Chapter 7 – The Prince Who Refused His Wings

Aro lowers the piton.

“I will not choose another city for the world,” he says.

The mountain keeps climbing. We have one hour before it tears the atmosphere.

I open every sealed letter in my courier network and broadcast the truth: which routes are false, which monasteries concealed sacrifices, where the Eater has already bitten through the roots. Villages receive enough information to choose their own evacuation paths. My business dies message by message.

Aro confesses his part in Aethelgard. He did feed the falling city to the Eater—but only after its rulers chained fifty thousand people to prevent evacuation. He cut the anchors hoping the city’s storm engines would poison the creature. The plan failed. He kept the worst truth hidden because explanation sounded too much like absolution.

At the highest station, priests offer him his severed wings preserved in lightning glass. Restored, he could fly above the storm and survive alone.

He breaks the case.

Instead of attaching the wings, he pours their stored storm-blood into the mountain’s climbing mechanism. Wind becomes weight. For the first time in centuries, the peak stops rising.

The heart’s roots loosen inside me.

We descend into the storm together and drive anchor pitons horizontally toward neighboring mountains. Each strike costs Aro part of his weather magic. Nima-guided couriers carry the tether lines while villages below choose where they may attach.

The final anchor locks.

Silence replaces the upward wind.

Then the cloud floor splits open.

The Eater waits directly beneath us, its mouth ringed with the ruins of Aethelgard. By stopping the climb, we have placed the mountain within reach.

Aro takes my hand only after I extend it.

“Now,” I say, “we teach mountains to move sideways.”