The City Of God Now

Kael was a "Light-Tender," one of the few permitted to touch the Core—a pulsating orb of pure divinity that kept the city afloat and the gardens in eternal bloom. For centuries, the High Priests taught that the Core was a gift from a creator who had abandoned the "Sullied Earth" below to reward the pure.

The city didn't plummet. It began a slow, graceful descent. As the white towers pierced the cloud layer for the first time in an epoch, the "God" at the center stopped weeping. The golden light faded, replaced by the warm, messy orange of a natural sunset. The city of God

Kael realized then that the City of God wasn't powered by a miracle, but by a . The "God" they worshipped wasn't an absent creator; it was a living entity being drained like a battery to keep the marble streets clean and the wine flowing. Kael was a "Light-Tender," one of the few

"Let me fall," it whispered. "The weight of their perfection is crushing me." It began a slow, graceful descent

The sun didn’t rise over the city of ; it simply ignited. Built atop a floating shelf of white quartz suspended miles above the clouds, the city was known to the surface-dwellers as the "City of God." To its citizens, it was a gilded cage.

Curiosity overrode his fear. He pressed his ear to the quartz casing and heard a faint, melodic weeping. As he adjusted the resonance of his tuning fork, a voice—ancient and exhausted—echoed in his mind.

The City of God was returning to the dirt, and for the first time, its people would have to learn how to walk on ground they hadn't stolen from the sky.