Chapter 6

The tower shuddered, the great chains groaning under the impossible weight. The tension gauge spiked violently, the needle slamming against the highest mark before flickering erratically. The stabilizers, designed to keep even the largest sky-beasts under control, trembled under the force, their reinforced steel casings vibrating with a deep, unnatural strain. The air inside the control room grew thick, stifling, like the heat of a storm pressing against the walls.

Galrin barely had time to brace himself as the stabilizers lurched, the machinery letting out a deep, metallic wail like something alive was in pain. His boots skidded against the metal floor as he grabbed onto the railing, forcing himself to stay upright. The tower had never moved like this before.

The realization hit young Corrin like a cold weight in his gut as he watched, his gaze darting between the flashing dials and the great reel, its chains rattling, metal shrieking as the weight on the other end shifted again.

It wasn’t the usual struggle of a caught beast, the desperate thrash of something massive trying to free itself. This was something else. The pressure of it rolled up through the line, curling through the cables, vibrating through the machine itself in an awful, deliberate rhythm—as if the thing below wasn’t just resisting capture, but responding.

Corrin felt his stomach twist. He turned toward the observation window, his breath catching in his throat.

Something was moving.

Not in the way clouds rolled or mist stretched across the vast expanse of the void. Not in the way the sky-beasts drifted, their great, slumbering forms carried by the winds of the upper reaches. This was different. Something shifted in the distance, beyond the clouds, a shadow against the blackness that did not obey the rules of the sky. It didn’t ripple or sway. It didn’t float like mist or scatter like smoke. It bent, curling at impossible angles, moving in ways that made no sense—like a shape that was struggling to exist inside this world.

Corrin’s breath turned shallow. His instincts screamed at him.

He could hear a voice, deep in his mind. Though they were whispers and he could not make out what they were saying. Observing Galrin, he thought he could perhaps hear them too, his lips mouthing out some unheard language.

He turned sharply toward the controls, his heart pounding. “Galrin, we need to cut the line.”

Galrin didn’t move.

The older man stood hunched over the console; his fingers locked around the controls so tightly his knuckles had gone white. His breathing had changed—deep, uneven, almost trembling. Sweat glistened along his brow, though the room had grown cold.

For the first time since Corrin had known him, Galrin looked afraid.

“Galrin,” he tried again, stepping closer. “Something’s wrong. The stabilizers are failing—we need to—”

The master Skycatcher twitched. A small, sudden motion, like a man waking from a deep dream.

Then he whispered something.

At first, Corrin thought he had misheard. The old man’s lips barely moved, his voice low, breathless, as though he were listening to something no one else could hear.

“I hear you,” Galrin muttered.

Corrin went still, knowing that the words weren’t meant for him.

His masters fingers twitched over the levers, moving slightly, then stopping. His gaze flicked up, unfocused, not looking at Corrin, not looking at the controls—looking past them, past everything. His lips parted again, voice hoarse, barely more than a whisper.

“I know. I know what he’s thinking,” Galrin murmured, almost in response. His throat bobbed with a swallow. His fingers curled tighter. “He wants to let you go.”

Corrin’s blood turned to ice.

“What are you talking about?” he asked carefully, taking a slow step forward.

Galrin exhaled sharply, his shoulders hunching. His gaze snapped to Corrin, but his eyes were wrong—wide, unfocused, too dark in the dim light.

“You’re afraid,” Galrin muttered, voice thin, turning his head towards the young apprentice. “You think this is beyond us. You think I should let it go.”

Then, he heard it too, a whisper. It did not come from Galrin. It did not come from the wind.

It came from everywhere at once.

A voice without form. A presence without shape. It curled around the edges of the room like the breath of something vast and unseen, coiling in the corners of the tower, curling behind Corrin’s ears like something speaking inside his own mind.

Corrin staggered back, his breath vanishing from his lungs. The sound wasn’t a sound. It was a thought that didn’t belong to him, sinking into his skull, sliding between the cracks of his mind like oil, thick and inescapable. Galrin inhaled sharply, his grip tightening on the controls as if bracing against something unseen, something whispering into the marrow of his bones. “Never” he muttered, his voice shaking, distant, as though he was speaking to someone who wasn’t in the room.

Corrin forced his legs to move, stepping forward again, reaching out, feeling the cold press of dread against his ribs. “Galrin, don’t listen—” But another voice filled the space between them, curling like smoke in the air, wrapping its words in something dense, something ancient.

He fears what you will become.

Galrin twitched violently, a tremor rolling through his body, his breath coming in sharp, panicked bursts, his fingers flexing over the controls, twitching as though fighting off unseen hands. Corrin reached for him, but the old man lunged back, sudden and wild, his teeth bared in something close to rage. “No! I won’t let you take this from me!”

The words came fast, fevered, and for the first time, Corrin saw just how deep the thing’s hooks had sunk into him. Galrin’s face had twisted into something wrong, his eyes too wide, his breath too ragged, his body locked in rigid defiance. Then the tower lurched. The entire structure groaned, the chains rattling, vibrating like something had caught them instead of the other way around.

The walls shuddered, the great stabilizers grinding as they fought to hold the line, their screams rising in protest against the weight pulling against them. The great reel let out a high, metallic shriek, the kind of sound that signalled the breaking point, the kind of sound that meant something enormous was about to give way. Corrin stumbled forward, grabbing onto the railing, his pulse hammering as his gaze snapped toward the observation window, his breath catching in his throat. The shadow moved again. And this time—it was closer. No longer just a distant shape lurking in the abyss beyond the clouds. It had shifted, its form pressing against the edges of reality like something testing the fabric of the world itself, stretching it thin.

The sky bent around it, warped, the clouds coiling in strange, unnatural patterns, the air pulsing with a wrongness Corrin could feel in his bones. The Skycatcher’s beam flickered, its steady glow trembling, distorting as if it, too, was being touched by the presence beneath them. The world seemed to hold its breath. Corrin turned back to his teacher, his stomach twisting, his throat dry. “Galrin,” he gasped. “It’s coming closer. You have to cut the line—now.” But he was no longer listening. He was shaking, his eyes wide with something caught between terror and awe, his fingers white-knuckled around the controls. His breath came in rapid, shallow gasps, his lips still moving, still whispering to the thing below, feeding it, letting it grow inside him. Corrin took another step forward, desperation creeping into his voice. “Listen to me—” The line pulled again. Hard. The tower let out a sickening groan, metal shrieking, beams rattling, the chains straining toward the abyss.

Corrin could feel the energy, the overwhelming negative force emanating from the Skycatching machine, from his master himself. Whatever they had snagged up in the vastness of space, it was now tethered to their world and it was not letting go.

It was then that the master Skycatcher drew the knife.