Chapter 1: New Skies
The sky here never slept.
Even when twilight fell and the stars bloomed like glowing fruit across the heavens, the world above the Veil remained alive. Sail ships glided silently across moonlit winds, drifting between floating cities and cascading waterfalls suspended in midair.
This was Kael’s world. And now, it was mine.
I leaned against the rail of the skyship we now called home—a vessel made of polished wood and etched crystal that hummed faintly beneath my touch. Below us, endless mist swirled over glowing fields, and to the east, a curved bridge of light connected one island of floating land to another.
I hadn’t stopped staring at it since we arrived.
Kael stood behind me, his presence quiet but grounding. It had only been a week since I crossed the Veil and severed my tether to Earth. A week since I chose him over the life I once knew.
“How does it feel?” he asked softly.
I smiled without looking back. “Like I fell into a story someone else wrote... but I don’t mind reading it.”
He chuckled, low and warm. “You’re not reading it anymore, love. You’re writing it.”
The word love still made my heart stutter. It felt both brand new and centuries old.
I turned to him. “Do you miss the others?”
“The others?”
“The ones like us. The Echo-Bonded. You said there were more.”
Kael’s expression shifted. Not dark. Just... guarded.
“There were,” he said. “But fewer every cycle.”
“Why?”
He looked past me, toward a floating temple in the distance. “Because not everyone approves of what we are.”
I frowned. “Souls that remember?”
“Souls that won’t forget.”
Before I could ask more, a horn sounded in the distance—a deep, echoing tone that vibrated through the deck. A welcome horn.
Another skyship approached, sails gilded in red and silver. Kael’s shoulders tensed.
“They’re early,” he murmured.
“Who?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he said, “Stay here.”
“Kael—”
But he was already walking toward the edge of the ship, cloak swirling behind him.
I turned back to the sky, my hand gripping the rail.
And from the corner of my eye, I saw someone standing on the approaching ship’s deck—a tall man with silver eyes fixed on me, and a faint smirk that made my heart stutter in a very different way.
He raised a hand in greeting. Not to Kael.
To me.
