Since the founding of the Guardian Empire, a single, merciless law had ruled over the windswept archipelago like the edge of a silent executioner's blade—*the Tithe must be paid*.
It didn't matter where you lived—whether in a palace of velvet and glass or a shack pressed into the cliffside by wind and prayer. Every soul was counted. Every body came with a cost. Payment could take many forms: bright Gaus coins, tempered alloys, bred beasts, or even war-forged steel—so long as it added up.
The formula never changed. Five thousand Gaus' worth of tribute per person, doubled for every childless youth between seventeen and twenty-five. No exception. No mercy. It was a burden calculated to kill futures before they could bloom.
It was never meant to be fair.
It was meant to break you.
And if you couldn't pay? You fought. That was the unspoken arrangement—the ugly truth everyone pretended not to know. The unwanted, the infertile, the unloved—they'd be thrown into barbed caravans and shipped off to *Sarus Fortress*, a grim garrison buried into the cliffs of the southernmost isle. A place where the Twisted prowled just beyond the horizon, and the average life expectancy could be measured in months .
That was why Nari and her younger brother, Duri, had been scavenging across the archipelago's broken back for the past seventeen days—dragging their aching bodies over sun-cracked ridges and razor-edged canyons in search of *anything* worth selling. Their home island had withered under a pitiless drought. Not a divine punishment. Just something cruel.
The crops had rotted. The animals collapsed where they stood. And even after offering up every childless youth they had—including Ryel, who'd cried and begged like a whipped mutt—they were still short.
The only hope left was finding something valuable.
*Anything.*
Fortunately, they had Gaeam.
Gaeam was their Dalam, their beast of burden and battered hope—a towering, gangly creature ten feet tall and twenty long, covered in stiff brown fur that always seemed damp. It smelled faintly of wet hay and hazelnuts. It looked like a flying squirrel had gotten into bed with a smug-faced frog . Its enormous throat sac inflated with slow, steady *whumf*s, keeping it and its riders afloat on air currents like a grotesque balloon.
Nari had always found Gaeam ridiculous.
But she also loved it. Fiercely.
Because Gaeam could carry them, and whatever pitiful salvage they scraped from the bones of the earth.
So far, that salvage was worthless. A few twisted veins of dried iron. Maybe 6,700 Gaus at best.
Nowhere *near* enough.
Nari's grip tightened around her bow. Her knuckles were white. Her arms throbbed. But none of that scared her.
Not the Twisted. Not conscription.
What did? Duri.
Duri, who still talked in his sleep. Duri, who couldn't hide how he shivered when the night winds cut through their cloaks. Duri, who was only *fourteen*.
If the debt climbed, if the collectors lost patience... he'd be taken early.
Nari couldn't let that happen.
He could not survive it ,but she could.
She remembered the *Rok-Howler*—the twisted beast that had torn through the eastern fields when she was six. She'd been brave. Stupid. Curious. She'd inhaled the strange pink-purple smoke curling from its corpse.
The Accuh of the Rok-Howler the had entered her. Changed her.
Out of all the powers it might have offered, it had given her the Howler's brute strength—dense bones, iron-thick muscle. The kind of strength that made even village elders go quiet.
Seventeen now, she stood at the edge of desperation, fury, and guilt.
"I won't let it happen," she whispered, her eyes locked on the shifting sea of clouds below them. "No matter what."
"What?" Duri glanced back from Gaeam's saddle, blinking. His voice cut through her thoughts like a blade.
She flinched.
"N-nothing," she lied, fumbling the mirror shard in her palm. A bead of sweat traced a slow, sticky path down her cheek, "do you see anything interesting?"
Nari swallowed the knot in her throat. She adjusted the horn-mounted spyglass they'd cobbled together from broken optics. The sun was dipping lower, painting long shadows across the sky.
And then—
Her breath caught.
At first, she thought her eyes were playing tricks on her. But no—just off their current drift, rising from a blanket of clouds, stood an island. Not strange by itself—all islands in the archipelago floated in the skies. But this one... this one was *wrong*.
Not because it floated.
Because it shouldn't be *here*.
It wasn't lush or overgrown. It wasn't jagged or mountainous like the others.
It was *flat*. Artificial.
The edges were fenced in thick, seamless metal. The ground itself wasn't soil or stone—but some strange, dark gray surface, smooth and uniform, like the work of a god or a noble's artificer.
"Pavement," Nari breathed, heart pounding. "Only the rich have pavement."
Her hands began to tremble. *Had they found a noble island? An abandoned fortress? A forgotten estate?*
Then her lens shifted—and she saw the building.
It loomed across the island's center: tall, collapsed, and alien. A structure made of a gray material that shimmered faintly with dormant enchantment. Most of the upper levels had caved in. But what remained...
Was *glass*.
Massive panes of it. Fractured. Gleaming. The entire front of the structure had once been a wall of enchanted windows. And even shattered, even weathered by time, it sparkled like treasure hoarded by dragons.
Glass alone could fetch tens of thousands of Gaus per pane.
And this place had *hundreds*.
A shiver crawled down her spine.
This island wasn't on any map.
Not mentioned in any story.
It had just... appeared. Empty. Waiting.
"Duri," she said softly, lowering the lens, her voice gone dry.
"What is it?"
She raised her hand, pointing with a shaking finger.
"There's a building," she whispered.
And Gaeam began to turn, gliding toward the metal-rimmed island, its wings catching the wind like parchment sails.
The wind shrieked around them, and the clouds parted like a curtain.
The island loomed closer.
An ancient structure , long dead, half-buried in its own collapse.
A monument to something the world had tried to forget.
And all Nari could think—over and over—was:
That place *shouldn't exist*.
*skip*
The island was too quiet.
Gaeam's wide, leathery paws touched down with a low *thud*, skidding slightly on the unnaturally smooth gray surface. Beneath their feet, the ground felt artificial—too flat, too even. Strange veins of pale metal glinted between cracked slabs, and the air smelled sterile and lifeless, like dried stone struck by lightning long ago. There were no birds. No rustling of wind in leaves. No chirp of insects. Just the gentle *whumf* of Gaeam's throat-sac deflating and the faint metallic groan of some unseen joint giving under the beast's weight.
Nari dismounted silently, swinging her leg over the saddle with the smooth grace of someone used to traveling rough terrain. Her short green hair whipped against her cheek, tousled by the creature's landing. A single strand clung stubbornly to her skin until she brushed it away, tucking it behind her ear with a brisk, almost irritable motion.
Duri was already gone.
Of course he was.
She spotted him up ahead, sprinting toward a looming, half-collapsed structure that jutted up from the island like the spine of some dead god. His arms flailed, boots clattered, and his voice rang out in excited bursts—jibbering half-words and half-laughs, like a child chasing after something only he could see. That was Duri. Her younger brother, as reliable as a thunderstorm—chaotic, loud, impossible to stop once he started moving.
"Duri—wait!" she called, but he was already at the front entrance, wrestling with a set of enormous glass doors framed in curling metal.
She watched him throw his weight against them, trying to force them open like a wild animal testing a cage. His boots skidded uselessly. The doors didn't budge. Not even a tremble. Not even a sound. Duri gave a determined grunt and tried again, this time bracing his feet against the frame and hauling with everything he had.
Nothing.
Then the doors pushed back, subtly, and Duri let out a surprised yelp as he stumbled backward and landed flat on his back with an exaggerated groan.
Nari's lips twitched. She folded her arms, watching with quiet amusement. "Idiot," she muttered fondly.
Her eyes scanned the building with more care. The structure was huge—partially collapsed, but still proud in its way. Twisted girders jutted from the broken roof like rusted ribs, and shattered windows gleamed in the sun. Vines had begun to crawl their way through cracks in the stone, but they were few and brittle, as if even plants were reluctant to claim this place.
The air was thick with dust, dry and choking. But underneath it, there was another scent—faint, metallic, and burnt. Not fresh. Not threatening. Just… old. Long-dead.
She moved with purpose, circling the building's edge until she found what she was looking for—a service door, half-off its hinges and leaning askew behind a crumbled pillar of stone that might have once been a watchtower. She tested it with her foot. It groaned, then swung open, revealing a passage swallowed in shadow.
"This way!" she called.
Duri jogged up behind her, panting and red-faced but grinning like he'd just survived a dragon attack. "I loosened it for you," he said smugly.
"Mm-hm." Nari didn't dignify it with more than that.
The hallway beyond was dark, lit only by the fractured sunlight filtering in through cracks in the ceiling. Rows of metal lockers lined the walls, dented and rusted. Shattered lights hung in limp clusters from the ceiling. Debris littered the floor—broken furniture, torn pages, books scorched and crumpled like dried leaves.
The scent changed the moment they stepped inside. Musty paper.Dust .Smoke . And something else—wild, animal.
Nari paused. One glance was all it took. Duri had already gone still.
They knew this feeling.
They'd stumbled into places like this before—abandoned ruins where scavenger beasts sometimes nested, or worse, the half-forgotten lairs of things with more eyes than sense.
Without a word, she reached beneath her thick wool cloak, fingers brushing the secret pocket sewn at the base of her spine. Her knife slid free with a whisper of metal—a simple, curved blade, its handle wrapped in dark leather. No decoration. Just purpose. With her strength, it was enough.
Duri mirrored her instinctively, drawing his own blade and holding it low, eyes sharp now.
They moved in silence, step by careful step.
The walls were marked with faded posters—some peeling, some burned, some scrawled with symbols neither of them could recognize. If Nari could read, she might have recognized them as Old Empire script. One had the image of a girl smiling, holding a piece of chalk and a slate board. The caption read: "Tomorrow's Leaders Learn Today."
Duri leaned in and squinted. "Creepy."
"Quiet," Nari whispered.
Her boots crunched on broken glass.
They passed a shattered room filled with long tables, their surfaces blackened and scarred. Torn pages were scattered everywhere, some still clinging to books warped by water damage. One had a expertly drawn diagram of a human heart, labeled in four different colors.
"Medical?" Nari murmured, half to herself.
And the deeper they went, the stranger it got.
Rooms filled with twisted metal chairs and coiling wires. Glass panels like dark mirrors, some shattered, some blinking faintly with long-dead power. Blackboards charred and smeared with ash. Lockers torn open. Shelves of strange square machines—glass and steel fused into fragile husks.
"Think nobles lived here?" Duri asked, nudging a desk with the tip of his boot.
Nari shook her head. "Too many seats. Too many repeating rooms . It wasn't a house."
"Then what was it?"
She didn't reply. Not yet. But the shape of it was beginning to settle in her thoughts—the rhythm of the rooms, the repeating corridors, the identical chairs and books. A place for learning. A place for *many*.
A place meant to teach.
But to teach *what*?
And to *whom*?
"A school," a voice said. "For assheads like me."
Nari whirled around, heart lurching, knife raised before her eyes could even catch up. Duri was already stepping forward protectively, blade drawn.
A figure stood in the doorway.
The first thing Nari noticed was height—he was *tall*, tall enough that her head wouldn't reach his shoulder. The second thing was the way he stood: relaxed, like someone who wasn't the least bit worried about the two armed strangers facing him down.
He was built like a fighter, but not the kind born from hunger or labor. This was training. Repetition. His form was lean but defined, muscles coiled under skin pale as milk. And his clothes—his clothes were *wrong*. His boots were sleek, crafted with an elegance no tanner she'd met could replicate. His pants were greenish, smeared in strange, splotched patterns, and dotted with far too many pockets. The white shirt hung loose around his frame, perfectly fitted, yet she couldn't spot the seams.
His face was as sharp as his voice. Clean-cut. A jawline that could slice bread. And eyes the color of storm clouds—cold, steady, unreadable.
He leaned against the doorframe, one brow raised in dry amusement.
"So," he said again, "you gonna introduce yourselves, or just keep stealing my shit?"