Aether slowly raised his head.

It was funny how the sky had always looked the same. It was like a variable, always the same, never to be changed; it was told what to hold, a beautiful sky, and it never changed itself.

Not empty. Not alive. Just… there. A ceiling you stopped questioning after a while. What reason did it even have to be there, sure if you went by science, it was obvious, but what about beyond science?

Was it a limit to humanity? Or just a place we try to reach, and go beyond our goals.

Two different sides of the same coin; rather, it depends on who questions it.

However.

But now it was changing.

The clouds weren't breaking like a storm or being forced apart. They were drifting away slowly, almost like something had decided they no longer needed to stay together. Like the sky itself was remembering it could open. It was a beautiful sight, even among the many he had seen, not the best, but it was hard to top his memories. But it was one you would see only once in a lifetime.

And then light came through.

Real light. Blinding him, he tried to block the light, but it got through the crack of his fingers. In the end, his eyes did adapt to it, letting him stare.

Not the dull kind that sometimes slipped through storms or thin cloud layers, but something steady. Warm in a way that felt unfamiliar more than comforting. Like a ray of sunlight at the end of a fairy tale, where the author signed himself and said the line everyone knows...

Of course, only when the story has a happy ending.

But not all have one.

...

It spread across the ground below them.

From a frozen tundra, they have arrived... here.

The land was broken in the same way it had always been. Wide stretches of emptiness, uneven terrain, fragments of things that used to exist but didn't anymore, built by men, showing the blood and effort they had put into building them, only to be forgotten. You could call it ruins if you wanted to, but even that felt like giving it too much structure. Maybe before, they could have been called that, but now they were beyond that.

Memories of what once was.

It was just… what was left.

Everything looked slightly different under the light. Not better. Just more honest. Like details you weren't supposed to notice were suddenly visible again. In his eyes, this looked like a war, but not between people like the one they had just faced, but with Mother Nature.

Aether didn't speak.

Neither did the others.

There wasn't really anything to say yet.

'What a wasteland.'

The ground, it had an unnatural color, as if a child had painted it with a brush, like they painted walls, but now, there weren't any parents to stop them.

A vibrant violet, one that sparkled in the eye.

There were also places where they cracked down, and it worsened to the point where holes emerged. Just... what kind of natural disaster could do something like this, after all, it was nothing he knew from his world, or any of the many books he had read about. So it had to be something specific from this world.

...

Also, his compass was moving... meaning it was close, just in front of him. But there wasn't anything there... which meant that it was either below them...

Or above.

Then the sky shifted again, which made him instantly gaze up.

The clouds continued to separate, slower now, like they were revealing something instead of just moving away from it.

And something appeared above them. Finally, he could finally get a good look at this thing... at the proclaimed city in the sky, which, by what Lucien had told him on their way, was considered one of the best-looking civilizations on Stormfell.

At first, it didn't make sense. Not as an object. More like a mistake in scale. A shape too large to belong to the sky.

Then it became clearer.

A city.

Floating.

Not falling. Not rising. Just… existing above everything else, as it had never considered the ground important enough to be part of its world. It made him think the people above must definitely look down on everyone who lived on the mainland of Stormfell... in the main sense, but also that they considered themselves better than anyone on the island.

Even from below, you could see enough to understand it wasn't natural.

White structures formed its outer edges, smooth and continuous. Inside that boundary, shapes are stacked upward in layers. Towers, platforms, and bridges connecting sections that didn't seem like they should stay connected.

Many islands floated above them, all connected to the main island, all having the same structures, the same rules they needed to follow. And yet they were all so beautiful even by themselves.... Though he had to say, it did remind him slightly of the castle in the sky from the book he had entered with his rebellion. Though that castle and its beauty had only been an illusion... though who said this one wasn't going to be the same. It wasn't impossible.

...

The city didn't feel like it was watching the world below.

It felt like it had forgotten it existed. Like they were so much above it that whatever lived below them was insignificant. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

Thin streams of water fell from parts of it, steady and controlled, disappearing into the clouds beneath the city like they were being returned somewhere instead of lost.

At the center, something larger rose above everything else.

A tower.

Tall enough that it disappeared into the upper clouds, like it didn't end so much as stop being visible.

Aether stared for a while without moving.

It was strange.

Because nothing about the world below had changed.

But for the first time, it felt like the world above had always been there.

Just… not meant for them.

...

'How strange. And yet... I do wonder what kind of story this one holds... with this shitty thing sitting below, and such a beauty above, makes you wonder what made it end up like this. It couldn't always be like this... Guess... there was only one way to find out, that being to go up.

...

But how?

Aether glanced at Lucien, who rolled his eyes, instantly getting what he was trying to say.

The boy walked forward. "If I remember correctly... he said, walking up to a random cup that had strangely not been destroyed, weird for a cup to survive but nothing else.... and then, to Aether's horror, he poured one hundred embers inside.

He had wanted to scream, to grab the magician by his collar, after all, that was a heck of a lot of money that they had worked hard for.

But then, behind him, a gateway opened.

His eyes glistened as he stared at the radiant light inside it. He had never seen anything close to this.

"That's the entire fee; these guys think very highly of themselves, so of course, they would want that much money just to enter. But it was one of the safest places on this island, so I guess you can also understand their motives. They didn't want anyone getting here and destroying their peace, but they also didn't want to offer their services for nothing."

Aether stared, still shocked. He had no idea what was worse, this or the amount of money they had to pay every day to just live in the Great Harbor. While this place took a lot of money at once, the Harbor took money every day, with the money you had to spend on housing, which you also will probably have to pay for here. But still, in the end, that daily fee would get over one hundred, so you could say this was a better deal... if you plan on staying for long. Which they weren't.

And he wasn't going to just spend weeks here, just to make his money worth... though maybe it wasn't that bad of an idea.

Aether sighed. They at least still had six hundred left from the beast humans. It was probably going to be enough... but at the same time, he hated saying that, because not only were the prices going to be very high, but they weren't going to have enough money to even last three days.

Walking up to the gateway, he stared at it. Was it possible for something like this to exist? I mean, what kind of Will could even make something like this? It didn't make sense. And if it was a Will, it was definitely one of the masters. There was no doubt in his mind, no way an average Will user could ever create something this complicated.

...

'Alright, enough complaining, let's just see what this city is made out of, and if it's really worth all the money I spent on it.'

...

'If I don't like it, I want a refund.'