Drew awoke completely energized the next day.

  He hurried from the small bunkhouse he slept in to a warehouse.

  Arrayed across the warehouse floor were hundreds of tension frames, each strung with split vine fibers pulled taut and locked in place. The fibers ran straight and parallel, stretched under constant load while low-temperature kilns breathed out dry, steady heat.

  The air smelled faintly of sap and warm bark.

  Exhausted workers sat slumped against the walls or on the floor between frames, boots kicked off, hands stained dark with resin and ash. They had worked through the night at Diego’s direction, carefully drying the fibers without letting them slacken or twist.

  In another corner, large clay vats sat capped and cooling, each filled with gallons of pre-made resin. The surface of the mixture gleamed darkly when disturbed, thick and glossy.

  Diego entered with the morning shift, boots heavy on the stone. The stoic man looked tired and irritable, his patience clearly wearing thin.

  “Here are the workers you asked for,” he said. “Hopefully they’re sufficient.”

  The group assembled before Drew consisted of kiln minders, sap workers, warehouse hands, riggers, wood carvers, and two scribes. They studied the scene with open skepticism.

  Behind them, through the main doors, deckhands strained and cursed as they maneuvered a massive screw press into the center of the warehouse.

  “I don’t need better people,” Drew said, unable to keep the grin out of his voice. “I just need them in the right order.”

  That earned him a few doubtful looks.

  Diego gestured sharply. “Get started. You’re burning silver by the minute.”

  Drew stepped forward, lifting one of the tension frames so everyone could see.

  “I need a group to replicate what the night shift did,” he said. “Split the vine sheaths, stretch the fibers under tension, and keep them aligned like this. No twist. No slack. Then dry them slowly in the kiln. If the fibers move while they dry, the panel fails later.”

  Two riggers nodded, recognizing the logic immediately.

  He turned next to the resin vats.

  “We need more resin. Heat and reduce the sap first. Then add chalk, clay dust, vine ash, and trace oil in these ratios.”

  He handed a folded sheet to two sap workers.

  “Follow the first recipe for three batches. Then switch to the second.”

  The men exchanged a look but moved off without arguing.

  Drew crossed to a cleared section of floor where dried fibers waited.

  “You two,” he said, pointing. “Remove the fibers from the frames and lay them out exactly in their original orientation. Lengthwise first.”

  He demonstrated, arranging the fibers carefully.

  He dipped a wide brush into the resin and painted it across the layer, working slowly, forcing the mixture into the strands.

  “Once it’s fully wetted, add a second layer at forty-five degrees.”

  He laid the fibers diagonally, then repeated the resin application.

  “Third layer goes ninety degrees from the first.”

  Another coat of resin. The fibers darkened as they absorbed it.

  “This is where the strength comes from,” Drew said. “Direction matters.”

  He smoothed the surface with his palms, then covered it with an oiled leaf sheet.

  “When you’re done, bring it to the press.”

  The warehouse hands had finished positioning the screw press. Drew turned to them.

  “Press slowly. Firm pressure, but don’t starve the resin. If it squeals or cracks, back off.”

  They nodded grimly.

  “From there,” Drew continued, “it goes straight to the kiln.”

  He faced the two women assigned as the second kiln group.

  “You’ll work with a scribe testing cure temperatures and times. Slow cures, stepped heat, and controlled cooling.”

  He turned to the nearest scribe.

  “I need everything recorded. Which batches cure clean. Which delaminate. Which soften, crack, or burn.”

  He paused.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “Is there a second scribe?”

  A man raised his hand hesitantly. “Here.”

  “Good,” Drew said. “You’re with me. We document final panels. Weight, stiffness, failure patterns.”

  The scribes exchanged uneasy looks as the teams began moving, the warehouse filling with motion, heat, and noise.

  Turning to the unassigned carvers, Drew handed over a series of quick sketches he had made in the palanquin the previous day. Many were inspired by the drones he had helped design back home, others shaped like darts or missiles from his old world.

  “I need you to carve miniature replicas,” Drew said. “About the length of my forearm.”

  The men studied the sketches in silence, brows furrowed, expressions blank with incomprehension.

  “…Okay,” one of them said at last.

  They got to work.

  Drew stepped back, watching the process come alive.

  For the first time since María’s fall, the chaos felt… ordered.

  Fourteen hours later, Drew stood with the scribes, inspecting stacks of finished panels marked and numbered in orange paint.

  Stack one held a series of pale panels. The surfaces were uneven, fuzzy fibers pushing through the resin. Drew picked one up. It was light. When he tapped it with his finger, it answered with a hollow sound.

  He moved to another stack, this one made with additional hardener mixed into the resin. Drew lifted a panel and inspected it. It was beautiful. A deep, dark gloss reflected the light, but fine hairline cracks ran near the edges.

  When he struck it, the panel rang sharply.

  He bent it slightly.

  It snapped.

  Drew skipped over the next few stacks, warped panels and delaminated failures he already understood.

  At stack six, he paused.

  The panel he lifted had a deep, even gloss, the fibers barely visible beneath the surface. It was lighter than he expected.

  When he flexed it, the sound was a dull thud instead of a crack.

  He bent it further.

  The panel flexed, then sprang back into shape.

  Diego pushed himself up from the floor where he had been taking a brief catnap. Drew handed him a panel from stack six.

  “This one complained,” Drew said quietly. “That’s the one we want.”

  Diego turned the panel in his hands, testing its weight, flexing it once more than necessary. His expression didn’t change.

  “How many more can you make like this?” he asked.

  [SYSTEM UPDATE]

  Breakthrough Achieved: Structural Composite Fabrication You have successfully created a new class of load-bearing material.

  Innovation Registered: Keelweave Composite Classification: Hybrid Structural Material Status: Novel Process Confirmed

  +3,500 XP (Crafting Breakthrough) +1,500 XP (Applied Systems Reasoning)

  Skill Level Increased: Crafting → Level 4

  Intelligence → Level 3

  New Passive Effects Unlocked:? Improved intuition for material failure thresholds ? Reduced iteration loss during experimental fabrication ? Increased efficiency when coordinating multi-stage workflows

  Notice: This method cannot be replicated without process understanding. Knowledge dissemination may alter factional balance.

  Grinning ear to ear, Drew responded, “As many as your workers and materials allow.”

  Checking the notebook the scribe handed to him, clearing his voice, Drew continued.

  “With one press and two shifts, they could turn out about two dozen panels a day, though only half would be worth keeping until the mix is dialed in.”

  Diego held the panel, marveling. “I will let Thren know.”

  Diego dismissed the workers. He turned the panel in his hands one last time and shook his head in quiet wonder.

  Drew, barely able to contain himself, crossed to the table where the scaled, carved canoe models waited.

  The material worked.

  Now the shape had to prove itself.

  Drew walked out through the gate wall of Thren’s defensive fortifications. He carried a long pole in his left hand. In his right was a wooden box holding the scale models the carvers had produced.

  At the end of the dock, he fixed a small wicker racing canoe, purchased earlier from the market, to the pole’s tip.

  He steadied his breathing and focused.

  Aether Flow Perception: INTERMITTENT

  Status: Full sensory alignment detected.

  Warning: Prolonged use may cause sensory dropout.

  The gases he had seen while navigating days earlier snapped into sharper, brighter focus. The effect hurt his eyes. The image strobed, flickering in and out of clarity, and pressure built behind his temples, promising a brutal headache.

  Drew clenched his jaw and extended the pole.

  Around the wicker canoe, the aether fog shredded into fine turbulence. It clung to the hull, broke free, then reattached in uneven patches.

  The top sail shed a strong wake that curled downward and back. The lower sail, set slightly aft, sat directly in that disturbed flow, catching and stabilizing it.

  Drew frowned.

  His crude wind-tunnel test showed the canoe doing far better than expected. The flow was ugly. Drag heavy. But the pattern was stable.

  It was inefficient on paper, but it refused to stall cleanly.

  And that made it dangerous in the right hands.

  Anything that refused to fail cleanly would eventually fail catastrophically.

  He drew the pole back and swapped in the next model.

  A skyray shape.

  No. He grimaced.

  A flying wing.

  He could dress it up however he liked. He’d always loved the B-2.

  The manta-inspired craft had no distinct top or bottom sails. Instead, it used integrated membrane sails stretched across the widened wings of the hull. Everything was low, broad, and smooth.

  The sail skin formed a shallow cambered surface, like a paraglider fused directly to the body.

  It looked beautiful.

  As Drew extended the pole, he felt it immediately.

  The pole itself bounced as the wings generated lift.

  Through his aether vision, the flow spread cleanly across the surface, forming smooth sheets instead of streamers.

  Then the incoming current shifted.

  The flow feeding the model was uneven.

  A cross-current struck.

  One wing brightened sharply.

  The craft snapped upward on that side.

  Drew had to fight the pole to keep it from twisting out of his grip.

  At first, irritation flared. The flow wasn’t laminar. The test wasn’t clean.

  Then María’s fall flashed through his mind.

  This was the test.

  The craft didn’t fail because the air was bad.

  It failed because the air always was.

  Claire would have loved this shape. Clean. Elegant. Optimized.

  He wondered, briefly, how many test flights it would have taken her to admit it was wrong.

  He withdrew the model and mounted the next shape.

  A cruise missile.

  His eyes throbbed now, vision wavering, but he forced himself to continue.

  Whatever this sense was, it was not meant to be used for long.

  Any ship that depended on it would kill its pilot.

  Or force them to choose between blindness and control.

  The sails were mounted forward of the nose. As the model entered the wind, the aether fog split cleanly around the tip and clung tight to the body, pulsing in narrow, controlled bands.

  Behind the forward sails, paired vortices spun into being, two aquamarine ropes running down the fuselage like rails.

  When a cross-current struck, the nose pitched up aggressively, coupling into a roll.

  The craft was sensitive. Dangerously so.

  But it did not immediately lose control.

  The short, stubby wings contributed lift without spreading it too widely, reducing the need for excess vine structure.

  It was far more stable than the flying wing.

  But it demanded respect.

  It was not a shape that forgave ambition.

  It only rewarded discipline.

  The manta shape spread the wind across its entire body and turned slowly.

  The old canoe fought dirty and stayed upright.

  But the missile form cut a lane through the aether like a knife.

  One mistake, though, and the flow tore loose all at once.

  Drew’s aether vision collapsed.

  The pulsing yellow and aquamarine haze vanished, replaced by darkness and pain.

  His head exploded into a full migraine.

  He yanked the pole back, gathered the box of models, and staggered toward the inner complex.

  He found a bunk.

  And passed out.