The tiny, amplified voice still hung in the air—“You are prisoners of Hearth.” —when the world erupted into motion. Before Stollen could raise a hand in peace, before Lyra could even form a word, the miniature soldiers moved. It wasn’t an attack of brute force, but of terrifying precision. A dozen of them drew back their arms and hurled not spears of war, but short, needle-tipped darts. Thwick. Thwick-thwick. The projectiles were tiny, but they found the seams of their suits—the flexible joints at the knees, the elbows, the neck seal. A cold, sharp prick, followed instantly by a spreading numbness. Lyra slapped at her thigh, fingers fumbling. “Tranq… darts…” Her words slurred. “Advanced… cocktail…” Stollen’s vision swam. The forest tilted. He saw Lyra’s legs buckle. H

 The walk back to Skrul’s village was silent, the weight of the council’s decision and the impossible map heavy between them. In the clearing where the cage stood, their damaged spacesuits lay where they’d left them, scarred and silent. Skrul was waiting, his expression unreadable. “The Council has spoken,” he said, his amplified voice cutting through the quiet. “But words are not ships. What is your first move, giants?” Stollen’s mind, grateful for a practical problem, clicked into gear. “We need raw materials. Metals for the frame. Composites for the hull matrix. Ceramics for heat shielding. Polymers, plastics, fuels, electronics, sensors, and glass.” He listed them like a mantra, the familiar checklist of a spacecraft making the impossible feel slightly more tangible. Skrul nodded slowly. “Metals, we have in abundance here. This continent i

  The journey from Eira’s militarized ridges to Arin’s land took several hours of steady walking. The terrain shifted from sharp, needled trees to rolling, patchwork hills. From a high pass, Stollen and Lyra looked down at what the map called a “continent.” To them, it was an island perhaps ten miles across. Fields spread in quilted squares, but many were fallow or choked with weeds. The settlements they could see were clusters of simple, thatched huts—no watchtowers, no forges smoking, no high-tech vehicles. “A ‘continent’,” Lyra said, her voice flat. “It’s smaller than some lakes back home.” “Scale is everything here,” Stollen replied, his eyes scanning. “To a two-inch tall person, ten miles might as well be a planet. But… look at the fields. The soil’s thin. Eroded.” 

    The sea changed color as they paddled closer to Arinthal’s land. The water shifted from deep blue to a clear, luminous turquoise, and the air grew noticeably cooler, carrying a sweet, floral scent. The island itself rose from the water not as a jagged coast, but as a series of graceful, terraced slopes covered in vegetation that glowed with a soft, internal light.     “It’s like someone decorated an island with neon,” Lyra murmured, her paddle dipping silently.     Stollen’s eyes were on the structures nestled among the glowing trees. They weren’t built; they appeared grown—curving walls of seamless, polished material that flowed into arched doorways, roofs that were living canopies of bioluminescent leaves. To their giant scale, it was an exq

The sea after Claira’s island did not calm; it thickened. A fine, grey dust began to fall from a cloudless sky, coating their canoe, their supplies, their skin. It wasn’t snow or ash, but something mineral and dry. It smelled of ozone and burnt stone.“Volcanic,” Stollen said, wiping a grey streak from his visor. His suit’s external sensors, glitchy but functional, chirped a weak warning. PARTICULATE MATTER: HIGH. COMPOSITION: SILICATES, ALLOY RESIDUE.“Not volcanic,” Nathe corrected quietly from the bow. He caught a few grains on his fingertip, rubbing them together. “Smelter discharge. Thorold’s forges. They never stop. They burn day and night. This is what falls downwind.”Lyra stared at the hazy outline of the approaching landmass. It wasn’t green, or grey, or any natural color. It was a landscape of scorched umber and rust-red, scarred by geometric lines—roads, trenches, massive cleared zones. Watchtowers, skeletal and tall even from their distant perspective, stood silhouetted a