rearranged, a slow dance of memory made visible. He saw Sovreg priests and priestesses, tall, flame-crowned, their arms outstretched not in worship, but in greeting, in peace. And opposite them: the Sky Renders, massive and wild, wings flared wide. In the heart of their meeting, a single Sovreg pressed the star-shaped device, not a weapon, but a bridge to their own brow.
As the Sovreg's flesh joined with the artifact, their eyes glowed with light. The Renders lowered their heads, their song swirling in visible patterns, ribbons of blue and gold twining from beast to priest. Communion. Understanding not through words, but through the joining of pain, memory, and will.
The murals morphed, now Sovreg architects etching star-thoughts above every temple's entrance, now flame-bearers riding on the backs of Renders, the device pulsing on their brows. Then the cycle: islands lifting, sky rising, Renders merging into the very land, guiding its ascension. Sovregs weeping, joyful, and afraid. The flame, never lost, only changed.
Luka's knees buckled. The artifact in his hand was more than a relic. It was an invitation, a demand.
He pressed it to his temple.
Agony split him open, the wires burning through his skin, tunneling into bone and thought, searching for the old Sovreg spark that now lived in his blood. He screamed, and the temple echoed back with music—a single, blinding chord, old as sky.
Then came the flood: Renders' voices, memories, fears, hopes. The grief of every cycle. The surrender. Dakin's voice rang loudest, a thunder, a lullaby.
You did not doom us. This is our purpose. The sky ascends, always. The flame needs us. The world needs the pain.
Luka's vision blurred. Murals swirled, every Sovreg face a mirror, every Render's song a promise.
You are not our end, little flame. You are our bridge.
His body convulsed, but he held tight. Let me hear. Let me understand. Let me carry what you cannot.
And at last, the pain dulled to ache, the voices gentled, and Luka saw: The cycle was not cruelty, it was sacrifice for something greater, a becoming.
He slumped against the wall, sweat cold on his brow, artifact still gleaming, the temple around him pulsing with a soft, grateful light.
He was changed. Now he could speak to the Renders. Now he could grieve with them. Now, for the first time, he truly belonged to this sky, and to its sorrow.
Dakin found him on the island's edge, Luka's silhouette suspended in gold and violet, arms flung wide as if offering himself to the void. The boy's cheeks were streaked with tears, his brow crowned by the artifact's sharp glint—the Star-Thought, Sovreg relic pulsing faintly, threads burrowed into flesh.
Dakin approached quietly, great wings folded, claws gentle on the stone. His mind touched Luka's—a surge, a storm, a sudden, impossible intimacy.
Luka did not turn. His voice was a whisper, cracked and small.
"I broke everything, Dakin. I set the flame free, but now, look at us. The sky is rising. The islands are emptying. You... all of you, you're going to vanish. I thought I was saving you. I thought I could fix it."
Dakin's thoughts poured in, warm and sorrowful, filling every hollow in Luka's heart.
"We knew the cycle. We remembered the pain. When the Sovreg bound the flame, they were afraid—afraid of letting go, of dying, of change. Their chain was a cage. At first, it slowed the sky. We endured. But then, too long..."
Luka shuddered as images battered his mind: Renders starving, the flame dwindling, the world's heartbeat faltering to a death-rattle.
"We searched for answers. We searched for hope. You were the hope, Luka. The child flame. When we found you, it was not just for hunger; it was desperation. If the cycle stayed broken, all would end. Not just us. Not just the sky. All of Asirios, turning to dust. Implosion. Silence. No memory. No future."
Luka crumpled, guilt and grief twisting inside him. "I didn't know... I thought I could stop the ending. I didn't want you to die. Not for me."
Dakin moved closer, his head bowing until golden eyes met Luka's, ancient and kind. The great beast pressed his brow to Luka's, a gesture old as love.
"Change is not death. Loss is not erasure. Our purpose is to sing the world awake, to guide it onward. Yes, some of us will merge with the sky. Yes, we will vanish from your sight. But the flame will carry us. The song will carry us. The sky will rise, and so will we, different, yes, but not lost."
A pulse of warmth, acceptance, washed through Luka. He sobbed, but this time the tears were gentler, cleansed by truth.
"You are not our doom, little flame. You are the bridge. The gift. The memory we needed."
Luka closed his eyes, breathing in the cool, thinning air, feeling the presence of every Render—loss and hope, pain and pride—woven into the wind.
"I'm scared, Dakin."
"So are we. But fear is not the end. Stay with us, Luka. Witness. Remember. This is not a death. This is becoming."
They stayed like that, on the edge of all things, as the sun slipped lower and the first stars began to burn, impossibly bright, in the rising sky.
* * *
The pain of the Star-Thought cleaved through Luka's mind, and with it came the ancient, crushing presence: Lythos.
Rock. Stone. The unyielding monolith, cold that would never burn, a weight that would never ascend.
In the haze of vision, Luka saw a world where all things ended as stone:
Skies collapsing, flame stilled, islands falling into endless dark.
Not a cycle, not rebirth, only petrification.
Only the weight of Lythos, hungering for silence.
Then, through the void, shapes split the mist: Janaah. Wings of alloy and shadow, not born for flight but for slaughter. Each machine, a twisted prayer to motion denied, wings that would never know the sky. They came not to soar, but to cut away hope, to drive all that lived into stone.
The first island shuddered. The mist churned, twisting with a sound like iron drowning in its own echo. Shapes erupted from the cloud-banks, wings like razors, bodies fluid as quicksilver—Janaah, the Lythos' children. Not beasts, not machines, but a blasphemy of both: faceless, formless, alive with shifting edges, wings of living metal that sliced the light itself. Each body split, doubled, reformed, each strike birthing more, each wound a doorway for another.
Dakin's mind blazed with recognition...
"Lythos..."
The word fell like a curse, ancient and cold.
I am Lythos. The End Stone. The Unraveling. I make wings fall, and skies forget they were ever born.
Luka reeled, vision burning in his blood. This was the true enemy: the stone that hated becoming, the wing that feared flight. He staggered, clutching his head, breath caught between terror and defiance. The vision faded, the sky returned, the Star-Thought still burning in his flesh. He knew now what hunted them: not a beast, not a rival, but the end of all stories. The face of unmaking—hungry, relentless.
The Sky Renders flocked around him, a chorus of blue fire and scale. Luka clung to Dakin's back, their minds fused by pain and song, seeing through each other's eyes—flame, hope, terror, memory.
The Janaah struck like a tidal wave, tearing into the Render circle, metal wings shrieking. No eyes, no faces, just slicing geometry, a hunger that wanted to unravel the world. The oldest Renders fell first, bodies shattered, blue fire leaking into the sky.
Dakin howled. The flock surged, spitting arcs of living blue, raking Janaah with claws and fangs. But for every enemy shattered, two more took its place.
Luka's mind buckled under the onslaught: shrieks, metal rending, the stink of dying flame. In the thick of battle, the horizon bled, clouds burned, and the sky itself seemed to split with every clash.
The renders circled—desperate, defiant, but doomed.
Dakin's voice, wild in Luka's head:
"We cannot hold them long. You must finish what was begun."
Despair threatened to swallow Luka, but somewhere deeper, the flame surged—a pulse, a song he'd never fully heard until now. He remembered the murals, the Sovreg with their star-thoughts, arms outstretched, communion of Render and sky. Memory became order:
Let go. Trust the cycle!
Luka rose. He leapt from Dakin's back, hanging in midair—untethered, weightless, neither falling nor flying. The Star-Thought pulsed agony into his mind, but he forced himself open, arms wide, body arched in surrender.
He called the flame—all of it.
It answered.
A coil of light erupted from his chest—a serpent, a storm, a thousand-armed lightning bolt. The sky split. Each tendril lashed outward, seeking the Janaah, wrapping them in blue fire, searing through morphing shells, tearing the Lythos blight from the sky one by one. The metal creatures screamed, a sound without voice, pure unmaking. The flame passed through Luka, not burning, but becoming—every wound, every memory, every hope braided into the fire. For an instant, every Render's mind was his, their hearts beating in his chest.
Dakin's voice, grief and love, and pride, echoed within:
"This is what we were meant to be, little flame. Guide us."
The last of the Janaah flickered, broke, fell—raining shards of cooling metal into the mist below. Silence rushed in, electric, stunned.
Luka hovered, trembling, the flame settling back beneath his skin.
He landed on Dakin's back, clinging tight, spent but unbroken. The flock wheeled, gathering what remained of their wounded. The sky was scarred, but alive. Luka wept, shoulders shaking, feeling the ache of loss, and the hope that the sky, at last, could rise unbroken.
But then he saw them—the fallen.
The bodies of the Sky Renders, those ancient kin, drifted in the silent air, torn and still. For a moment, grief gutted him. But as he watched, their scales caught the light, shimmering blue and gold, and began to dissolve, slowly, impossibly, into pure radiance. Each body unraveled into threads of living flame, no longer bound to wing or bone, becoming the very essence they had guarded all their lives.
And all of that fire, all of that memory, streamed through the broken sky, returning, inexorable, to Luka. He felt it strike him: a thousand voices, a thousand lives, a storm of sorrow and triumph and ancient memory. The fire flooded through his veins, burning heavier and lighter at once, filling him with their courage, their regret, their old songs and secret joys. For one staggering moment, he was the flock. Every loss, a wound inside his chest, every hope a new, fierce pulse beneath his skin.
The remaining Renders gathered, wings folded, heads bowed. not in defeat, but in reverence. They watched as Luka's form shimmered with borrowed fire, as the blue flame braided itself through his soul, reforging him as their guide, their vessel, their promise kept. In that hush, Luka wept, not just for the fallen, but for all that had become part of him, knowing now, bone-deep, that to be the flame was not just to lead or save, but to carry every sacrifice, every memory, every spark that refused to die.
The sky had changed, and so had he.
* * *
The sky above their sky darkened, shifting from blue to a bruised, cosmic dusk. The stars pressed closer, not as distant fires, but as silent witnesses to endings and beginnings.
Dakin stood beside Luka, gaze fixed on the deepening dark. "Lythos tried to break the cycle," his thought-voice echoed, threaded with sorrow and ancient resolve. "They would have erased everything—turned flame to stone, memory to oblivion. But now you see, Luka... This is not death. This is the path. This is what we were made for."
All around them, the floating islands trembled. Blue glyphs flickered to life across the stone, old sigils burning bright, revealing patterns—shapes and prints etched deep into the rock, each one the echo of a Sky Render's wings, each one a promise waiting to be fulfilled. It had always been this way: each generation, the Sky Renders gave themselves to the sky, merging with the land so that a new world could rise. They were more than guardians—they were the catalyst, the bridge to what comes next.
Luka's heart broke as he understood. He ran to Dakin, clung to him, desperate to hold him in this world. "No," he pleaded, tears cutting through the grime on his cheeks. "There has to be another way. You can't leave. Not now. Not after everything..."
Dakin's wings curled around Luka, blue fire dancing between them, memory and hope pulsing in the contact. "You are the flame-bearer, Luka. The child of memory. Let us go. Let us become the bridge. Without us, the sky is only ruin."
The ritual began. One by one, the chosen Sky Renders rose to their islands, each answering the call of their glyph, each surrendering to the transformation. Flesh became energy, wing became wind, memory bled into stone and sky. They merged with the islands, blue light flaring as each ancient shape was filled, the mountain peaks and stones becoming living monuments—the blueprint for a new sky, a promise encoded in the bones of the world.
Dakin lingered, the last of the old flock. He pressed his brow to Luka's one final time. In that instant, Luka felt everything—every flight, every wound, every joy, every hope, every sacrifice that Dakin had carried through the cycles. The love and faith, the forgiveness and trust.
"Remember for me, little fire," Dakin whispered—his voice a storm, a lullaby, a blessing. "Guide them well."
And then he was gone, dissolving into a storm of blue sparks, his essence joining the island, his memory forever alive in the flame.
Luka collapsed, empty and overflowing, the Star-Thought artifact burning at his brow. All around him, the sky shimmered, islands drifting higher, old wounds closing as the new world—bright and strange—began to rise.
The Lythos, broken by the storm of sacrifice and flame, fled into the dark, their hunger sated by nothing, their silence echoing across the void.
Luka wept—not for death, but for the beauty of what had been given up, so the world might be born anew.
He stood, alone but never truly alone. Dakin's memory burned in every breath, every glyph, every drifting island. The sky had changed, and so had he.
"Ascension is not death," Luka whispered to the rising world. "It is the only way for the story to go on."
With the last light of the merging sky, Luka spread his arms, fire in his veins, heart alive with memory and hope, ready to bear the story onward, ready to find the next sky, and to sing its birth.
For a heartbeat, or an eternity, there was nothing. Only the hush of blue flame curling around him, swallowing the world, erasing pain and memory and even the shape of time itself. Darkness, deep as the space between stars. A silence that could have been death, or simply the pause between one existence and the next.
Then—sound. Voices, laughter, singing—a river of life rushing from the mouth of a cave.
Luka stumbled forward, blinking as light poured in, gold and wild and impossibly real. He stepped from the cave, and the world waited: the village, his village, every house and path as he remembered, but sharper, more alive. Faces turned. Laughter died mid-song. One by one, the villagers fell silent, their eyes drinking him in—fear, awe, joy, a hundred emotions tangled in every gaze. The old men bowed their heads. Children peeked from behind their mothers. Some wept, some fell to their knees as if the sky itself had come down to walk among them.
Confusion tangled in Luka's chest. "What...what is this?" he thought, staggering through the silent crowd. Had he returned? Was this the world he'd left, or some echo conjured by longing and loss?
He caught his reflection in a sheet of black glass, half-buried in the path. The sight stilled him: his eyes blazed with living blue, the Star-Thought at his brow pulsed with a silent music, and his body, no longer a child's, had become something new. Strong, unyielding, grown by fire and memory and the agony of sacrifice. There was power in his frame, and an ancient, searching light behind his eyes.
A gasp rippled through the crowd as he turned, as if even his shadow carried something holy. He felt the flame singing in his bones—the memory of Renders, the wisdom of old cycles, the ache of everything lost and gained.
He stood before his people, both less and more than he had been, the child remade as myth, the outcast crowned by the impossible.
Through Luka's eyes, the world was no longer made of mere stone and sky. The flame was everywhere now, hidden arteries pulsing beneath the ground, veining every rock, every tree, every cave, flickering in the eyes of birds and the laughter of children, swirling even in the breath of the wind. It ran through the bones of the mountains and the rivers below, a living network that sang with memory and promise. In every heartbeat, he felt it: the world was alive, and he was alive within it.
His senses spun wider, higher, deeper. He could hear the village's whispers before lips even moved, taste the sharp tang of old sorrow and new hope in the air. Every scent, every color, every shadowed breeze carried a secret—each one a thread in the endless tapestry of flame.
But beneath the miracle, something else burned, a vision etched deep in the marrow of his mind. Somewhere far beneath the peaks, deep in the heart of the living mountain, the fire shone brightest. There, in that secret dark, he saw them: eggs, thousands upon thousands, their shells aglow with inner light, cradled in the earth's ancient hands.
They pulsed in time with the world's slow breath, waiting, listening, dreaming of open sky. The next generation of Sky Renders, not yet born but already remembered by the flame. And when the sky rose once more, when the old world became new, these unborn guardians would break free, hatching beneath the peaks, their wings carrying the memory of everything that had come before.
Luka understood then: the cycle was never meant to end in silence. The village, the peaks, every child who had ever watched the sky with longing—they were next. The world was preparing, gathering itself for another leap, another birth, another impossible song. And he, the fire-bearer, memory-walker, exile, and guide, was the bridge.
He looked at his people, standing in awe and fear and hope, and he knew: the sky would ascend again, and with it, all of Asirios would become more than it had ever dreamed.