Chapter 28 · A Declaration Before the Fall

The platform groaned beneath them.

Not shook. Not trembled.

Groaned—as if the entire floating district had grown a throat and was trying to scream.

Mara Finch staggered backward, one hand pressed to her ribs. Copper light leaked between her fingers in thin, trembling threads. The barrier that had held the maintenance platform together was gone. Beyond its shattered edge, the lower district hung in the open night, a maze of bridges and homes suspended over a bottomless sea of cloud.

Pieces of Veyra were falling.

A stone balcony tore free from a neighboring tower. It dropped past them, windows flashing with reflected lightning, and vanished into the dark below. A heartbeat later, the sound reached them—a distant, terrible crunch.

The buried beast pulled itself higher.

Its plated skull scraped against the broken platform, shedding chunks of black stone. Long limbs unfolded from the maintenance shaft, each joint ringed with pale blue fire. Its body was too large for the space beneath the district, too old for any living anatomy. Chains of rusted magic clung to its hide, snapping one by one as it climbed.

“Sister,” it called.

The word did not come from its mouth.