The Isles Above

The winds shifted as the vault faded behind them — no longer stormwinds, but currents laced with something subtler. Like the air itself knew where it was meant to guide them.

They moved fast.

Reven, Kaela, and Lirien crossed the broken expanse of the eastern divide, heading toward the launch ruins the envoy had revealed — an ancient spire hidden in the bone-white cliffs of the Skyreach Expanse. It had once been a Skyborn gateport, designed to pierce the clouds and reach the isles above.

Now, it was barely more than fractured steel and dead platforms, choked in vines and time.

But it still hummed with power.

"We're not the first to try this," Kaela muttered, glancing at the rusted corpses of transport frames scattered across the shattered hangar. "How many didn't make it?"

Lirien ran her palm across a cracked console, coaxing a faint flicker of blue from its surface. "Too many. The isles were never meant to be found again."

"They hid them," Reven said, examining the launch schematic on the console. "Buried their legacy in the sky."

Lirien nodded. "The Supreme Isles weren't just cities. They were vaults of bloodlines. Data. Clean history. They erased themselves from the planet to survive it."

Kaela crossed her arms. "And if they're still up there?"

Reven looked up toward the veiled sky, where the clouds swirled unnaturally — too thick, too stable. They weren't clouds. They were camouflage.

"Then it's time they remembered the world they left behind."

They repaired the launch spire through the night.

Lirien rewired ancient Skyborn conduits with elemental cores scavenged from Rift-dampened zones. Kaela stabilized the platform structure, climbing through jagged towers like she'd grown up on them. Reven worked the anchor systems, manually unlocking the clamps that still held the lift dormant after centuries.

By dawn, the tower was awake.

Its core glowed faintly. Not bright. Not steady. But enough.

"Is this going to hold?" Kaela asked, tightening the last bolt on the stabilizer rail.

"No," Lirien said. "It's going to launch. There's a difference."

Reven stepped into the platform. "Everyone ready?"

Kaela sighed. "No. But I'm going anyway."

Lirien grinned faintly. "That's the spirit."

They stood in silence as the platform powered up — surrounded by the bones of a forgotten world, staring into a sky no one had touched in five hundred years.

Then it moved.

Not slowly. Not with caution.

It launched like a bullet from a god's chamber.

The air howled.

The world dropped away beneath them. Clouds turned to smoke turned to nothing as the platform ascended past the atmosphere's upper drift. Reven's breath caught in his throat — half from the pressure, half from what lay ahead.

Above the clouds, the world was bright.

Not warm. Not soft.

Blinding.

And in the centre of that brilliance hovered a chain of floating landmasses—city-sized platforms suspended by invisible force, connected by glowing bridges and elegant gravity tethers. White towers crowned each island, gleaming with untouched technology.

The Supreme Isles.

They were real.

Lirien adjusted the platform's trajectory as it slowed. The system responded with a pulse of data — welcoming, but clinical.

"Still functioning," she murmured. "Still watching."

As they neared the first island, a field surrounded them. A scan. Gentle, but invasive. Reven felt it brush through his thoughts, sifting for bloodlines, markers, permissions.

It hesitated on him.

Then accepted him.

The platform docked with the outer bridge.

No guards. No resistance.

Only open gates.

Kaela stepped off first, eyes scanning every rooftop. "Too quiet."

"No alarms," Lirien said. "They don't fear what comes from below."

Reven led them forward.

The streets were clean. Perfect. Empty.

Statues stood in the plazas — faces erased, names smoothed from stone. Memorials or warnings. It was hard to tell.

Then a voice echoed through the air, gentle but cold.

"Welcome, Echo of Man."

They stopped.

From the centre of the plaza, a figure approached — not human, not quite machine. A synthetic frame, elegant and old, wearing a long coat of metallic fibbers that moved like silk. Its face was porcelain and expressionless.

"I am Steward-9. Protocol Keeper of the First Assembly. You are Reven, carrier of the fracture keys."

Reven held his ground. "You knew I was coming?"

"We have known since the Vaults awoke. Since the Rift stirred again. The network is not broken. It has been waiting."

Kaela raised an eyebrow. "And the others? The Supremes?"

"Alive. Contained. Not all chose to remain aware."

Reven's heart pounded. "There are more of me?"

"Not like you. You are the only natural-born survivor. The others are… curated."

"Clones," Kaela said, blunt.

"Preservations," Steward-9 corrected.

Lirien stepped forward. "Why bring us here? Why let us find this?"

The steward tilted its head. "Because you are the only variable we did not calculate. The Rift does not fear the machines. It fears the unpredictable. It fears the human choice."

Reven's voice was low. "You want to use me."

"No. We want to see if you survive."

A silence.

Then the ground beneath the plaza trembled.

And from above, a crack opened in the false sky.

Not a rift. Not yet.

But the beginning of one.

"You have reached the end of the Vaults," the steward said. "But the real trial has only begun."