"Stormborn lies."

  Drew rolled the words over in his mind as he climbed. He'd always considered himself honest not perfect, but decent. But vivisection? That was motivation enough to lie through his teeth.

  He trailed Fray Hernando in silence, lost in his own thoughts. The only sound was his ragged breathing and the scrape of boots on stone. His legs burned as they climbed the crude steps carved into the rock, up and up into thinning air.

  In the corner of his vision the flickering system flashed warnings and notifications. It was like a bad dream… or a bad video game.

  Eventually they came to an archway that led out to a cliff side. Drew squinted pausing and blinking in the bright light.

  The cliffside spilled out before him in impossible layers. Narrow staircases and stepped landings clung to the walls, connecting adobe dwellings that jutted like nests from the stone. He could see ropes, baskets, and woven bridges strung like spiderwebs between them. The smell of sunbaked earth, wild herbs, and ozone filled the air.

  And below… a jagged slab of rock, wrapped in massive vines that vanished into churning yellow clouds. Lightning flickered far below granting an orange glow to the clouds. It hit Drew all at once, he really was not on Earth anymore.

  “Don’t lean too far.” Fray Hernando Said “No one here just gawks like that. For now you need to learn who you are pretending to be.”

  A set of stairs led upward towards a stone building with a glass wall. The glass was not perfectly clear and had a slightly concave circular shape to them granting a panoramic view of the cliffside.

  The twosome continued up the stairs towards the structure.

  Looking out towards the horizon whole damn islands drifted in dream like clusters. Most were the size of a house but a few were the size football fields. Beneath all were vines rhythmically swaying in the wind. On one island small tree shimmered with gold the leaves pulsing with luminescence.

  The Fray reached up and grasped an iron ring on wooden door and slammed it down on the wood door in three heavy knocks.

  After a pause a short man about Drew’s age opened the door.

  “Welcome Fray” pausing and glancing at Drew “And guest to the Skyridge Observatory.”

  Another system ping appeared in Drew’s vision.

  [Location Discovered: Skyridge Observatory]

  High-altitude mapping and signal detection post

  Faction: Arawinaya Sub-Band: Quari’tal

  Defensive Rating: Moderate

  Special Feature: Drift Cartograph Access (Locked)

  +100 XP (Exploration Bonus)

  Map Fragment Unlocked: "Unstable Horizon" (1/5)

  The short man stepped aside and gestured them in. His skin was the color of weathered stone, and his black hair was tied into a knot behind his head, fastened with what looked like a sliver of bone. He wore a short cut tunic made of a rough red fiber with a satchel made of brown vines around a shoulder.

  “Come inside, I can make some tea” the short man gestured again, “another Chain might be surfacing.”

  Fray Hernando grunted in acknowledgment and stepped through. Drew followed, doing his best not to gape.

  Inside, the observatory was circular, with thick stone walls and a dome of copper-streaked glass above. Dozens of hanging glass bowls pulsed gently with golden light, illuminating tables stacked with maps, coils of fiber, and bone handled tools.

  The glass bowls providing light contained small tree saplings with their leaves glowing and shifting the intensity of light they gave off.

  A large round platform dominated the center with roots twisting on the table. The roots and the table in general was smudged as if seen through a dirty window. Drew squinted but the table and it's top would not come into focus.

  His vision flickered.

  [Drift Cartograph Detected: Access Denied]

  Cartograph Status: Protected System (Arawinaya Encryption)

  Authentication Required: Sub Band Trusted Rank or Graft Synced Credentials

  Warning: Attempting unauthorized sync may trigger defense response.

  He blinked the message away quickly.

  The young man was staring at Drew.

  “, El Venado de las Venas” he said flatly. “You bring us problems.”

  “I bring you an opportunity,” Hernando replied.

  His eyes slid to Drew.

  “This the privateer? I don’t believe for one second he is one.”

  Drew opened his mouth, then remembered the fray’s warning and snapped it shut.

  The younger man snorted.

  “What was he sailing a canoe by himself?”

  “Nothing… yet,” Hernando said. “But he’s bonded to a vine I’ve never seen. A hybrid. Possibly engineered. Possibly… divine.”

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  That drew a pause.

  “My father worked with you once,” he said to Hernando, not taking his eyes off Drew. “Before you were cast out. He said you only lied when you thought it would save a soul.”

  The Fray’s reply was slow.

  “And do you think I’m lying now?”

  “I think you believe it,” the young man said. “But that doesn’t make it safe.”

  He walked toward the central platform, placing one hand reverently on the warped surface of the Cartograph roots. The glow from the sapling bowls reflected in his eyes.

  “Does he even have a Driftname yet?” he asked. “Or a registered vine alignment?”

  “No,” Hernando said. “He arrived with only the root un-bonded but implanted. No interface training, no Drift speak, no tribal mark. He’s… raw.”

  “So he is from the Kétza Mórah (Forgotten soil) that brings even more trouble. And unbounded but implanted. And who implanted that vine” the younger man stated raising an eyebrow.

  The fray exhaled through his nose, the sound heavy with weariness.

  “Yes,” Hernando said quietly. “He is from the Kétza Mórah. From Earth.”

  The younger man froze, his fingers still resting on the blurred Cartograph.

  Drew blinked. Earth. Finally, someone said it out loud.

  “I suspected as much,” the young man muttered. “You haven’t brought someone across in a long time”

  “I didn’t bring him,” Fray Hernando said, his voice tightening. “The Drift did. The lightning, the vine, The Lord chose him.”

  The young man’s expression darkened.

  “You always talk about ‘The Lord choosing’ when you don’t understand something.”

  “And yet you’re still here, working this observatory your father left you,” Hernando replied. “Still guarding systems you don’t trust, hoping for a sign.”

  He gestured to Drew.

  “This is your sign. Or your burden. Maybe both.”

  A silence settled between them. Then the fray continued, gentler now.

  “I trust no one here completely. Not anymore. But you,” he said, looking at the younger man with something like fondness buried beneath the weight of years, “you are the only one I trust even a little.”

  He turned to Drew.

  “You can trust Ametzu. He is the only other person here you can be open with.”

  Drew held his hand out to Ametzu.

  “I’m Drew, Drew Wilson.”

  Tentatively Ametzu took his hand and shook. His handshake was soft almost a limp fish style of hand shake.

  Fray Henando cleared his throat.

  “I brought him here so you can help explain the current state of the drift.”

  Ametzu released Drew’s hand and turned away, walking toward one of the curved tables lining the observatory wall. He picked up a carved bone stylus and tapped the surface of a faded map, it's edges curling slightly in the dry air. The map was drawn on treated bark, veins of inked root tracing archipelagos that floated in coils and spirals.

  “You really don’t know anything, do you?” he asked, not looking back.

  “Only what I’ve seen since I got here,” Drew admitted. “Mostly pain. Some lightning. One weird system message.”

  Ametzu’s lips twitched, but it didn’t quite become a smile.

  “The Looming Drift,” he said, gesturing to the map, “is not a continent, or a country. It’s a sky filled with borne sprawl of unstable islands land torn from the surface and hurled into the upper clouds by storms. Each time the world breaks, new islands rise. Some float for centuries. Others last days.”

  He picked up some small stones and placed one on each corner of the map to keep it laying open.

  “There are four major archipelagos that remain mostly stable. The largest belongs to Nueva Trujillo descendants, of the Conquistadors. Militaristic, devout, and powerful. They anchor their islands with holy vines Vélaria Sanctum and its sisters. Their capital is on a cluster called Domina’s Crest.”

  "Wait," Drew interrupted. "You said they're militaristic and devout. Would they help someone like me? Or..."

  "They would conscript you if they believed your story," Ametzu said. "Or execute you if they didn't."

  He moved the map slightly. The light shifted, highlighting a more irregular cluster.

  “To the east, scattered in smaller bands, are the Arawinaya my people. Descendants of the skybound people. We map. We drift. We adapt. Skyridge Hollow is one of our newer islands. It's a larger than normal new island. We are planting sister vines here to cause it to drift towards our other islands.

  "And then," he said, voice tightening, "there are the Tzoma Kai."

  Drew raised an eyebrow. "Let me guess. Not friendly neighbors?"

  Ametzu looked up at him finally, eyes sharp. "They are nomads. Raiders. Born from those who followed us up the sky ladder. Recently they've had other arrivals from Earth. They were already vicious. Now they reject balance entirely. They graft without restraint."

  Drew's hand drifted unconsciously to his chest, where the vine pulsed beneath his skin. "And they'd... study me?"

  "Vivisect you," Hernando corrected. "Slowly."

  Fray Hernando's voice hardened. "The more recent visitors from Earth are rather notorious. That's why people will not trust you."

  “The more recent visitors are rather notorious and why people will not trust you.”

  And how many more peoples are out there?” Drew asked.

  Ametzu hesitated.

  “We’ve made contact with other sapient races across the Drift. But we mostly interact with three. One observes. One trades. One… consumes.”

  He tapped the map again. The map shimmered and folded in on it'self, leaving only a single glowing word hovering in the air: “Unstable Horizon (1/5)”

  “Welcome to the Drift, Drew Wilson,” Ametzu said quietly. “It doesn’t care where you came from. Only what you’ll do now.”

  Behind him, the fray’s voice rumbled low part lecture, part sermon.

  “The Drift doesn’t care,” Hernando said, stepping forward, “but the vines do.”

  Drew turned to look at him.

  “The vines,” the fray continued, gesturing with one scarred hand, “are more than plants. They are alive with purpose. Each species is a conduit a filter for Aether. When grafted into the body, they act like new organs. Veins. Roots. Some bond to the blood, others to the bone. A few,” his eyes lingered briefly on Drew, “bond to the mind.”

  Drew’s hand drifted to his chest, fingers unconsciously brushing where the vine had first touched him.

  “Each vine draws from the Aether currents in the clouds,” Hernando went on. “That’s how the islands float. The vines don’t just stabilize them they feed on the energy of the storms. The older the vine, the more stable the island.”

  Ametzu added, “But there’s a cost. Vines don’t thrive alone. They resonate. Plant two different vine species on a island, and the magic twists. Islands begin to drift together slowly, steadily like two lovers drawn across the sky.”

  “It’s how we form archipelagos,” the fray said. “Arawinaya. Acruciari. Even the Tzoma Kai. All built their domains by pairing the right vines to the right soil.”

  “Some claim the Kachina the jellyfish spirit's designed it that way,” Ametzu said softly.

  Drew frowned.

  “The Jellyfish?”

  “The Kachina,” Hernando said, with a reverence that made Drew stop asking questions.

  The fray crossed to the central table, placing a hand gently on the blurred, root warped Cartograph.

  “This is how the Drift moves. Not by tides, but by tendrils. Every vine is a choice of alignment, of identity. And now that you are grafted, Drew, you are bound into that system.”

  His tone turned grave.

  “Your Lúmivolt Root is unknown to the Cartograph. It holds a volatile charge, and worse it’s hybridized. That makes you a mystery. A threat.”

  Drew felt the weight of both men’s eyes on him. For the first time since waking, he understood:

  The vine in his body wasn’t just keeping him alive.

  It was changing everything.

  His gaze dropped to his hand. The place where the vine had touched him still itched, deep in the muscle.

  Residual Charge the system had called it.

  He flexed his fingers. Nothing.

  He focused harder, picturing the arcs of lightning. A faint static itch prickled up his arm, sharp enough to make him wince.

  Fray Hernando’s hand whipped out grabbed his hand.

  “STOP” he roared.

  Then the air exploded with blue-white arcs.

  The discharge rippled out from him in a crackling sphere. Hernando staggered back, jaw clenched against the jolt. Ametzu cursed, dropped his stylus, and collapsed, convulsing on the stone floor. The copper dome above them rang faintly, as if the whole observatory had been struck.

  The Cartograph roots shuddered. One tendril twitched like a snake tasting the air.

  A translucent panel blinked into view:

  Skill Activated: Residual Charge

  Effect: Area Discharge radius 10 ft

  Cooldown: 1 hour

  [+50 XP (Skill Activation Bonus)]

  The sharp tang of ozone filled the room. Hernando shook out his arm, giving Drew a long, steady look.

  “You’ll want to learn control,” the fray said, voice tight with lingering static. “Or the Drift will eat you faster than any storm.”

  Ametzu sat up shaking his head disoriented. Near his collarbone green veins pulsed with light.

  “Don’t use your gifts in here. Get out and let us talk about what to do with you.”