The ascent from the Vane Central Bank’s sub-levels felt like climbing out of a grave and straight into a furnace. As we burst onto the executive helipad, the scale of the nightmare finally hit me. Aethelgard, the "Jewel of the West," was no longer a city of order. It was a chaotic sea of light and shadow. Below us, the grid-locked streets were choked with hover-cars and screaming citizens, their voices a distant, collective wail that rose up between the skyscrapers like steam.
But it was the sky that demanded our attention. The mercury-hulled monolith didn't just sit in the clouds; it claimed them. The liquid metal was shifting, undulating like a living organism, reflecting the neon glow of the city in a distorted, sickening kaleidoscope. Where the ship’s gravity wells touched the atmosp
