The Skyhost’s horns echoed across the night sky, but Jin was already beyond their reach, riding winds that hadn’t blown in centuries. Her cloud-mark blazed with remembered patterns as she followed the star-scripts deeper into the high darkness, each gust of air carrying new secrets.
“I know, I know,” she muttered as her wind-rider bucked against unfamiliar currents. “You’re excited to remember. But we still need to breathe up here.”
Behind her, the Aerie’s floating bulk was mobilizing for pursuit. Dozens of wind-riders rising like angry wasps, their pilots’ air-marks glowing with standard patterns – nothing like the complex scripts now flowing across Jin’s skin.
But they were following old maps, known wind-paths.
Jin was riding something far older.
The star-patterns shifted around her, forming corridors of pure light. Ancient airways, her logbook had called them, though she hadn’t understood what that meant until now. The winds here moved differently, carrying fragments of memory like scattered leaves:
Water and fire dancing in the deep—
Mountains waking, giants stirring—
Temples rising, spheres singing—
The elements remembering their first tongue—
A patrol of riders appeared ahead, trying to cut off her path. Jin smiled as the ancient winds simply… shifted, carrying her through spaces the Skyhost had forgotten existed. Their shouts of frustration faded behind her.
“Jin!” A new voice, carried on carefully shaped air. Instructor Senna, her mentor at the Aerie. “Please! Whatever you think you’re discovering, it’s not worth throwing away everything you’ve worked for!”
But that was wrong. The patterns writing themselves across the sky showed her exactly what it was worth. The true nature of air itself – not meant to be shaped and contained by careful protocols, but to dance freely with its sister elements.
Her logbook pages fluttered, and Jin saw her careful notes with new understanding. All those nights spent conducting starlight through currents, thinking she was creating something new… she’d been remembering. The air itself had been teaching her letters in its first language, showing her the way back to something ancient and true.
The winds surged suddenly, carrying a new taste – sage and cedar smoke. Jin banked hard as another rider emerged from the clouds, but this was no Skyhost guard. The figure rode the winds like they were water, their movements fluid and strange. An air-mark blazed on his face, but the patterns were like none Jin had seen before.
“Well met, star-reader,” the stranger called. His voice carried easily despite the wind’s song, deep and melodic like distant thunder. “I am Talon of the Zephyrcaller Nomads. And you’re not the only one the sky is talking to tonight.”
Jin’s hand tightened on her wind-rider’s controls. The Zephyrcallers were legendary among the Skyhost – air-mages who rejected the rigid structure of the floating cities, choosing instead to follow the winds wherever they led.
“The patterns,” Jin said. “You can see them too?”
Talon laughed, the sound rolling through the high air like summer storm clouds. “We never stopped seeing them. We just didn’t know what they meant until tonight.” He gestured at the horizon where strange lights danced above the sea. “But now? Now the elements are done being silent. Done being separate.”
More horns from the Aerie. The Skyhost was reforming, preparing for a coordinated pursuit. But the winds were already shifting, opening new paths deeper into the forgotten airways.
“They’ll lock you away if they catch you,” Talon warned, his expression darkening like gathering storms. “The old powers fear what’s awakening. But if you’re willing to trust the wind’s memory…” He gestured at the star-lit path ahead.
Jin didn’t hesitate. “Show me.”
They rode together into ancient currents, the winds around them singing with joy as they remembered how to carry secrets between earth and sea, fire and sky. Jin’s carefully ordered notes gave way to new patterns as the air itself taught her its true nature.
Behind them, the Skyhost’s ordered world of contained magic and careful protocols grew smaller and smaller.
Ahead lay others who could read these signs. Who could hear the elements’ true songs. Who could help remake what had been broken.
The Aerie’s horns faded to whispers as Jin followed her strange new guide through paths written in starlight.
The dance was calling.
And the winds themselves would carry her there.