"Let me fall," it whispered. "The weight of their perfection is crushing me."
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. The city of God
One evening, while scrubbing the conduits of the Great Spire, Kael noticed a rhythmic vibration coming from the Core. It wasn't the usual hum of power; it sounded like a . "Let me fall," it whispered
The city didn't plummet. It began a slow, graceful descent. As the white towers pierced the cloud layer for the first time in an epoch, the "God" at the center stopped weeping. The golden light faded, replaced by the warm, messy orange of a natural sunset. One evening, while scrubbing the conduits of the
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.