In the dusky embrace of twilight, the apprentice stood atop the tower, his gaze lost in the endless expanse of the heavens. With a practiced hand, he cast the line, a slender beacon stretching into the star-freckled void. Around him, the air hummed with a quiet tension, the first faint stirrings of an otherworldly force. As he watched, the line stretched further and further into the cosmos, reaching beyond any distance he had ever seen. Suddenly, the line jerked, and the machine’s gauges flickered wildly, registering something far more powerful than anything the charts had ever recorded before.

As the apprentice gripped the machine, he felt a surge of raw power coursing through it, threatening to tear it from his grasp. He planted his feet firmly, muscles straining as he wrestled with the unseen force. The air around him crackled with energy, and he could feel the immense weight of the thing he had hooked.

Every muscle in his body burned with effort as he fought to maintain control, knowing that he had caught something spectacular.

The apprentice wiped the sweat from his brow and turned his focus to the control panel, his fingers trembling as they hovered over the dials. The machine before him, an intricate array of brass levers, glowing gauges, and humming coils, pulsed with energy as it strained against the force at the other end of the line. With painstaking precision, he twisted the primary tension dial a fraction to the left, reducing the strain on the cables. The mechanical whir of the reeling mechanism deepened into a slow, measured hum, the great iron drum rotating in cautious increments.

For a moment, the tension on the line stabilized, and the apprentice dared to hope he could coax the catch in gently, without catastrophe. But then, a violent jolt shuddered through the tower, sending infernal sparks scattering from the machine’s interface. The line snapped taut as though a mountain had hooked itself onto the other end. The apprentice’s breath caught in his throat—this thing was resisting with immense, incalculable force.

The machine groaned under the strain, gears grinding, cables whining as they fought to hold against the force. The primary gauge flickered dangerously into the red, the needle quivering at the threshold of disaster. If the line snapped now, not only would he lose the catch, but the backlash could tear the whole mechanism apart, maybe even bring the tower down with it.

Gritting his teeth, the apprentice eased his grip and reached for the secondary stabilizer. With careful, deliberate movements, he dialled it down by two degrees, spreading the tension more evenly across the spooling system. The machine responded with a heavy shudder, steam hissing from the release vents as it absorbed the unnatural pressure. For a moment, he thought he had it under control.

Then the entity below wrenched the line again, harder this time. The tower trembled, cables shrieking, the control panel flashing a warning light. The apprentice had never seen anything fight back like this before. His pulse thundered in his ears as he reached for the emergency pressure release, knowing that if this thing kept resisting, he might not be able to hold on much longer.

The apprentice’s hand hovered over the release catch dial, slick with sweat, as the machine groaned under the strain. If the line snapped, if the tower failed, it wouldn’t just be his own life at risk—it would be the death knell for the entire region.

The realization settled over him like a lead weight in his stomach, colder than the night wind whipping around the tower’s spire.

This tower was more than just an old structure of iron and stone; it was the lifeblood of the settlement. The great celestial beasts they reeled from the void were their sustenance, their foundation.

Without them, there would be no more meat, no more marrow-rich broth to fill the bellies of the people. The town below would starve within weeks, their stores dwindling as hunger took root. He pictured the market stalls, once vibrant with cuts of fresh star-whale meat, reduced to barren tables covered in dust. The thought twisted his gut.

And it wasn’t just food. The creatures' bones were carved into tools, their hides turned into protective garments, their sinews wound into strong cords.

The towering spires of the city, its very foundations, had been reinforced with the remains of these colossal beings. If the supply ceased, everything would collapse—not just livelihoods, but the very fabric of society itself. He could already hear the whispers of panic, the gnawing hunger, the people turning on one another in desperation.

Trade would crumble. The neighbouring regions, so dependent on their shipments, would withdraw. Their once-prosperous city would be left to rot, its people turning gaunt, the glow fading from their eyes as famine set in. No bone, no meat, no industry—only the slow, inevitable decay of a civilization built upon the backs of these catches. The apprentice swallowed hard, his throat dry.

Sure, there were other towers on the continent, but they would be unable to cope with the demand to supply a whole new region, one that had lost its own tower to a young apprentices foolish bravado. The tower could be re-built too, but how many years would that take?

He gripped the dials tighter. He couldn’t let that happen. The tower had to hold. He had to reel this thing in, no matter what it was, no matter how violently it fought back. If the line snapped, if the tower crumbled, it would be his failure.

A door slammed open behind him, rattling on its rusted hinges. Heavy boots clomped across the metal grating, uneven, hurried, their owner still sluggish from sleep. The apprentice didn’t turn—he didn’t have to. He knew that gait, the weight of those steps, the gruff muttering that followed.

“What in the seven hells is happening Corren?” The voice was thick with sleep, but edged with irritation. The tower master, old Galrin, was a man who’d spent his life wrangling the cosmic beasts, his hands calloused from decades of fine-tuning the great reels, his patience worn thinner than parchment.

“The line,” Corren gasped, barely able to tear his hands away from the controls for even a second. “It—it caught something. Something big.” He flicked his gaze toward the primary gauge, the needle still quivering near the red. “It’s fighting harder than anything I’ve ever seen. I tried to stabilize it, but—”

Galrin grumbled something under his breath and shoved past him, his thick fingers gripping the dials with an ease that came from experience. His bleary eyes swept across the flashing warning lights, the tension readings, the trembling machinery barely holding together. A frown settled deep in the furrows of his face.

“Damn thing’s nearly pulled us apart,” he muttered. With a practiced hand, he reached for the stabilizer controls, twisting the main pressure valve in increments so small the apprentice could barely see them. But he felt the effect immediately—the groaning of the metal softened, the shaking of the tower dulled, the tension on the line no longer a beast threatening to snap free but a caged thing, subdued, forced into submission.

Galrin exhaled through his nose, running a hand down his grizzled face. He glanced at the apprentice Corren, expression unreadable.

“It’s big, alright. But not impossible.” His hands moved over the secondary reel controls, adjusting the draw speed ever so slightly.

The great drum of the mechanism gave a deep, rolling whir as it began its work—not the panicked sputter of something fighting to keep up, but a steady, controlled pull.

“At this pace,” Galrin murmured, eyes locked on the readouts, “we’ll land it in the catch zone in five days.” His tone was calm now, assured, like this was just another haul. But the apprentice wasn’t fooled. His master wasn’t a man easily rattled—but his shaking fingers betrayed his cool composure.

Five days. Five days of keeping this thing steady. Five days of hoping it didn’t thrash, didn’t snap the line, didn’t bring them all down with it.

Corrin swallowed hard, watching the slow, rhythmic whir of the reel, feeling the sheer weight of the thing below, the unnatural force straining against the line. His gut twisted with unease. This wasn’t like the others. This wasn’t some lumbering sky-beast, drifting docilely through the void.

The line had cast so far beyond any distance previously recorded, there was no telling what strange variant of sky-beast they had found and ensnared.

Every instinct in him screamed that they were pulling in something they weren’t meant to.

“Maybe we should let it go,” Corrin said, his voice barely above the hum of the machine.

Galrin’s hands froze over the controls for the briefest moment before he turned, his lined face hard as iron. “What did you just say?”

Corrin forced himself to meet his master’s gaze. “This thing—it’s different. You saw how it fought. You felt it. It’s too strong. If it gets any worse, we could lose the whole tower. Maybe worse than that.”

He hesitated, then forced the words out. “We should cut the line before it’s too late.”

Galrin’s expression darkened, his thick brows knitting together in disbelief. Then, with a harsh bark of laughter, he turned back to the controls. “Boy, you don’t know a damn thing about what we’ve got here.”

He gestured to the great, groaning machine, to the trembling line that stretched into the heavens. “This—this is history in the making. Do you have any idea how much meat this beast will yield? How many mouths it’ll feed? The bone alone will be worth a fortune.” His eyes gleamed, not just with greed, but with the fervour of a man who saw destiny within his grasp.

Corrin clenched his fists. “But what if it’s too much? What if we can’t handle it? You know exactly what happened 20 years ago, what I witnessed with my very own eyes.”

Galrin slammed a heavy hand onto the console. “We will handle it.” His voice was sharp as cut steel. “This isn’t just another haul, Corrin. This is the haul. We land this, and we won’t just be another sky tower scraping by on lean years and scraps. We’ll be the richest damn region in the world. People will know our names. We’ll be legends.”

Corrin’s mouth went dry. He wanted to argue, to tell his master that something about this felt wrong, but he could see it now—Galrin wasn’t just pulling in a beast. He was pulling in his life’s ambition, a dream too big to abandon.

And Corrin wasn’t sure he could stop him.