A massive construct of reinforced platinum and graviton anchors, the Karakoia glider docking platform clung to the city’s edge. The graviton stabilizers embedded themselves into the walls, vomiting out oscillating energy fields that shimmered with rippling distortions, counteracting the unpredictable air currents. Below the Black Fang, a voice could be heard hollering from the structures below, ones that extended downward like inverted spires. “Shock-absorbing pylons, checked!”

  Gravel checked the control panel as he grabbed a glider from the glider rack that stood along the launch deck. “We’ve got a route down?”

  Priest nodded toward a secondary console, where a map of Bor’tho’s transit network flickered into view. “Yes. Atmospheric descent corridors won’t run for another few hours.”

  Hunter groaned. “Not a fan of the gliders. Why the gliders, anyway?” She turned to Priest for an answer.

  Gravel smirked. “Oh, you hate them? You’re not the one built like a damn stone pillar. I nearly dropped like a rock last time.”

  “You did drop like a rock last time,” she retorted.

  “Parachutes will not work on this planet. Thin gravitational pull meant not enough drag,” Priest said. “That is why Bor’tho floats. Very easy to thrive up here. Too easy, perhaps.”

  “Even the buildings have to be treated with stabilizers, or they start growing their own ecosystems,” Gravel added. “I read that from the brochure they handed us at the platform.”

  Likewise, powered flight was inefficient at low altitudes because the thick, nutrient-saturated air clogged engines within minutes.

  But the gliders worked. Each glider pack used micro-thrusters to correct altitude shifts, keeping the descent smooth while allowing for long-range gliding across the vast, empty stretch of mist. The stabilizing effect kept users from spiraling into an uncontrolled drop, but it wasn’t a perfect system. One still had to know what they were doing—or, at the very least, trust the glider’s AI to compensate for their mistakes.

  “Hey! Where’d you get that brochure? I want to read it too. I should’ve gotten one.” Hunter pouted.

  “Too bad.” Gravel shrugged. “I knew you would’ve wanted one, so I threw it away.”

  A dockworker came up to the three of them and said, “You have clearance.”

  Gravel nodded to him as he shuffled away, stepped back from the console, and adjusted the straps on his gear. “Alright. We drop in from the west sector. Glide corridor takes us down over the edge of the desert. Once we clear the air boundary, we head for M’mara.”

  The glide corridor referred to a specific designated flight path optimized for safe atmospheric descent. It was a predetermined route where conditions—such as air currents, gravity fluctuations, and obstacles—are stable enough for gliders to descend smoothly without being thrown off course. Straying from the path wasn’t recommended, but it wasn’t a hard rule—no one could really enforce it.

  Priest cut in, already making for the airlock. “We are burning daylight.”

  Hunter followed him onto the docking bridge, Gravel bouncing behind.

  “You think we’re gonna do better than the last time?” She asked him.

  Gravel replied, “We’ve come up with actual coordination plans, a Plan B, and a withdrawal plan. We’ll be fine.”

  She paused for a second. “If you say so, Captain.”

  Below them, the thick mist churned, an endless white abyss stretching toward the distant desert.

  The wind roared past as they dove from the docking platform. Their glider wings snapped open in a synchronized metallic flutter, and the micro-thrusters roared.

  “These are way too loud for civilian use!” Gravel shouted.

  For the first few seconds, everything was white.

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  The mist wasn’t just dense. It was alive, animated. Cuddling currents rolled in slow, deliberate waves, like a sea of sentient clouds. They dampened sounds, muffling even the rush of wind against their bodies, and befogged the flowing particles of organic matter carried along the currents like dust in a sunbeam.

  Gravel kept his movements steady, adjusting his glide angle. It took him a few tries until he was able to stay within the designated flight path.

  “We are clear of the platform,” Priest’s voice rang out through comms. “Maintain course.”

  The mist broke apart beneath them.

  Their altimeters adjusted simultaneously, flashing green as the last wisps of fog thinned. The landscape below unfolded before their very eyes.

  It was boundless.

  To the west, the ocean stretched farther than the eye could see, its surface dark with almost a metallic sheen, and strangely still beneath the thickened air. It wasn’t a true ocean, at least not in the way humans knew it; it was a hyper-dense liquid ecosystem, where strange gelatinous formations drifted just beneath the waves.

  Directly below them was the endless, rust-colored expanse, its sands shifting in slow, crawling dunes, even slower than the currents of the nearby ocean. Here and there, clusters of blackened spires jutted out from the ground, like skeletal fingers reaching for the sky. Dead coral-like structures, they were, formed from mineralized plant matter left to fossilize over centuries.

  They angled toward the desert’s outer edge, where the ruins of M’mara waited in the distance.

  “Final approach,” Priest called.

  Gravel flexed his grip on the controls. “Alright,” he muttered. “Let’s land.”

  Their landing was weightless. They landed adjacent to a forest in front of the desert called M’Vila.

  “These trees are wack,” Gravel said. “Why does everything on this planet have to move creepily slowly?”

  They were tall, unnaturally thin, their trunks extending in long, reed-like segments that swayed, even without wind.

  Priest zoomed in on his scanner. “It’s alive in a way most forests aren’t. Self-contained, self-sustaining.” The plant life didn’t just take from the soil—it grew from the air, cycling nutrients that never reach the ground.

  “Wait.” Gravel turned back. “You know where Hunter is—”

  A loud thud and a grunt of pain cut through the comms, followed by the distinct crunch of someone eating dirt.

  Gravel turned just in time to see Hunter sprawled flat on the ground, limbs awkwardly tangled beneath her like a puppet with its strings cut. Her glider pack had partially disengaged, one wing still half-deployed, twitching.

  For a long moment, nobody said anything.

  Then Fang, ever the stalker, burst out laughing over comms. “Ohhh, that was beautiful.”

  Hunter groaned, pushing herself up just enough to glare at them, her face half-covered in dust and crushed vegetation. “I hate this planet.”

  Gravel walked over, arms crossed. “You good?”

  She spat out a leaf. “Do I look good?”

  “You should’ve told us your glider malfunctioned so we could assist you,” Priest told her. “That was dangerous.”

  “It didn’t malfunction. I just suck,” she replied.

  Gravel smirked, rocking back on his heels. “Well, at least you’re self-aware. Also, you’re paying for the broken glider.”

  Priest crouched beside her, calmly flicking through his scanner. “No fractures, no major injuries. Just your pride.”

  “Don’t mention it again, please,” Hunter grumbled, swatting at her gear and forcing herself upright. The moment she got her footing, she kicked at the ground, sending a puff of mist-drenched soil straight at Gravel’s boots.

  He took a step back, unimpressed. “Chill. I’m wearing my collectors’ edition tactical boots today.”

  Atop the clouds, the floating city of Bor’tho was now nothing but a giant silhouette amongst the haze, stretched in all directions—massive, interconnected platforms suspended on a lattice of reinforced graviton stabilizers, keeping the entire structure afloat above mists.

  “That city is more a drifting archipelago than a city,” Hunter looked up, then looked back at the forest. “And this. This is just weird.”

  “Weird would be the right word for it.” Gravel nodded.

  “Focus,” Priest reminded them. “And do not joke around this time.”

  “Yes, Dad,” Hunter said.

  Beneath Bor’tho, the lower altitudes were coated in a near-permanent layer of thick, nutrient-rich fog, dense enough that many ground-based settlements had long been abandoned. The mist was a double-edged sword—it saturated the air with organic compounds which gave way to bizarre, fast-growing plant life and supplied airborne mineral deposits that made the planet invaluable for resource extraction. But it also meant that anything left at sea level for too long was either consumed by unchecked biological processes or crushed under the weight of its own mutations.

  As she adjusted her gear, the forest around them swayed, its eerie film-like foliage undulating in slow, rhythmic waves in response to the disturbance of their arrival. A soft, wet creaking echoed through the trees—not the sound of wood bending, but something organic shifting.

  “Yeah . . . I beg we bounce,” Hunter whispered.

  “We bounce.” Gravel nodded.