Starlight Between Us

Chapter 15 - Cracks in the Skyglass

Aiden had always known the sky could break.

Not in the way children imagined—the heavens shattering in fire and thunder—but in quiet, unnerving shifts. A shimmer in the air that didn’t belong. A flicker in the clouds that came too quickly. A silence too sudden, too still. That was how it always began.

And now, it was beginning again.

He stood on the edge of Aureole’s central liftdeck, where the glass platform hovered above the eastern rim of the floating island. Below, the shimmering threads that tethered the island to the Corestone pulsed erratically—veins of blue-white magic that twitched like fraying nerves. The liftdeck trembled beneath his boots. From here, he could see the faint curvature of the skyglass dome that had once kept them safe from storms and stray magic.

But even that was beginning to ripple.

“Aiden!”

He turned. Clea, his mentor and the island’s lead harmonist, was striding toward him, her long robe flaring behind her like a flag caught in the wind. Her dark braid whipped around her shoulder, and the usual calm on her face was gone—replaced with tight-lipped concern.

“I thought I told you to stay near the core today,” she said sharply, grabbing the railing beside him as the platform groaned under another shiver. “You feel that? The eastern flank’s destabilizing again.”

“I know,” Aiden said, eyes fixed on the trembling threads below. “It’s the third time this week.”

Clea exhaled, trying to keep her voice steady. “It’s more than a coincidence now. The air out here is thinning. The harmonic fields are shifting. You can hear it in the wind.”

Aiden’s jaw clenched. He could hear it too—that strange humming, like a low chord played off-key. The island had begun to breathe irregularly, the steady rhythm of its magical infrastructure thrown into chaos.

“It’s Lena,” he said, quietly but firmly.

Clea didn’t respond at first. Her brows furrowed as she studied his face. “You’ve been distant,” she said. “Unfocused. Since the tether formed, you haven’t been sleeping. You miss classes. You wander out here like the answer’s written in the clouds.”

“Because maybe it is,” Aiden replied, his voice sharper than he intended. “This isn’t just a tether. It’s not just some anomaly. It’s part of something ancient—older than this island, older than the dome, older than the Corestone itself. It chose us.”

“Old doesn’t mean safe,” she said coldly. “And chosen doesn’t mean sustainable. We’ve lived above the clouds for five generations, Aiden. This place stays afloat because our magic stays in balance. Now everything’s misaligned. The lantern cores dim faster. The wind tunnels misfire. Even the Echo Trees are singing the wrong melodies.”

He knew she was right. He’d seen it himself—lanterns flickering in the middle of daylight, static in the air thick enough to taste, memory orbs losing clarity like smeared glass. The skyglass itself had begun to stretch in some places, becoming less reflective, more translucent—as if preparing to show him what lay beyond.

Still, he couldn’t let it go.

“I won’t sever the link,” he said. “Not for anything.”

Clea sighed deeply. “Then be prepared. The Council is watching. They know where the disturbances are centered. If the instability continues, they’ll demand a full purge.”

His heart stopped. “A purge?”

“They’ll sever your bond. All of it. The resonance. The connection. The link to her.”

Aiden took a shaky breath. “That’s not just severance. That’s annihilation.”

“If it protects Aureole, they’ll do it,” Clea said gently. She laid a hand on his shoulder. “You’re not the first to bond across realms. But you might be the last… if this breaks the veil.”

She turned and left, her footsteps swallowed by the hum of the liftdeck’s trembling core.

Later that evening, Aiden stood inside the Lantern Atrium—a wide, circular chamber at the highest point of Aureole’s inner spire. Here, thousands of suspended lanterns floated in concentric rings, projecting memory echoes onto the dome-shaped ceiling. A swirling galaxy of recollections. Some were personal, some collective, others so ancient they blurred into myth.

He often came here to think. Or to forget.

But tonight, there was no forgetting.

He reached into his coat and pulled out the glowing interface of the app. Lena’s last message hovered just below the surface:

The bridge is forming. Choose your tether.

He didn’t know what that choice was supposed to mean. Lena hadn’t explained, and the prophecy he’d uncovered had been half-burned, half-erased by time or someone’s hand. But deep in his chest, he felt it—the magnetic pull between them. The way his magic hummed differently when she was near. Like a song that didn’t exist until both their voices were present.

The app pulsed in his hand.

Not a message.

A portal.

Light spiraled softly from the screen, reaching outward like petals unfurling in slow motion. The bridge was forming again. The call was getting stronger, more insistent. As if something on the other side needed him there.

Aiden took a step forward.

But just then, a sharp chime rang through the chamber. Not from the app.

From Aureole.

A summons.

He swore under his breath. The Council. Of course.

The Hall of Aether was carved deep into the floating mountain’s heart. Pillars of white crystal spiraled toward a ceiling woven with living threads of light. Silver banners hung from the arches, shimmering with spells meant to enforce silence and truth. The five Councilors sat behind a half-moon dais, robed in varying shades of sky-blue and moon-gray.

Aiden stood before them alone, back straight, heart racing.

“Apprentice Aiden,” said Vellira, the High Seer. Her voice rang unnaturally through the chamber, amplified by the room’s spellwork. “You have formed a resonance link without authorization. You have accessed unsanctioned magical frequencies and destabilized the realm.”

“I didn’t form it,” Aiden said evenly. “It found me. It’s part of the app’s original coding—magic buried deeper than any script we’ve ever studied.”

Councilor Deren, narrow-eyed and rigid as glass, leaned forward. “You accessed f*******n technology. You linked yourself to an external entity without consent. And now our realm is unraveling.”

Aiden’s hands curled into fists. “You think I did this on purpose?”

“I think you’re allowing sentiment to blind you to danger,” Deren replied. “You’ve violated the boundaries of the Veil. That app is older than recorded memory. You are meddling with forces beyond comprehension.”

“She’s not the threat,” Aiden said. “Lena’s part of it, yes—but this imbalance existed long before us. The Bridgewake is not a calamity. It’s a signal. Something is awakening on both sides.”

“The floating corridor near the southern gardens collapsed this morning,” Vellira said. “Four citizens were injured. Do you truly believe this is all coincidence?”

Aiden’s voice dropped. “Tell me what ‘tether’ means. Tell me what happens if I choose her.”

Silence.

Of course they didn’t know.

They only knew how to contain, how to neutralize.

“We will monitor the link for three more cycles,” Vellira said at last. “If the disturbances persist… we will initiate severance.”

Aiden stepped back as if struck. “You’ll kill the bond.”

“If necessary.”

They dismissed him with a nod of finality, and he left with fury and grief trailing behind like a cloak.

That night, Aiden stood at the edge of Aureole again.

Clouds churned below like restless water. The sky above was too still.

He opened the app.

The portal remained—glimmering like a heartbeat made of starlight.

But he didn’t step through.

His hand trembled.

Behind him, the Echo Trees began to sing again—notes higher now, piercing, frantic.

Warning.

He turned—and saw it.

The air above the city split—not with sound, but with light.

A seam opened vertically across the skyglass, as if someone had unzipped the atmosphere. A soft, luminous c***k, and through it came a rush of salt air and sea wind—foreign to the sky, but achingly familiar to him.

Lena’s world.

The bridge wasn’t waiting anymore.

It was crossing over.

Something—someone—was coming through.

And Aiden, heart pounding, knew one thing for certain:

There was no going back.