The pristine wind of the sky tier carried no trace of the toxic surface smog, yet the memory of burning wood and iron-rich rain never truly left Axl Jenkins’s tongue.
Eight years ago, the courtyard of the surface orphanage had been loud, chaotic, and alive.
Ten-year-old Axl had spent his afternoons trailing behind his fifteen-year-old brother, Xero, and Xero’s absolute best friend, Kaio.
To the orphans who had lost their families to the relentless rampages of the Gen Z, those two teenagers were a living myth.
In their generation, they were known to everyone as The Zenith & The Void.
Kaio was the Zenith—a prodigy whose genius-level Segonda manipulation allowed him to command his peak level of pyrokinetic abilities, generating and wielding a magnificent, roaring inferno at will.
Xero was the Void—an anomaly who possessed only Premera capabilities, yet his raw, terrifying physical force and unrefined energy output were so immensely powerful that he could match Kaio’s genius step for step.
They were the peak and the deep, the ultimate spear of humanity.
Axl had idolized his older brother, following him like a shadow while their seventeen-year-old sister, Sora, managed the youngest biological siblings: five-year-old Leeroy and three-year-old Kai.
Then, the world shattered.
Everyone in Bembaran remembered the day the monster popped out in the middle of the city, and everyone remembered the blood-drenched chaos that followed.
It was the day Sora was killed.
But what stung Axl the most, fueling a bitter, venomous hatred that had rotted his core for eight long years, was the truth behind her death.
The public news and street rumors had made it undeniable: Xero, consumed by a toxic jealousy over Kaio’s legendary fame and hero status, had been the one to release that nightmare into the city lines.
Xero had unleashed the monster that murdered their own sister, and he had been rightfully imprisoned for it ever since.
Axl knew the stories.
He believed the rumors.
And he would never forgive his brother for the weight of his sister’s ghost.
CRACK.
Axl’s leather-clad fingers tightened violently against the pristine deck railings, the structural titanium groaning under the raw, unmanifested compression of his grip.
He stood at the absolute edge of Neo Terra.
From this height, the giant floating ship looked like a sprawling sky island suspended above the gray blanket of the world.
Below the deck, the advanced military personnel of the sky tier—geared up entirely in sterile white tactical armor—marched past rows of high-tech weaponry that gatekept the world’s resources.
The privileged populations of the Neomans walked the upper plazas with happy, untroubled smiles.
Out here, there was no problem with the Gen Z, and the air carried zero trace of stagnant Astral Energy.
The massive vessel only descended to the surface timeline when the Sky Executives required a formal meeting with the Master of the Kampilan guild.
Axl pulled his gaze away from the horizon.
His vibrant, red to maroon-gradient hair—casually cut long at the temples but short at the back—shifted slightly in the wind.
He wore the immaculate, high-collared uniform of The Celestial Order.
His long white shortsleeve coat hung open, unbuttoned to reveal a simple black shirt beneath.
Running from his left shoulder down to the bottom edge of the fabric was a prominent, golden-yellow cross emblazoned with a stylized ring symbol positioned directly over the center of the intersection.
His white high boots met his trousers just below the knee, and a single, white fingerless glove covered his left hand, exposing his pale fingers to the crisp air.
“What’s with the long face, jerkface?” A loudmouthed, mocking voice cut through the hum of the deck.
Axl didn’t turn around as a short teenager stepped into the light.
The boy had ash-gray hair, with a thick headband covering his forehead down to his eyelids, throwing the upper half of his face into a dark, shadowed void.
Five thick, messy strands of bangs swept across his cheeks, completely obscuring his eyes beneath the fabric.
He wore a matching white capelet over a white t-shirt featuring the identical golden ringed-cross logo, paired with loose white shorts and open-toed sandals.
Long white gloves swathed his forearms up to his elbows, leaving only his fingers exposed.
This was Kilat, the Zenith of Lightning.
Kilat leaned against a structural pillar, a sharp smirk parting his lips.
“Is it about your little brothers?
The one who just got his perfect paint job beaten into dust, and the other one currently sitting inside the guild’s prison cell?” Axl’s red eyes widened in sudden, raw shock.
He pivoted, his brawler posture locking rigid as his blood ran cold.
“What did you say?
What about my brothers?” “Oh, you don’t know?” Kilat chuckled, tossing his head back as his ash-gray bangs swayed.
“I guess the higher-ups didn’t bother to inform a short-fuse like you.
They probably wanted to avoid a surface war.” Axl’s left hand slammed against the rail, his fingerless glove twitching with a terrifying, localized hum.
He raised his right hand, pointing a bare, trembling index finger straight at the speedster’s face.
“You better be absolutely certain about what’s coming out of your mouth, gray-hair.
If you are joking with my family tree, I will kill you right here, right now.” “Try me,” Kilat sneered, completely unbothered.
“If you really want to know, go ask the Executives yourself.
They’re the ones tracking the cloud ledger.” Nobody on the ship knew where Kilat acquired his surface data.
To the rest of the Order, he was simply an eccentric prankster who commanded a Segonda element of lightning.
But in truth, Kilat possessed a terrifying, city-scale sensory ability: his biology could read the minute, atomic differences in electrical frequencies and kinetic vibrations through the air.
No matter where Neo Terra flew, if he focused his wide-range auditory nerves, he could hear the conversations of the surface colonies miles below.
He kept the information strictly to himself, using it solely to provoke his comrades for his own amusement.
Furious at the taunt, Axl swung his gloved left hand with a blinding, air-tearing velocity, attempting to seize Kilat’s throat.
BZZT.
His fingers caught empty air.
Kilat vanished into a static blip, his physical silhouette completely dissolving before the strike could connect.
“You’re lucky you’re fast,” Axl hissed, his knuckles cracking as his blue aura threatened to ignite his floating rings.
“If I did catch you, that would have been your last breath.” “Really?
Catch me, slowpoke,” Kilat’s voice suddenly whispered directly against Axl’s right ear.
Before Axl could chamber a counter-punch, the speedster vanished again, his laughter bouncing off the titanium walls.
“Will you two calm down?
Or do I need to be the one to stop the both of you?” A cold, beautiful voice sliced through the deck like a sub-zero blade.
The two Zeniths instantly froze, their signatures violently dropping back to zero as a tall woman walked toward the railing.
She possessed an astounding, ethereal beauty—her hair was a pure, winter white that fell past her shoulders, framing a slender face with striking white eyelashes and bright, piercing blue eyes.
This was Seraphim Sulayman, known across the sky capital as Captain Sera, The White Princess.
She wore a long, white leather longsleeve coat that is unbuttoned but still tight over her slim frame, the sleeves completely covering her arms down to her white-gloved hands.
Underneath the outerwear was a crisp white turtleneck, accented by a solid, metallic ring cinched around her neck featuring a small, four-petaled red flower emblem.
A slim golden cross was aligned perfectly down the center of her shirt, running from her collar straight down her chest before smoothly tucking into a pair of high-waisted white pants secured by four polished buttons.
High white boots with sharp high heels clicked rhythmically against the pristine deck plates with every step she took.
As the leader of the Celestial Order, The Zenith of Order, her presence radiated a heavy, structural authority that forced both boys into an immediate, sweating stance of submission.
“You are dismissed,” Sera commanded, her bright blue eyes tracking their tense shoulders.
“Go perform your designated patrols across the western plaza blocks.
Do not let me catch you fracturing the deck again.” “Yes, Captain,” Kilat and Axl mumbled simultaneously, sweat trickling down their cheeks as they bowed slightly, quickly walking away toward the opposite corridors to escape her field of vision.
But Axl Jenkins did not follow protocols.
The moment his boots cleared the shadow of Sera’s command tower, his face warped into a mask of pure, bloodthirsty calculation.
He didn’t care about sky decrees, and he didn’t care about gatekeeping laws.
If his biological brothers had been maimed by surface scum, the dirt would pay in blood.
Reaching the absolute outer boundary of the cargo launch grid where the cloud guards weren’t looking, Axl climbed over the silver rail.
He didn’t use an elevator.
He didn’t wait for a deployment ship.
With a silent, predatory grin, Axl Jenkins leaped backward off the edge of Neo Terra, plunging straight out into the open sky, his falling frame a red meteor cutting through the toxic smog toward the unsuspecting ruins below.