The great chains binding the floating city of Rotaalan creaked and groaned as they swayed with the gusts of wind. They were as high as the birds, as high as mountains. Emalia withdrew the last of her climbing ropes from the chains and took a quick step back, eager to put some distance between her and the edge. The great stone blocks layering the top level of Rotaalan’s surface ended suddenly where the city stopped and the sky began. She risked a glance back and felt her stomach tumble at the emptiness. The climb had been a horrid, almost never-ending struggle. And even now, she hardly felt safe and secure.

Protect me, oh great Sunderer, Martyr of Humankind, Emalia prayed silently. Shield me from this fear. This weakness buried in my Soul—

A grip on her thick, fur-lined tunic tugging her gently broke her concentration. “Please don’t stand so close to the edge, Em. It makes me nervous.”

Emalia turned and blinked, taking in the grim expression of her old friend and sworn guardian, Sovina. Clad in a mail shirt and quilted arming cap, gripping a handaxe with a sheathed official temple saber at her side, she was a sight to be seen amongst the uncivilized city-states of the north, not used to the armored women of the Nova Column. But here, in these ruins, she looked as if she belonged, capable and strong, even if under the surface, she were more caring, considerate, and kind than anyone Emalia had ever known.

“That sounds like an order,” Emalia tried with a smile, not quite able to rid herself of the shake in her voice.

“When it comes to keeping you alive here, it is.”

Turning her gaze from her sole traveling companion, Emalia took in the towering ruins of the once-great city and Wonder that was Rotaalan. Built upon an island, fortified and stabilized with massive blocks of stone, multiple square miles were heaved into the sky with the sheer strength of old Sorcery. Spires and towers jutted up, some broken, others still looming like monoliths over crumbling homes of stone and brick below. There were temples to the true gods, bastions, stretching estates, wandering sections of broken aqueducts, and then the central fortification—a keep matched only in the core cities of the Vasian Empire. Their destination. Looking upon such wonders, all thoughts of their dangerous height faded away. As a prophet of Raizak, she had her divine purpose before her.

“Let us hide the ropes nearby,” Emalia muttered, gaze lingering on the high walls and turrets of the keep. “If there are looters here, we should be cautious.”

“There will be.” Sovina gathered the ropes and piled them in the darkness of a nearby ruin’s doorway. When she was done, she gestured to the tree trunk-thick chain links they’d spent the entire morning climbing up. “If it’s close enough to the shore for us, then I’m sure some enterprising scoundrels will be rummaging through this place.”

“Even after what happened with its twin, Elansk?”

“Such people are desperate. For them, gold weighs heavier than their lives.”

“What a short-sighted perspective.” Emalia snorted, frowning off and adjusting her brocade headwrap.

“Maybe.” She shrugged. “But no less true.”

Conceding the point with a stretch of silence, she strode forward, Sovina at her side, ever watchful. Gazing around at the history before her, untouched by humanity for the last hundred years, the city was like a portal back into the days of old. At the height of the empire, when Wonders like this were a tsar’s ambition rather than their downfall. But now it was a derelict, forgotten thing, falling slowly, its magic fading away like the wax of a burning candle. Nothing but smoke in the air, now.

They were less than a quarter mile from the keep, judging from their first glance at it, but as they wound their way through the city streets, avoiding piles of rubble and unstable foundations, it seemed the central fort never got any closer. And then, soon enough, it wasn’t there at all. All Emalia could see were the rooftops around her, closed in like the towering shelves of the Column’s many archives. She winced at the memory. Even though this was because of their gods, the priests didn’t understand. They not only didn’t believe her, but deemed her direct communication with Raizak as an impossible fabrication. It doesn’t matter, she thought, shaking away the anxiety that welled every time she thought of home. They believe what they will. It has no bearing on me anymore. True as it might be, the thought sat in her throat like a stone, taking some effort to swallow and pull her attention back to the present.

She had her mission, her purpose here. No concerns of the past would hold her back now.

“Wait,” Sovina whispered, stopping suddenly before her.

Emalia nearly ran into her, then frowned past her shoulder. “What is it?”

Her companion glanced back and met her eyes, then slowly slid them down the street for Emalia to follow. Perhaps forty paces ahead, in the remains of an alleyway, was the form of a man. But not just any man. After a moment of concentration to pick up the details hidden by shadows, the cold weight of dread settled across her, thick and unavoidable. The rumors were true.

There were Dead in the fallen city.

“Greyskin looks like,” Sovina muttered.

It was a large creature, a head taller than an average man with hunched and crooked shoulders from which inhumanly long arms dangled, clawed fingers nearly scraping the ground. These kinds were only found in the lost Wonders of the world and edges of the frontierlands. Greyskins were larger, faster, and smarter than most other Dead. But that wasn’t why they were feared so.

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“Ah.” Her companion saw it the same moment she did.

The Dead was holding the arm of a half-dangling corpse, the hand held to its jaws as it tore off strips of flesh. The wet sounds of such evil carried, turning Emalia’s stomach.

Sovina took her by the elbow and guided them back in search of an alternative route. After turning a corner, she said, “There are looters here, then.”

“Or were.” She couldn’t shake the image of that creature from her mind. How it stood there, hunched and decrepit, almost human, yet far too monstrous. What did humanity do to deserve such a curse? Why can you not simply rid us of them for good, Rotaal?

“We’re smarter than them. And we’re not here to steal and pillage, right? Raizak will protect us; we’re here for him, after all.”

“Of course.” Emalia nodded, rubbed her face, and stood tall. They were on a different street leading into an intersection of sorts. At the center, a strange monument in the shape of an obelisk was erected, now crooked and clearly on the verge of collapse. She studied it, then the streets and buildings for a minute before turning and gesturing to a sidestreet. “According to the notes, we should be getting close.”

“And if the gate’s locked? Your passageway, then?”

“Yes, but if that too is blocked, we prepare to scale the walls.”

“Of course.” Sovina gave a crooked, charming grin. “More climbing.”

The streets were as narrow as Nova’s, but straighter, more structured in their design. It was as if each stone in the whole city were nearly planned with quill and ink, and the more Emalia considered it, the more likely it seemed that was the case. After all, everything would need to be carefully monitored and studied to ensure a perfect equilibrium, as her old tomes would put it. Like many of the ancient Wonders of antiquity, the floating cities of Rotaalan and Elansk were impractical. Food, water, fuel, and waste would have been large matters of concern. Indeed, it was those very problems that offered a hidden passage into the central keep.

They picked their way through the ruins carefully, watchful of alleys and dark doorways where the Dead surely lurked. Sovina was in the lead now, her saber held low and ready, bobbing slightly with what Emalia could only guess as anticipation. Her companion wasn’t bloodthirsty—not exactly—but she wasn’t one to shy away from a good fight, as she’d put it. At least one of us possesses such courage, she thought with a frown. We shall need it here.

Soon enough, and without another sighting of the Dead, the tall walls of the keep emerged from the crowded sightlines of the city. Four tall square towers made up the corners of the outer wall, with multiple stone structures rising above them inside the walls. They had balconies with garden plots and open walkways with exposed courtyards to view the city streets. The limited information she’d managed to find on the city’s layout before she left Nova had not spoken much on the keep, but she’d expected castles of the eastern hillsides, not what seemed like a fortified estate.

“I’d think a floating city was enough deterrence to the enemy,” Sovina muttered as they paused to take in their destination, “so why all the walls? For their own people?”

“Civil war and strife is the one constant of history.”

“Still, I figure their enemies would just fly in or some such Sorcery.”

Or raise armies of the Dead. Emalia shivered, then directed them forward and along the wall. It was best not to think of such horrors of the past. She had to focus on the present. Unfortunately, the gate to access the inside of the walls, as she suspected, was closed. Two wide doors reinforced with iron were shut and, after a testing shove, also locked.

Sovina craned her head back to see the top of the wall. “Secret passageway it is then.”

“We’ll need our torches.” Emalia felt for the knife at her side, suddenly wishing she had more to protect herself with. “And we’ll need to be cautious. Dead often dwell in such places.”

Her companion took out two torches from her large pack and held them under her free arm. “Quick and quiet, then. Nothing we’re strangers to, right?”

“Right.”

They circled the walls until Emalia spotted the small square building she was looking for. It stood a standard dozen paces from the walls, along with the other houses and businesses, so that it could be easily missed. But as Sovina pushed open the front door and the cloud-marred sunlight filtered inside, she knew her parchments were right, and this was no standard home. An iron gate barred entrance to a large opening in the ground, trapdoors tossed open, one off its hinges and hanging awkwardly to the side. But holding their attention were the half dozen skeletons piled up against the other side of the iron gate as if they had been trying to escape.

“I thought everyone fled Rotaalan?” Sovina asked, voice quiet and cautious.

“Most did. Some stayed.” Emalia approached, kneeling to observe the skeletons. Though she had only an academic understanding of anatomy and physiology, she could tell quickly enough there was damage to the bones. Cuts and scrapes and shattered pieces from punctures. “They learned too late the inherent instability of Sorcery. The Great Martyr Raizak gave us knowledge, but it was his sacrifice that also birthed such… temptation.”

“Poor fools.”

“They brought it on themselves.”

“Maybe these Sorcerers you speak of, but everyone?” Sovina asked, something soft in her voice. “Aristocrats, even? What did they do to deserve this?”

She studied the bones a while longer, the question hanging in the air. Finally, Emalia stood, brushing the dust from her tunic. “Complacency in a broken system means participation in the act. They could have done something. They could have left earlier and not tempted the gods.”

Sovina glanced her way but said nothing. Instead, she shook the door to the gate, and though it was old and rusted, it held. She tried her lockpicks on the keyhole, but it was too rusted, so she pulled out a prybar and shoved it near the lock, heaving as the metal squealed in protest. Such noise raised the hair on Emalia’s arms as the thought of creatures of death running to investigate, so she closed the door behind her but could do little more with how rotten the bar lock was. I could have closed my eyes to the complacency and ignorance of my people, but I left. I put myself in the way of danger to do what is just. She folded her arms and watched as the iron gate fell to the side, opening the passageway into the dark descent under the castle. I am the hand of Raizak. He speaks to me, through me, and so it is my duty to fulfill his commands. The smell of stagnant death swirled up from below, turning stomachs. Her mind reeled with imagined numbers of undead ready to feast on her flesh. I am his hand in the land of humanity, of mortality. How many crawled in the shadows down there? How many were waiting?

“Focus on what we can control, Column-sister,” Sovina said, handing her a lit torch.

She took it, watching the flames sputter and curl around the pitch-soaked fabric at the end. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, the echoes of her dreams lingered. Whispers spoken in the early morning as the sun colored the sky a faint yellow. Raizak, the Sunderer, Martyr of Humankind, her patron god, spoke of the dangers to come and the great necessity of her task. And how when she found the creature she was searching for, bound and half-broken, she would need to kill it and cut out its heart. Only then, with such an item, could Raizak breathe his second breath and return.

Only then could the fallen world be saved.