The platforms blurred together after the tenth.
Twelve. Fifteen. Eighteen. Each one smaller than the last, the settlements thinning, the Verath fewer. The wind was constant up here — colder, sharper, carrying nothing but altitude. The base platform had disappeared days ago. The cloud layer below was a white floor stretching to every horizon, the lower platforms rising from it like stones from a riverbed.
Jake and Vauren moved through it.
On the twelfth platform a Verath man was repairing a wall. Alone. The structure behind him was small — one room, a doorframe with no door, the stone patched in places with a lighter material. He was fitting a piece into a gap, his back to them. He didn't look up when they landed. The wind carried the sound of his chisel after them as they launched.
They'd found a rhythm. Jake launched first — faster off the column, the light at his feet firing consistently now, each arc carrying him cleanly to the next platform. He'd land, check the surface, check the wind, and watch Vauren come. Vauren's launches arrived after — slower, curving, the body finding its own line through the air, the landing soft. Every time. The water had become the whole approach, the body fluid from the moment he left the column to the moment he touched stone.
They didn't discuss it. Jake launched. Vauren followed. They climbed.
On the fifteenth platform Jake's shoes finally gave out.
They'd been failing for days — the soles worn thin and then worn through where his feet met the grooves, the light pressing warm against fabric that was barely there. On the fifteenth platform the left one tore across the ball of the foot mid-climb and he nearly lost the column. He came back down, pulled both shoes off, studied them, and left them on the stone.
Then he climbed the column again, and it was a different thing entirely.
His feet on the stone, the grooves under his skin, the light running through the contact points with nothing between them. He went up faster than he ever had. At the top his feet pushed off and the launch was something new — sharper, the arc tighter, the correction at the peak happening before he'd finished leaving the column. He landed on the sixteenth platform three meters from where he'd aimed and his body took the last three meters on the ground, a sliding step that covered the distance at a speed his legs shouldn't have been able to produce.
He stood there. The light was fading from his soles but the warmth stayed.
Vauren landed behind him, the water rolling through his body on impact, and took in Jake's bare feet on the stone.
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"Your shoes," he said.
"Gone." Jake was still looking at his feet. At the stone under them, the grooves pressing into his skin, the warmth fading but still there. His heart was hammering. The launch had been — he didn't have the word for it. The arc had been tighter but the air had felt bigger, the whole sky opening up around him, his body moving through it like it belonged there.
"Do it again," he said.
"Jake."
"I need to do it again."
He was already at the column. Climbed it fast, bare feet in the grooves, the light firing at every contact point. At the top he launched — back to the platform he'd just left, a short arc, the wind catching him at the peak. His feet pushed against nothing and he changed direction mid-air. The correction was sharp, instant, his whole body turning on it. He landed running, three steps at a speed that left the stone behind him before his eyes caught up.
He stopped. Turned. Laughed.
"Vauren," he said. "Vauren."
"I see it."
"It's in my feet. I can feel it. When I push off it's —" The sentence ran out. He was grinning too wide to catch it.
The bare feet on the stone, the grin, the whole of him standing there vibrating with something new. Vauren watched it all.
"There is something wrong with you," Vauren said.
"I feel incredible."
The twentieth platform was empty. They passed through it.
They climbed through twenty-one, twenty-two. The platforms were barely platforms now — narrow shelves of stone with room enough to stand, the grooves worn faint, the sky enormous in every direction. Jake could see the curve of the cloud layer below, the faintest suggestion that the world they were on was round. The wind came from below and above simultaneously, crossing at the platform's edge in ways that made the launches unpredictable.
Vauren's launches were better in the wind than Jake's. The fluid body adjusted to the crosscurrents naturally — the water shifting, the arc bending, the landing compensating. Jake's speed was less useful when the air moved him sideways. He had to learn to push against it, the light at his feet correcting for wind as well as direction.
On the twenty-second platform they sat with their backs against a stone that might have been a building once and might have just been a stone. The sky was darker up here — thinner, the blue deeper, the stars faintly visible even before the sun was fully down.
"It's different up here," Jake said.
Vauren was studying his left hand. Opening it, closing it. The fingers moved fully now. The wrist rotated. The shoulder was still stiff but the water had been working through it for days, and whatever it was doing, it was doing more of it. The blue in Vauren's skin shifted when he moved the hand — deep and even, the fluid running under the surface.
"Your arm," Jake said.
"It is improving."
"It looks a lot better than improving."
Vauren closed his hand. Opened it again. Watched the blue shift.
"The water moves through the joint," he said. "I did not ask it to. It does it when I am not paying attention, during the launches, during landings. The fluid moves where the damage is."
"Your body is healing itself."
Vauren met his eyes. "It appears so."
Jake grinned. "Inelegant healing."
Vauren's expression shifted — brief, suppressed. He turned away.
"Nine more," Jake said.
Jake leaned his head back against the stone. The stars were brighter now, the sun below the horizon, the platforms above them dark shapes against a deep blue sky. Nine more platforms. The portal at the top.
"We're close," he said.
Vauren said nothing. But he was still studying his hand, opening and closing it, the water moving through him, repairing what was broken, building what came next.