With a heavy heart and a steady hand, Kael didn't perform the nightly maintenance. Instead, he reversed the polarity of the stabilizers.
Curiosity overrode his fear. He pressed his ear to the quartz casing and heard a faint, melodic weeping. As he adjusted the resonance of his tuning fork, a voice—ancient and exhausted—echoed in his mind. The city of God
One evening, while scrubbing the conduits of the Great Spire, Kael noticed a rhythmic vibration coming from the Core. It wasn't the usual hum of power; it sounded like a . With a heavy heart and a steady hand,
Kael was a "Light-Tender," one of the few permitted to touch the Core—a pulsating orb of pure divinity that kept the city afloat and the gardens in eternal bloom. For centuries, the High Priests taught that the Core was a gift from a creator who had abandoned the "Sullied Earth" below to reward the pure. He pressed his ear to the quartz casing
Kael realized then that the City of God wasn't powered by a miracle, but by a . The "God" they worshipped wasn't an absent creator; it was a living entity being drained like a battery to keep the marble streets clean and the wine flowing.
The City of God was returning to the dirt, and for the first time, its people would have to learn how to walk on ground they hadn't stolen from the sky.
Looking over the edge of the floating plaza, Kael saw the world below. It was dark, chaotic, and scarred, but it was real . He looked back at the golden statues of the Priests and the sterile, unmoving perfection of his home.