Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1: We Begin Our Tale…

(as passed down by those who remember)

Between Tower and Earth, Only Sky Divides.

The ten spires of Halidom stretch high above the cloudline, each one proudly. But far below, veiled beneath those drifting clouds, lies a city just as vital — a lush world tended by the Rooted, who others call groundlings. There, the land blooms with purpose. Terraced gardens spiral down hillsides. Vines coil over arched walkways.

Rain falls every morning — a miracle that runs on memory and solar light. It’s the Cloudline that makes it possible: a lattice of engineered vapor maintained by ancient protocols and solar collectors on every spire. Long ago, Rooted and Highborn built it together to heal what greed had broken. Now, the sky rains by schedule. A gift turned transaction. A promise turned tool.

The towers may glitter like heaven, but it is the earth that breathes. And it breathes only because the bargain holds.

The skyblood say the groundlings rejected progress.

They’re wrong.

We understand science. We teach it. We use it. We just don’t bow to it. Because the last time our people trusted machines without question, the vines failed, the soil soured, and the rivers rose without warning. Algorithms don’t grieve. Drones don’t feel hunger.

Up there, they optimize. Automate. Trust AI more than instinct.

Down here, we still patch roofs by hand. We still test soil by touch. Not because we’re backward—because we remember.

Precision without wisdom is just another kind of collapse.

They build drones.
We build ladders.

And only one of those knows how to catch a child falling from the sky.

They speak of the towers as if they rose from ambition.

But that is not how it began…