The Sky Beneath Us Novels & Stories

Above them, the sky stretched wide and endless. And somewhere deep beneath it all— The bond pulsed. Unbreakable. Unchosen. Unstoppable. 🩸

Our life. This is the top of the world.

The sky above Jakarta didn't just leak; it collapsed. Thunder rolled across the horizon like a barrage of heavy artillery, shaking the very foundations of the mansion. For Sari, the violence of the weather was a blessing. She stood at the heavy iron servant’s door, her hand hovering over the latch. Rain lashed against the wood, the sound a deafening roar that masked the frantic thudding of her heart. "Now or never," she hissed to herself. "Move, Sari. Move!"

Sofia whispered, her head falling back as the blue cracks on her skin began to glow with a soft, stabilizing emerald light. The other children moved in, forming a wide circle around Sofia and Nomo. They joined hands, their small bodies glowing with a collective resonance that defied the oily blackness of the sky. It wasn't the violent, explosive power of the Sovereign; it was the quiet, stubborn strength of the root. They were the "Seeded," and they were anchoring the sky.

CHAPTER 70— CONTAINMENT POV: Ezra The sky turns into a machine. Not a metaphor. A literal one. The halo above Earth ignites like a ring of newborn suns, stretching from horizon to horizon. Light pours down from orbit in perfectly measured beams, connecting thousands of invisible points across the atmosphere. It looks beautiful. It looks terrifying. And it is very clearly aimed at the angel. Severiel hovers above the flooded street, wings half-spread, staring upward like someone watching a clever animal attempt a trick.

I wander a little, breathing in deep. The air here feels different — fresh, cool, slightly sweet from the blossoms. It calms the jittery beat of my heart, just a little. I find a bench and sink onto it, letting my head tip back toward the sky. Just five minutes. Five minutes to feel normal before I go back in and pretend I’m totally cool with feeding two men who clearly own the world but look at people like they’re chess pieces. Except — of course — the universe can’t even give me those five minutes.

It was more than that. It was the air—cool and pristine, filtered through some expensive system that removed any hint of the city outside. It was the silence, broken only by purposeful footsteps and hushed, important conversations. It was the weight of invisible judgment pressing on my shoulders, as tangible as if someone had draped a heavy coat across my back.

I slid off the Sovereign, the soles of my boots hissing against the superheated glass of the Citadel’s roof. Above us, the night sky was painted a toxic, beautiful orange by the burning wreckage of the Aegis Destroyer. Ash drifted down like snow, settling on our leather vests and the chrome of our bikes. But below us was where the real show was happening.

Eliana lay on her back, staring up at a sky that was not compressed time or collapsing architecture or the machinery of a dying law. It was simply sky, the blue of late afternoon, streaked with the first hints of sunset, the color of a world that had never learned to bargain, never learned to exchange, never learned to weigh the worth of a soul against the duration of a life.

They may not like me, but at least when they're near, other students can't kill me. Ahead of me, Rowan, Seyla, and Lyra, all link arms as they giggle in excitement. I slow my pace slightly to keep a distance. I don't want my sour mood to bring down theirs. I glance up at the night sky, and I gasp. I stop walking altogether as I take in the millions of stars lighting the sky. I almost forgot how beautiful the night sky is.