The descent turned the *Morrowfin* into a falling room.
Orra kept both hands on the platform rail while the ancient flagship carried them downward. The deck had vanished beneath a lattice of green light. Beyond it, enormous gears revolved in the dark, their teeth passing close enough to shear the mast. Each rotation changed the angle of the shaft, guiding the ship through the wreck’s hollow spine.
The crystal beneath Orra’s palm burned with a steady warmth. Its pulses had become slower. Deliberate. Every answer from the ancient machinery came through her bones before it reached the walls.
“Your course is making decisions,” Vey called from the helm.
Orra looked toward him. He had lashed himself to the wheel with a cargo strap. The *Morrowfin* bucked beneath the strain, though no wind touched its sails.
“Then steer around the bad ones.”
“I would enjoy having a choice.”
“You still have one. Keep us in one piece.”
Brask had gone forward to the bow, where the ship’s patched hull pressed against a transparent field of green radiance. Through it, the levels of the ancient wreck slid past: galleries packed with overturned skiffs, sealed barracks, hanging chains thick as tree trunks. White-armored guardians stood on some of the distant platforms, motionless and facing upward.
A flash of red light tore across the upper shaft.
The *Morrowfin* shuddered.
“Something came through,” Brask said.
The ancient voice answered from the walls. “Outer gate compromised. Unauthorized forces within vessel.”
Vey’s face hardened. “The Inquisition.”
Another impact rolled down through the wreck. It sounded smaller than the bombardment above, but closer.
Nima crouched beside the platform, gathering her constellation cards as they spun across the deck. Several had split along their silver edges. She held one up to the light and watched its star pattern rearrange itself.
“They followed the signal,” she said. “The crystal is still broadcasting.”
“Can you stop it?” Orra asked.
Nima hesitated.
That was answer enough.
“Could you stop it if the crystal were out of the socket?”
“It would stop the beacon. It might also stop the course.”
“And if the course stops?”
Next
The fortress has accepted Orra’s crystal and opened its inner door; she must discover what was taken before the Inquisition ship—or whatever lives below—reaches it first.
Nima glanced through the field at the gears turning around them. “We fall into whatever is beneath us.”
Brask returned from the bow with a coil of line over one shoulder. “I vote for the option where we keep moving.”
A white beam cut through the dark above them. It struck the field and spread into branching cracks of light. Behind it, a black-hulled vessel appeared between the ancient ribs, its prows reinforced with iron plates. The Inquisition ship had entered the flagship.
Its guns fired again.
The shield bowed inward. Orra’s boots slid across the platform. The crystal flared beneath her hand, and the course lines on the floor shifted.
The ancient voice spoke. “Keel-bearer. Threat detected. Defensive authority available.”
“Use it,” Orra said.
Vey turned from the helm. “What will it do?”
“Something with authority.”
“That is not a description.”
The second volley struck. The shield groaned. Brask’s line snapped tight as he caught a falling crate, and Nima pressed both hands over her cards to keep them from being sucked toward the breach in the field.
Orra stared at the black ship above. Harl Venn had fled from the Inquisition until his blood ran out. They had crossed the forbidden zone, lost one vessel to the Aethersea, and forced their way into a dead flagship after them. If the ancient systems could strike them, she would not spend another second wondering whether she had the right to command.
“Defensive authority,” she said. “Granted.”
The crystal went cold.
Every lamp in the shaft extinguished.
For a moment the only light came from the Inquisition vessel’s guns. Then the walls opened.
Ancient guardians dropped from hidden recesses on cables of braided metal. They struck the black ship in silence, six at once, their white armor flashing with old dust. One drove a spear through the nearest gun mount. Another tore open the forward hatch and disappeared inside.
The Inquisition ship tried to reverse. Its engines ignited blue, pushing against the narrow shaft.
A circular gate unfolded beneath it.
The vessel dropped through.
Its engines shrieked as the gate closed around the hull. The black ship vanished below the *Morrowfin*, swallowed by the flagship’s machinery and whatever waited in the lower levels.
The lights returned.
Orra’s fingers remained clenched around the rail. The skin across her palm had reddened where the crystal’s heat had been.
Brask stared down through the field. “Did we just send them deeper?”
“Probably,” Nima said.
“That was not the comforting answer.”
“It was the accurate one.”
Vey watched Orra from the helm. He did not ask whether she had known what would happen. He knew she had not.
The descent continued.
The ancient wreck grew warmer as they passed below the Aethersea’s lower currents. Violet mist streamed around the field, bright enough to show the shape of the ship’s hull. It curled through cracks in the flagship and vanished before touching the *Morrowfin*. The protective system held, but its light thinned each time the mist struck.
Orra checked the lift gauges. The port housing had stabilized, yet the pressure needle trembled near the red mark. Their own ship had survived the outer gate, the invasion, and the first part of the descent. It would not survive a long journey through the lower mist without help.
“Vey,” she said. “How long until the lift fails?”
“Ask Brask.”
Brask leaned over the gauge. “If the ancient field keeps carrying us, an hour. If it releases us, less than a minute.”
“Can you keep the field connected?”
“I can keep the damaged housing from tearing loose. The field belongs to the dead ship.”
“Then make our ship worth carrying.”
He looked at her, then barked a laugh that held no amusement. “You have a cruel way of making a fellow feel useful.”
He crawled beneath the housing with his tools.
Orra turned back to the map. The black region had widened beneath her hand. The circle split by a vertical line was no longer at the end of a route. It marked a structure buried beneath the Old Surface, surrounded by smaller symbols that resembled towers, walls, and locked gates.
The symbol in Harl’s brass case had not been a warning.
It had been a seal.
The thought came with the certainty of a diver recognizing a pressure crack. Harl had carried the case because whatever lay below had been closed, and the crystal was meant to open the path toward it. He had not known whether the person following him would reach the door. He had only believed someone must try.
A new line appeared on the map.
It connected the split circle to the *Morrowfin*.
Then a second line formed, running from the symbol upward through the ancient wreck and out into the sky.
Nima saw it too. “That is a return route.”
“Back to Ghost Isle?”
“No.” She traced the upper line without touching it. “Farther. The route continues beyond the island. Beyond every chart I have.”
Vey’s expression did not change, but his grip tightened on the wheel. “We have not even reached the first mark.”
“Then we should avoid planning the return.”
The shaft ended beneath them.
The *Morrowfin* burst out of the ancient flagship into open darkness.
Orra’s stomach lurched. The green field widened around the ship, revealing a world below that no skyfarer’s chart had ever shown her.
The Old Surface stretched beneath the mist like a dead continent drowned in lightless air. Mountains stood upside down along its horizon, their roots reaching toward the vanished sky. Vast plains of gray stone broke into geometric terraces. Towers rose from the ruins at impossible angles, some snapped in half, others buried to their upper windows. Thin rivers of Aethersea crawled through the valleys, glowing blue beneath crusts of black mineral.
Far across the plain, something enormous moved between the ruins. Its back lifted above a collapsed city, plated in rust and pale bone. It paused beside a tower, then continued, leaving a furrow of luminous dust.
Brask crawled out from beneath the lift housing and joined them at the rail. His tools clattered against the deck.
“Tell me that is a hill.”
“It is moving,” Nima said.
“Then I withdraw my suggestion.”
The ancient flagship descended toward a fortress half buried in the dead plain. Its walls formed a circle around a central shaft, each segment carved with the three broken circles and hollow point. The structure had been waiting beneath the surface for thousands of years, preserved behind layers of stone and magic.
The *Morrowfin* passed through the open center.
A landing platform rose to meet them. Its surface was etched with the split-circle seal. The flagship settled around it with a force that drove the ship’s mast forward and made every line snap taut.
Orra released the crystal.
It did not come free.
The socket had closed around its base.
“Orra,” Vey said quietly.
She twisted the beacon once. Metal resisted. The platform beneath her boots began to glow.
Across the fortress, doors opened in sequence. Ancient mechanisms groaned awake below the buried stone. A narrow entrance appeared at the edge of the platform, descending into a corridor lit by the same green lamps that had guided them through the wreck.
Above the doorway, the split-circle seal divided into two halves.
A line of old script illuminated beneath it.
Nima stepped close, her damaged cards trembling in her hands. “I can read this.”
Orra looked at her. “What does it say?”
Nima’s eyes moved across the inscription. The warmth left her face.
“It says, ‘Keel-bearer, return what was taken.’”
Deep inside the fortress, a lock turned.
The crystal released Orra’s hand and slid into the dark slot at the entrance, drawing the door wider.