The Crack in the Crystal Tree
Kane's fingers dug deep into the clay, cold and wet mud seeping through his fingertips like winding gray serpents. He knelt on the lowest branch of the giant crystal tree, with a surging sea of clouds beneath him and a network of vine-woven suspension bridges above—those bridges connected hundreds of cocoon-shaped wooden houses nestled in the treetop. In front of each home hung a glass lantern, its core not fueled by fire but by strands of glowing silver thread.
"Brother, my lantern's thread is shorter than yesterday," his sister, Lia, crouched beside him, reaching out to poke the glass lantern dangling from the branch. The silver filaments inside were visibly dissolving, as if pulled away by an invisible hand.
Kane shook the mud from his hands and set the newly shaped clay pot on the tree bark to dry. The surface of the bark was covered in glowing patterns—the veins of the crystal tree, said to be intertwined with the fate threads of the villagers. He glanced at Lia's lantern, his throat tightening. "The priest said that when the thread shortens, it's a good thing. It means fate is maturing."
A lie. Everyone in the Cocoon of Fate knew that when a glass lantern went out, its owner was "harvested"—either chosen by the church as a sacred servant or thrown into the abyss as a sacrifice. But Kane would rather his sister live in ignorance, just as he had deceived her into believing their parents had traveled far to trade, instead of being sealed in iron coffins and cast into the sea of clouds.
"But I want my thread to grow longer." Lia stood on tiptoe, trying to hang her lantern higher in the branches. "The higher it is, the longer it gets, right? Just like Uncle Carlo's..."
The treetop suddenly shuddered.
Kane instinctively grabbed Lia and rolled toward the inner trunk just as a crystal branch, as large as a carriage, crashed down behind them. It plunged into the clouds below, sending up a crimson spray—it wasn't mist at all, but roiling blood.
"Hold on to me!" Kane hoisted Lia onto his back, securing them together with the coarse twine meant for drying clay pots. His pupils contracted sharply.
At the top of the crystal tree, the so-called ever-burning glass lanterns were shattering en masse, their silver fate threads cascading down like torrential rain. And at the ends of those threads, pitch-black shadows were crawling down the trunk.
Abyssal fiends.
Their chitinous limbs pierced the bark, acidic saliva dripping from their grotesque maws. Wherever they passed, the glowing veins of the tree dimmed, and its once-living bark withered into lifeless ash.
Mark of the Godslayer
"To the Cocoon Core Altar!" Kane swung from branch to branch, gripping the vines tightly as Lia's tears soaked the back of his neck. He had seen these creatures before—ten years ago, when the church purged the abyss. The priests had claimed the fiends were extinct, yet now they tore through the treetop like beasts returning to their nest.
A shrill scream rang out above. Kane looked up to see Uncle Carlo's cocoon-house impaled by a monster's pincers. Half of Carlo's body dangled outside, his hand still clutching the fabric doll he had made for his daughter. The glass lantern's silver thread suddenly went taut, extracting his soul into a streak of silver light that spiraled into the vortex at the tree's peak.
"Don't look!" Kane clamped a hand over Lia's eyes, his boots scraping sparks against the bark. Thirty paces ahead lay the Cocoon Core Altar—the stone-built sanctum of the blind prophet, Mobius, the only place in the Cocoon of Fate not made of wood.
A slicing whistle of air came from behind.
Kane threw himself down just as a fiend's talons swiped past, severing strands of his black hair. The stench of decay filled his lungs as he found himself staring into the creature's maw, lined with countless clustered eyes—each one reflecting his own pale, terror-stricken face.
"Brother!" Lia's scream cut through the ringing in his ears.
His hand brushed against a shard of clay at his waist—the unfinished pottery piece, a birthday gift for Lia. As the fiend's claws arced down again, he seized the shard and drove it straight into one of its grotesque eyes.
Crack.
The sound was impossibly sharp. In that instant, the creature's skull exploded.
Dark purple blood splattered across Kane's face, burning like molten iron. He stared, stunned, at the shattered remains of the clay shard in his palm. That strike had been anything but ordinary. At the moment of impact, an intricate dark-gold pattern had surfaced on the back of his hand—a design shaped like a sword piercing through a blazing sun.
"The Mark of the Godslayer…"
A hoarse voice echoed from the direction of the altar.
At the top of the stone steps stood the blind prophet, Mobius, leaning on his bone staff. His hollow eye sockets gazed upon Kane's hand.
"So… the prophesied vessel is you."
The Prophecy of Blood and Tears
Kane dragged Lia into the altar chamber just as Mobius slashed his wrist with the bone staff. Drops of blood fell onto the crystal orb at the altar's center, revealing visions within—barriers of light crumbling, the skeletal remains of ancient dragons plummeting from the sky.
"Take her and go." Mobius pointed to the hidden door leading to the altar's underground chamber. "Follow the Cloudvine down to the lower docks. The church's airship will arrive in an hour—but they'll purge the survivors first."
"Purge?" Kane shoved Lia into the passage and turned to block the door. "We are the Chosen of Fate, selected by the church. They would never—"
"Because the abyssal fiends were released by the church."
Mobius let out a mocking laugh as blood-red tears poured from his hollow sockets. "Look at the crystal orb, child. See what your sacred city is truly doing!"
The vision within the orb shifted—high above the clouds, the silver airships of the Everglow Holy City hovered, and knights clad in platinum armor were pouring black clay urns onto the crystal tree. Crawling from within those urns were the larvae of the abyssal fiends.
"No…" Lia covered her mouth in horror.
"The Cocoon of Fate was never meant to nurture priests." Mobius slammed his bone staff against the floor. "We are soil for the souls of godslayers. When those souls ripen, the church reaps them—just as they harvest wheat!"
The tree suddenly lurched violently. Kane was thrown against the stone wall, the golden sigil reappearing on the back of his hand.
Mobius seized his wrist with startling strength. "Listen to me. Once the Mark of the Godslayer is exposed, the church will stop at nothing to reclaim you—to turn you into a mindless weapon. But if you can reach the Abyssal Corridor and find the memory shards of the First Godslayer—"
An explosion drowned out his words.
The ceiling of the altar split open. A massive, armored hand—mechanized plating glinting in the firelight—punched through the three-foot-thick stone slab as if it were paper. Kane's breath caught as he saw the insignia on the armor—the sun emblem of the Church's Knight Order.
In the knight's other hand dangled a severed head.
The village chief. His glass lantern thread was still coiled around the knight's gauntlet.
"Found you, little rat." The knight's voice crackled with electronic distortion beneath his visor. "Triggering a Godslayer Resonance? Seems this purge turned out to be quite the profit."
Mobius hurled the crystal orb to the ground.
"Remember this—" the blind prophet roared amidst the rising blood-red flames,
"The true prophecy… is the part that remains unspoken!"
The altar was consumed by fire.
Shattered Rebirth
Kane was falling.
The Cloudvine snapped in the flames, sending him plummeting with Lia in his arms. Above, the church's airships closed in; below, the churning sea of blood-red mist loomed. The golden sigil on his hand burned like fire, and amid the howling wind, he heard Mobius's final whisper:
"The power of a Godslayer is not in destruction, but in remaking."
Clay.
His fingers brushed against the last fragment of pottery at his waist—his blood-soaked birthday gift to Lia. As the searchlights from the airships locked onto them, Kane gritted his teeth and drove the shard deep into the golden mark on his hand.
Light erupted from the fissure.
The pottery melted into his blood, reshaping itself into a broken blade. The weapon was cracked like shattered porcelain, yet its presence alone made the misty sea below roil in fear.
A deafening blast—airships disintegrated in the golden radiance. The knights' screams ended in abrupt silence.
"Hold on!" Kane swung the blade downward.
The fractures on its surface pulsed as the misty sea split apart, revealing a path through the crimson fog. Below, he glimpsed a dock—barely visible—and a battered raft tethered to the shore.
Lia's sobs suddenly stopped.
A silver-threaded grappling hook pierced through her right shoulder, yanking her into the sky.
"NO!" Kane slashed wildly, but the second airship's armored hull deflected his strike. He saw Lia being dragged through the cabin door, her bloodied hand pressing against the glass, tracing a trembling horizontal line.
Their childhood signal.
"Stay alive."
Then, she was gone.
As the airship vanished into the clouds, the golden sigil on Kane's hand flickered—then died. He collapsed onto the raft, his broken blade dissolving back into pottery shards. One embedded itself into his palm, fusing with his flesh.
Mobius's voice echoed in his mind:
"Go to the Abyssal Corridor. Find the truth buried in the dark."
Beneath the raft, the sea of blood began to crystallize into ice.