The sky was already bright when Jake woke. The light came through the window cut into the stone wall, sharp and blue, and for a moment he didn't know where he was. Then the wind pushed through the gap and he remembered — stone, not soil. Sky, not canopy. His arms had stiffened overnight. His leg was better.
Vauren's bunk was empty and made, the padding folded once.
Jake ate at the market. The food stall woman remembered him — she pushed a skewer across the counter before he'd asked. He ate it walking, the warm stone under his feet, the blue awnings overhead, the town moving around him with the unhurried rhythm of a place that had been doing this for longer than he could calculate.
He went back to the terrace near the platform's edge. The old Verath was there. Same railing. Same cup. Jake had almost stopped here yesterday and hadn't. This time he sat down beside him.
The old man drank from his cup. He didn't look at Jake.
Jake watched the view. The platforms above, the cloud layer below, the town spread behind them. The wind pushed at both of them. The old man's skin didn't shift in the cold. The deepest blue Jake had seen, and it stayed that way.
They sat for a while. Jake didn't ask anything.
"Three days," the old man said eventually.
Jake turned to him.
"On the first link. Three days." He turned the cup in his hands. "I watch the wall."
"Is that fast?"
"Most take longer. Much longer." He drank. "The ones who cross that quick are usually large groups. Numbers do the work." He assessed Jake properly for the first time — the forearms, the burns, the fading marks, the hands, the feet. The assessment was thorough and unhurried. "You were not a large group."
"There were two of us."
"Two." He drank. "The blue one. Your companion."
"Vauren."
"His shoulder is broken."
Jake paused. "He says it's fine."
"He holds his arm like a man who has forgotten he can move it." The old man set his cup on the railing. "How did two people fight a guardian?"
"Badly," Jake said. "There were others. Most of them left before it was done."
"But you stayed."
"We stayed."
The old man held his gaze for a long moment. Then he turned to the platforms. A Verath launched from a column two streets over — the arc clean, the landing soft on the platform above.
"I am Torek," he said. He stood up. He was shorter than Jake expected — the other Verath were tall, but Torek had settled into himself over the years, his long fingers slightly bent at the joints.
"Bring the blue one tomorrow," he said. "I want to see what his body does."
He walked back into the town without looking back. Jake sat on the railing and watched the platforms for a while. Then he went to find Vauren.
Vauren was at the east-side building, testing his shoulder. The careful movements, the range stopping well before his arm was level.
"I met someone," Jake said.
Vauren waited.
"Old Verath named Torek. He sits on a terrace and watches the wall. He knew we took three days. He knew about your shoulder."
Vauren's expression didn't change.
"He wants to see us tomorrow. He said he wants to see what your body does."
"Why?"
"I don't know. But he watched a woman launch from a column the way someone watches something they've done a thousand times."
Vauren's eyes were steady on him. "You spoke to a stranger and arranged a meeting."
"I got his name this time."
Vauren closed his eyes briefly. "We will go."
Torek led them to the western edge without checking if they followed. They followed.
The training area was open and flat, the grooves running in wide circles. Two columns stood at the platform's edge, the spiralling grooves climbing them to the top, the sky open beyond. Other travelers were nearby — a woman with red hair standing at the base of one column with her hands against the stone, concentrating.
"Show me what you do," Torek said to Jake.
Jake held out his hands. The light came slow — reserves still rebuilding since the guardian. A faint glow along the forearms, brighter at the palms, concentrated at the contact points.
Torek watched. He held his hand near Jake's forearm, following where the light went — wrist, palm, fingertips. He stepped back.
"You."
Vauren held out his right arm. The blue deepened, the surface taking on something liquid under the skin. He held it for a moment. Let it fade.
Torek's attention went to the left arm.
"The other one."
"The right is sufficient to demonstrate."
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"The other one."
Vauren's jaw set. He raised his left arm. It made it to chest height before the shoulder locked. The blue came uneven, weaker on that side. Two seconds and he dropped the arm.
Torek said nothing about it. He turned to the column.
"Both body. Different problems." He put his palm against the stone. "Your hands hold you to the stone. Your feet move you up it. The column does nothing — you do everything."
He turned to Jake. "Yours speeds up at the surface. Hands fast, feet faster."
He turned to Vauren. "Yours absorbs. Don't grip the column. Let your body take its shape."
He stepped onto the base. The blue in his skin deepened across his entire body, and then he was at the top — fifteen meters up, the movement so fast Jake almost missed it. He stood on the column's cap with the sky behind him.
He dropped. Landed on the stone with a sound like a hand hitting water — soft, absorbed. The blue faded.
"Now you," he said.
Jake put his hands on the column. The stone was warm. The grooves had a faint vibration he could feel through his palms. He stepped onto the base.
"Push," Torek said.
Jake pushed. Light flared at his palms, his forearms lit up, and his grip tightened — the light making his hands faster, surer. He went up maybe a meter. His feet slipped off the grooves. He grabbed the column and hung there.
"You are pushing with your hands," Torek said from below.
"I push with my hands. That's what I do."
"Your hands are for the column. Your feet are for the going."
He tried again — light at his palms to hold, a push from below through his legs. He went up another meter. Then his concentration split between hands and feet and he slid back to the base.
Again. Three meters. Again. Four. The light at his palms was costing him, and his feet were doing something different that his body hadn't figured out yet.
Vauren approached the second column differently. He stood at its base for a long time, right palm against the stone, eyes closed. When he stepped on he moved immediately — the water softening every contact point, his body fitting to the column's surface. Five meters on his first attempt.
Then he tried to use his left arm and the shoulder failed and he came down hard.
He stood up. His face was empty. He walked back to the column.
Torek watched. When Vauren came down the third time, listing, the old man walked to him.
"You are climbing like a man with two arms. You do not have two arms. Let the right side do everything and let the left be dead weight your body absorbs."
Vauren stood at the base, motionless. Then he stepped on. His skin shifted darker, every point where his body met the column softened. Six meters. Seven. The left arm hung useless but the rest of him had stopped fighting the asymmetry.
He slipped at eight. Came down. The landing was soft — the absorption settling into his body like it had always been there.
Torek nodded once.
They spent days on the columns. Jake made it to the top on the second day — barely, the light guttering out as his hand found the cap. His feet had done something on that last attempt. A warmth at the soles, faint, gone before he could find it again. He checked his shoes. Checked the grooves.
Vauren topped the column on the same day, smooth and one-armed, the landing on the cap clean.
On the third day Torek took them to the top and told them to look.
The wind was different up here — stronger, colder, coming from every direction. The town spread below them. Above and to the right, a platform — a massive stone shelf maybe two hundred meters up and a hundred meters out. Buildings on its edge. Movement. Beyond it another platform. Beyond that another. They went up in every direction, scattered through the sky, the higher ones smaller with distance.
"How many?" Jake said.
"Thirty-one," Torek said. "Thirty-one platforms from the base to the portal."
Jake stared upward. Thirty-one. The highest ones were specks.
"The column puts you at the top," Torek said. "The launch puts you there." He pointed at the nearest platform above. "You leave the column and there is only air between you and where you are going."
He turned to Jake. "Be fast when you leave. The direction you choose at the top is the only direction you get."
He turned to Vauren. "When you land, let the body absorb. The landing is half the launch."
Then he stepped off the column's cap and launched.
Jake watched it happen. Torek's feet left the stone and his body went up and out in a long clean arc, the blue deepening across his skin, his arms adjusting in the air in small movements that looked effortless. He landed on the edge of the platform above and the impact rolled through him from feet to spine to shoulders. He stood there and looked down at them.
"Now you," he called.
Jake faced the platform. The distance. The air between.
"Right," he said.
He stepped to the edge of the cap. The grooves ended here — the last spiral cutting off at the rim, the stone smooth where thousands of feet had pushed off. Below him the town. Above him the sky. Ahead of him two hundred meters of nothing.
He pushed.
The light flared at his feet — the warmth at his soles, except this time it was real and immediate and his body left the stone moving fast. Too fast. The direction was off — he'd angled too far left, the platform sliding past above him, the arc carrying him out into open sky.
Wind. Sky in every direction. The town below getting smaller. The platform above and to the right and he was going to miss it.
His body did something. A correction at the peak of the arc — the light at his feet flaring again, brief, a push against nothing that changed his trajectory by a few degrees. He didn't choose it. It happened. The platform's edge came at him fast. He hit it hands first, forearms bright, fingers finding the stone. His legs swung and caught the edge. He hung there, half on the platform and half off, the sky underneath him.
He pulled himself up. Lay on the stone. Breathed.
Torek was standing over him. The old man checked his feet, then his face.
"Your direction was off," he said.
"I noticed."
"You corrected in the air."
Jake sat up. His feet were warm. The light had gone but the feeling was still there, fading. "I don't know how I did that."
Torek studied him for a long moment. Then he turned to the column where Vauren was still standing on the cap, watching.
"The blue one next," he said.
Vauren's launch was controlled and clean and the shoulder ruined it. He left the column at the right angle, his body positioned perfectly, his right arm guiding the trajectory. The arc was good. The distance was right. But the left arm hung dead. The asymmetry pulled him off-line halfway through. He hit the platform's edge three meters left of where he should have been, his right side taking all the impact, the water in his skin softening the stone's bite. He came up on one knee.
"Again," he said.
They went back down. Torek showed them how — a controlled drop, the body taking the fall in stages. For Vauren it was natural. For Jake it was terrifying. He hit the ground with light blazing at his feet and the impact still rattled his teeth.
They launched again. Jake's second attempt was better — the direction closer, the arc cleaner, the landing on his feet instead of his hands. The correction at the peak happened again, smaller this time. He felt it in his soles.
Vauren's second attempt was cleaner. He compensated for the dead arm by leaning into the launch differently, and he landed within a meter of where he aimed. The absorption was becoming instinct.
They spent the rest of the day on the second platform.
It was different from the base. Smaller. The buildings were less permanent — lighter, meant to be moved. A few Verath lived here. Others passed through on their way up or down. Travelers were visible — a pair sitting on the edge eating something, gazing up at the next platform the way Jake and Vauren had gazed up from below.
The view took Jake's breath. The base platform spread below them, the town visible in its entirety — the market square, the arrival point, the blue awnings small and bright. Other platforms were visible at new angles. The cloud layer was brighter from up here.
Jake sat on the edge with his legs hanging over and took in all of it.
"How long did the first link take us?" he said.
"Three days," Vauren said. He was standing behind Jake. Vauren didn't hang his legs over edges.
"How long do you think this one takes?"
Vauren's gaze went to the platforms above them. Twenty-nine more.
"Longer," he said.
Jake leaned back on his hands. His palms were warm. His feet were warm. The sky went up forever, the platforms disappearing into it, and somewhere past the last one there was a portal to the third link.
Vauren was still tracking upward, his left arm held close, his black eyes on the platforms above.
"We'll get there," Jake said.
Vauren turned to him. The wind moved his green hair across his face.
"Yes," he said. "We will."