Wind whipped grit against my face as I stood at the edge of the Blackrock Mountain cliff.

  The once-untouchable floating island of Cloud Summit now looked like a snapped broadsword, violently driven into the mountain's main peak at a sickening forty-five-degree angle.

  Beneath its shattered, surviving sunstone arrays flickered with a dying, erratic blue light. Every time they pulsed, the agonizing screech of buckling metal echoed across the valley.

  Thud.

  Another muffled impact. Hundreds of loose boulders sheared off the cliff face, cascading into the bottomless gorge below and kicking up a massive plume of dust. The bedrock shuddered every few minutes.

  “This steel city is too damn cramped. The air tastes like coal soot. It’s no place for a wolf.”

  Garza stepped up beside me, his massive frame blocking half the biting wind. After a brief repair cycle, he had been outfitted with a custom set of Skyreach black-iron pauldrons. He looked significantly more relaxed—and far more dangerous—than he had in chains.

  “I’m taking the packs back to the northern steppes.”

  The one-eyed Wolf King rolled his heavily armored shoulders, staring at the precarious wreckage. “Centuries of slavery ground the tribes down to loose gravel. The North needs a unified foundation. Alex, if you run low on fresh kills or winter furs, send a runner.”

  Turning to face the former tyrant, I gripped his hand.

  “Keep your guard up, Garza. If your people need winter heating units, high-proof liquor, or antibiotics, the gates of Skyreach are always open to you.”

  Barking a rough laugh, the Wolf King turned and strode toward the thousands of wolf warriors already marshaled outside the city limits. They were heading back to the wild, transitioning into the most lethal guerrilla allies on the wasteland.

  “It appears the old wolf has monopolized our northern market share, Alex.”

  Jasta materialized beside me, idly rolling a stolen noble’s ruby ring across his knuckles.

  The fox-kin had swapped his combat gear for a high-end merchant’s coat. Behind him, a heavily loaded caravan was idling, packed to the brim with Skyreach machined parts, windproof lighters, and high-purity filtered water.

  “I need to make a run to the 'Kingdom of Golden Sands' down south.”

  Pure, unfiltered capitalist greed gleamed in Jasta's shrewd eyes.

  “Those humans are so fat and lazy they’re rotting on piles of gold, and they're still operating medieval horse-drawn carts. It’s time we introduced them to the industrial sledgehammer of Skyreach. And while I’m at it... secure some venture capital. Those southern fat cats complain about the grime... If I pitch them commercial real estate in the clouds, they’ll bleed coin for the privilege...”

  “Go for it. Just watch your back, or some southern lord is going to turn you into a scarf.”

  “Relax. I’m the slickest fox in the den.” Jasta threw me a wink and led his caravan out.

  My allies were scattering to handle their objectives, but my stress levels weren't dropping.

  Staring down, I focused on the UI panel aggressively flashing across my retinas. The glaring red text hung over the entire city like a guillotine.

  This wasn't a glitch I could patch with a new retaining wall or a concrete dam.

  The island’s mass was too severe. The second that slope failed, the entire heavy industrial sector of Skyreach’s lower city—along with tens of thousands of people—would be flattened by a falling steel continent.

  “Patch through to all core personnel,” I told Zayla. “Emergency tactical briefing at the cliff edge. Now.”

  ...

  Ten minutes later.

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  I projected a 3D holographic wireframe of the cliff and the crashed island onto the cratered dirt. A pulsing red hazard zone spread across the map like a massive bloodstain, covering nearly a third of Skyreach.

  “Blow it! We have to blow the load-bearing cross-section right now!”

  Sarak shrieked, stabbing a stubby green finger at the projection. “Boss, you have no idea how much premium scrap is up there! We drop it, strip it, and haul the parts back to the smelters. We’re looking at least three thousand tons of aether-metal! We could double our tank production and steam mechs!”

  “I’m with the short guy on this.”

  Brad crossed his arms, his logic as blunt as a sledgehammer.

  “A giant rock over our heads is just a shot clock running out. If it’s a threat, we roll all our 30mm flak cannons up the slope and blast it to gravel. Better it comes down as rain than a whole damn roof.”

  “Absolutely not!”

  Elder Carl shook his head frantically, terror wrinkling his weathered face. “That is a cataclysm-level mass! The seismic shock from an artillery barrage will instantly trigger an avalanche and mudslides! We’d bury ourselves before the first piece of scrap even hit the ground!”

  Zayla stood with her arms crossed, hands resting near her twin blades, her eyes calculating.

  “If total structural failure is unavoidable, I’ll lead the rangers and hold the evacuation corridors. But Alex, our current transport logistics can only haul half the population out in time.”

  Mykra stepped out from the shadow of a supply crate, his gravelly voice dropping a lethal piece of intel into the mix.

  “The island’s main reactor is cold. But the lower decks still hold a high-pressure mana reservoir.”

  “If that containment cracks... the yield is roughly equivalent to a hundred kilotons of TNT. Skyreach would be vaporized. In less than a second.”

  Dead silence.

  The air in the makeshift command post froze. A nuclear-yield explosion would wipe this entire mountain range and the valley off the map.

  I stared at the holographic projection, grinding my teeth.

  Pull it out? Landslide.

  Blow it up? Vaporization.

  The mountain was a critical trauma patient with a punctured artery, and the floating island was a rusty shank shoved right next to its heart.

  Then, Jasta’s parting pitch echoed in my head.

  “Those southern fat cats complain about the grime... if I pitch them commercial real estate in the clouds, they’ll bleed coin...”

  My eyes snapped wide open.

  “Sarak, if a blade is lodged right against a patient’s artery, you don’t just yank it out. The pressure drops, and they bleed out in seconds. The ‘Mountain’s Wound’ operates on the exact same principle.”

  I looked around at their confused faces, taking a deep breath before dropping my ultimate blueprint.

  “We’re going to pour concrete over it and make it the new foundation!”

  “Pour concrete? Boss, do you have a fever?” Sarak’s eyes bulged. “That’s a multi-million-ton leaning tower! What are you going to use as filler? Our corpses?”

  “Sarak. We are going to change the entire physical dimension of this city.”

  I pointed up at the sky, tracing the outline of the jagged steel corpse half-hidden in the clouds.

  “I’m going to sink twelve ultra-heavy reinforced concrete load-bearing pillars—every thirty meters in diameter—starting from the deep bedrock of Skyreach! We’ll run massive gear-train assemblies straight up the side of the mountain, physically stitching the floating island and our ground-level city together!”

  My fingers flew across the holographic console, rapidly rendering a jaw-dropping 3D model.

  “When we finish curing the concrete—”

  “Subterranean level: Our Lower City. The heavy industrial furnaces, geothermal plants, and rail networks.”

  “Mid-level: The Middle City. Agricultural greenhouses, civilian housing blocks, and commercial plazas.”

  “And at the summit... we retrofit the wreckage of that island into the Upper City! Advanced research labs, high-end trade districts, and our very own sky-port!”

  I pushed my cracked safety glasses up my nose, letting the pure, unadulterated madness of industrial engineering bleed into my voice:

  “I am going to build a Vertical Metropolis!”

  “From this day forward, the people of Skyreach won't need to look up at the sky... because we will be the sky.”

  The briefing circle went completely dead.

  Brad didn't even notice the piece of straw drop from his open mouth. Sarak’s jaw practically unhinged, nearly hitting his boots. Zayla stared at me with wide amber eyes, looking at me like I belonged in a psych ward.

  Even Elder Carl, a man who had seen decades of magical phenomena, looked like his entire worldview had just been put through a woodchipper.

  In a world that worshipped bloodlines and mystical energy, this lunatic from Earth was plotting to literally nail the sky to the ground using rebar and cement.

  Sarak was the first to reboot. While the sheer scale of the blueprint short-circuited him, his goblin engineering instincts immediately flagged the fatal error:

  “Boss! The schematics are glorious! But high-spec concrete requires a full twenty-eight days to cure! That mountain won't even last twenty-eight hours!”

  “Before we even finish tying the rebar, millions of tons of scrap will roll down and mash us into a fine paste!”

  I checked the glaring 98.7% on the holographic readout and nodded.

  “If the mountain’s current structural integrity can't handle the dead load, then we decrease the weight.”

  “Decrease the weight?” Brad blinked. “How? Throw all their leftover gold and silver off the side?”

  “No. Anti-gravity arrays.”

  I turned to Mykra. “The island’s main reactor is cold, but the emergency suspension runes on the underside have to be intact. If we can boot up those emergency arrays to even twenty percent capacity, the upward thrust will offset a massive chunk of the dead weight!”

  “If we drop the load-bearing stress from 98.7% down to 60%, the mountain holds! That buys us the time we need to pour the pillars!”

  “That’s a negative.” Mykra frowned, his shadow rippling with agitation. “Boss, the interface for those circuits is locked behind hyper-exclusive royal bio-magic. If I brute-force the shadow code and trigger a failsafe, it’ll take me months to bypass the encryption.”

  “Physics isn't going to give us months. We don't even have hours.”

  I turned and power-walked out of the command center.

  “Boss, where are you going?” Sarak yelled after me.

  “To find the key.”

  I didn't look back, my voice cutting through the freezing wind as I headed straight for the POW camp.

  “But she lost all her mana! She’s wearing the inhibitor collar...” Brad chased after me.

  “I have a workaround.”

  ...

  I stopped in front of a specially constructed holding cell, heavily guarded and reinforced with ballistic glass and black-iron grating.

  The heavy clinking of chains echoed from the darkest corner of the cell.

  Selena. The Storm Queen. The untouchable deity who had once demanded the worship of millions.

  Now, she was shivering in the freezing dirt, wearing a filthy prison jumpsuit. The heavy Mana-Inhibitor collar locked around her neck blinked with a harsh red warning light. Thick, blood-soaked bandages were strapped across her right shoulder—the humiliating medical dressing of a severed wing.

  I stood outside the ballistic glass, looking down at the ruined god.

  “The clock is ticking.”

  I rapped my knuckles against the heavy glass.

  “It’s time to give Laborer 001 her first shift.”