Paola stood beside Roric at the helm, hands resting lightly on the railing as the airship drifted forward, steady and sure. White clouds slid past them in slow, endless currents, close enough to feel but never quite close enough to touch. The sky was calm. Too calm, after the last few days.

  Another pirate attack yesterday. Another short, violent interruption. Handled with ease.

  That was the part that bothered her.

  She leaned into the wind, cloak tugging at her shoulders, spiderweb patterns catching the light as they shifted. Her ears flicked reflexively, reading the air, the sounds of sail and rigging, the low creak of a vessel that trusted itself to the sky.

  Had she grown numb to it?

  This world was different. Killing here wasn’t rare. It wasn’t shocking. It was… practical. Necessary. Pirates attacked. They were dealt with. No ceremony. No aftermath beyond repairs and a headcount.

  Earth had been violent too. Wars, murders, land fought over endlessly. Resources. Borders. Religion. She knew that. She hadn’t grown up sheltered.

  But Earth violence had always felt distant. Mediated. Screened. Explained away by news anchors and statistics.

  Here, it had weight. Blood. Sound.

  The wind snapped her ponytail back, cool against her neck. They were only a couple days out from Helios now. Smooth sailing, Roric had said. Fewer patrol routes. Less lawlessness the closer they got to the sunlit city.

  She glanced back across the deck.

  Evan no longer had his scythe. It had been tossed overboard after the second attack, sinking into cloud and distance with a disappointed sigh from him. So much for the Death aesthetic. Now it was just the black cloak, flapping dramatically despite his best efforts.

  Not a single crew member had been harmed.

  Three attacking ships total.

  Well… three ships Yasmin had mostly obliterated. Yucca had assisted, of course. Precision to chaos. But still.

  As a team, they were terrifyingly deadly.

  And there it was again. That word.

  Deadly.

  Paola looked down at herself.

  Bare feet on the deck. No boots. No armor. Just skin and a cloak she barely remembered putting on. Nakedness had become… neutral. Normal. She couldn’t remember the last time it had felt strange.

  She thought of who she had been on Earth.

  A gamer. A semi-recluse. Weekend hikes. Loud family parties. Sisters stealing her clothes. Her brother annoying her on purpose. Socks and sweaters. Shorts under sweats because she was always cold. Comfortable. Soft in ways she hadn’t known she could lose.

  Now she stood unbothered by the fact that she’d killed more than twenty people.

  Bad people. Dangerous people.

  Still.

  On Earth, she had known, deep down, unquestioned—that this was wrong. Unacceptable. Something that would hollow you out if you let it become routine.

  That had been Earth-brained Paola.

  And Earth-brained Paola hadn’t been here in a long time.

  The realization sat heavy in her chest.

  She shook her head sharply, ears flicking, ponytail snapping as if she could physically dislodge the thought. The sky didn’t change. The ship didn’t falter.

  Roric glanced at her, saying nothing, giving her the courtesy of silence.

  Paola exhaled slowly and lifted her gaze back to the clouds ahead.

  Two days.

  Helios awaited.

  Paola leaned forward onto the railing just past the helm, forearms resting on the cool wood as she looked back over the deck. The ship moved with quiet confidence now, sails full, rigging humming softly as clouds slid by like slow, patient waves.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Everyone had settled into their own pockets of calm.

  Yasmin, Yucca, and Evan stood near the port side, heads bent together in conversation. Windmere, all three of them, in their own strange ways. Evan gestured animatedly, cloak fluttering, while Yucca listened with that attentive stillness of hers and Yasmin punctuated the air with sharp motions and louder opinions. Evan was… complicated. From Earth, like her. Fallen Star, like her. His path had twisted into something stranger than most, but he belonged here now, whether the world knew how to classify him or not.

  Selene was further down the deck, fingers moving with surprising patience as she worked ropes alongside two of Roric’s crew. Knots. Clean. Precise. Helpful, in her own quiet way. She didn’t speak much, but no one told her to leave.

  Ayla was… somewhere. Paola smiled faintly at that. Ayla always was—present, vigilant, never far, even when unseen.

  And Poca.

  Poca sat on the stairs leading below deck, legs tucked to one side, humming softly. The tune was wordless, gentle, something that seemed to belong more to the air than to any language. In her hands was a small puppet, half-finished. A bird. Tiny and delicate, shaped like a canary, its wings jointed with thread-fine magic and care.

  Everyone was at peace.

  That was the strange part.

  Not the blood. Not the violence. Not the fact that pirates had screamed and fallen into nothingness days ago. The strange part was that Paola felt… calm. That she could see this moment and not feel it fracture under the weight of what had happened.

  Her mind tried to protest.

  This is wrong.

  You should feel something.

  This is how trauma starts.

  She had killed people. Thrown them overboard. Watched bodies disappear into clouds with no idea how far they’d fall. Earth-brained Paola would have been shaking. Vomiting. Haunted.

  Instead, she was here. Breathing. Watching clouds pass like drifting continents.

  She should—

  “Ah,” Poca said softly, looking up at her. “You like her?”

  Paola blinked, pulled abruptly out of the spiral. “Huh?”

  “Ze little bird,” Poca continued, smiling. “She is for scouting. Light. Free. She will see places before we do.”

  Paola stepped closer, crouching a little to look. “She’s beautiful.”

  Poca’s cheeks warmed faintly. “I was inspired,” she said, accent lilting. “All zis flying. All zis freedom. It makes one want to… send a piece of themselves ahead, no?”

  She adjusted a thread, fingers impossibly gentle. Then, without comment, she leaned into Paola’s side, shoulder resting against her hip, familiar and unassuming. The contact was casual. Natural. Like breathing.

  As if she’d felt the spiral before Paola herself had named it.

  Poca’s humming resumed, low and soothing. “You are very quiet today, mon chaton.”

  Paola exhaled, tension easing out of her chest as if it had been waiting for permission. She rested a hand lightly on Poca’s shoulder.

  “I’m okay,” she said. And this time, it wasn’t a lie.

  The clouds kept drifting by.

  The ship sailed on.

  And for reasons Paola couldn’t fully explain yet—

  Peace stayed.

  He lived in the lower terraces of Mid Helios, in a building that caught the light but never quite owned it.

  The streets there were clean, intentionally so, but worn at the edges. Dark soil mixed with smooth glass pebbles crunched softly underfoot, bending the refracted light into dull rainbows that never lingered long. Not poor. Not privileged. The kind of place where people worked civic jobs, tended archives, maintained canals, taught apprentices. Respectable. Quiet.

  The trees overhead were tall and spaced just far enough apart to let the light through. Their crystal-veined bark caught the afternoon glow and split it into pale colors that slid along walls and stone arches. Moss glimmered faintly at the base of buildings, blue and gold where water pooled and ran back into the city’s veins. Helios breathed around him, alive but restrained. Watching.

  He liked walking this way. It helped him think.

  That was when he noticed the gathering.

  Not a crowd, exactly. A loose ring of people. Ten, maybe fifteen. Standing, not pressing. Listening. No raised voices. No banners. No guards rushing in to disperse anyone.

  A man stood at the center.

  Ragged, at first glance. Layered cloth, sun-bleached and patched, arranged with a care that didn’t match the word beggar. He stood with his back straight, hands relaxed at his sides. His voice wasn’t loud, but it carried. Calm. Certain.

  The citizen slowed, curiosity tugging at him. He stopped at the edge of the group.

  The man was speaking of gods.

  Not in the old way.

  “Ra was power through clarity,” the beggar said, eyes half-lidded, as if recalling something personal. “Order. Structure. Continuity. He thrived when people believed the world had a center. A rhythm. A rightful ruler.”

  A few listeners shifted. No one interrupted.

  “But Ra is gone.”

  There was no gasp. No outrage.

  The man smiled faintly.

  “Not dead,” he continued. “Not struck down. Simply… gone. He faded when certainty faded. When people stopped needing a single sun to tell them where to stand.”

  The citizen felt an unexpected tightness in his chest.

  “They learned systems,” the man said softly. “Councils. Laws. Shared responsibility. And for a time, it worked.”

  He lifted his gaze then, eyes sharp now, scanning faces.

  “But order without belief is fragile. Structure without meaning bends. And Helios—” his voice warmed, affectionate and critical all at once “—is unfinished.”

  A ripple went through the listeners.

  “You feel it,” the man said. “The strain. The hesitation. Destiny spoken where choice once lived. Faith returning, not because it is taught—but because it is needed.”

  Someone murmured agreement.

  “The gods will return,” the beggar said, not as a threat, not as a promise, but as a certainty. “Not to punish. Not to dominate. But to give. To restore rhythm. To place the sun back where it belongs.”

  The citizen swallowed.

  He had not believed in gods. Not truly. Helios had taught him that independence was strength. That they had outgrown divine oversight.

  Yet standing there, watching light bend through crystal leaves, hearing the calm conviction in that voice, he felt something stir.

  Longing, maybe.

  Or relief.

  When the man smiled, it was warm.

  When his eyes hardened, ancient.

  The citizen did not notice when he nodded along.

  Only later would he wonder why the words had stayed with him long after he walked away—why the city, refracting light around him as always, suddenly felt as if it were waiting for something to return.