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 climbed together.

Before Halidom’s towers, before the clouds became a curtain, we were one. We weren’t Skybloods or Rooted, just people.

We escaped from the lowlands, scattered by fire and storm, and the winds that tore down shelters. We gathered what we had: rope and iron, clay from the basin. And we built upward. Watchtowers to read the sky. Signals to warn the valley. Anchors for survival.

We built ten towers back then, ten spires reaching to the sky. Each was anchored to the old stone of the basin. We built them together. Everyone helped, even us children, singing as we worked.

We built our towers on the flats where the sea had once stood. Clay bricks for the foundation. Builders learned to coax fire from the sap bled from the roots, which burned hotter than wood. We melted sand into glass to catch sunlight. Forged steel from ironstone. Bent copper into pipes that drew water from the air itself.

After the Great Weathering—storms that stripped the coast, floods from reckless science, heat that cracked bedrock. We learned to mend what we’d broken. Not nature. Ourselves.

So above the city, we wove the Cloudline. A canopy of engineered moisture meant to call back the rains. It hung from the Central Spire like the spokes of a giant wheel, each line of mist strung outward in balance.

We seeded the sky with care. Towers gathered the sunlight, and the Cloudline turned it into daily rain, measured and precise.

Down below, the garden bloomed. The soil still carried its scars, but the rain knew what to do. Each drop carried minerals we’d fused into the vapor. The cracked and bitter land softened. Plants and trees found their grip. Heirloom seeds were sown, and the soil took them in like old friends.

Above, wind chimes rang in harmony at dusk. One note from each tower, ten tones joining into a single chord. Halidom cured the wounds the old world had left behind. A city born of love and prayer.