Read an Excerpt

Prologue: Before the Divide

As told by Elder Sya

Be still and listen, and I’ll tell you the story of how we built together.

Before this place, we were one people.

Then came the Great Weathering. Science had gone wrong. Storms stripped the coast. Floods rose from broken dams. Even the bedrock cracked under the heat.

When the storms finally stopped, we gathered. What little we’d saved. What strength we had left. And built upward.

Ten towers. Ten spires. Everyone helped… even us children.

We learned to mend what we’d broken. On the flats where the sea had once stood, we raised our city.

We started with clay bricks. Then builders learned to coax fire from sap. Bled it from the roots themselves. That sap burned hotter than wood ever did.

Sand became glass to catch sunlight. Ironstone became steel. Copper bent into pipes that drew water from the air itself.

I was too young to understand it. But I knew we were building something meant to last.

Above the city, we wove the Cloudline. A canopy of mist meant to call back the rains. It hung from the Central Spire like spokes on a wheel. Each line balanced against the next.

The towers gathered sunlight, and the Cloudline turned it into rainfall.

Down below, the garden bloomed. The soil carried its scars, but the rain restored it. Each drop carried minerals we’d woven into the mist. The cracked land softened. Plants found their grip. We sowed heirloom seeds, and the ground took them in.

Halidom cured the wounds the old world had left behind. A city born of love and prayer.