The City Of God -

The sun didn’t rise over the city of ; it simply ignited. Built atop a floating shelf of white quartz suspended miles above the clouds, the city was known to the surface-dwellers as the "City of God." To its citizens, it was a gilded cage.

With a heavy heart and a steady hand, Kael didn't perform the nightly maintenance. Instead, he reversed the polarity of the stabilizers. The city of God

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 sun didn’t rise over the city of ; it simply ignited

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. Instead, he reversed the polarity of the stabilizers

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.

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.

"Let me fall," it whispered. "The weight of their perfection is crushing me."