Tethered Ruin
In a city suspended over an endless abyss, the only thing more dangerous than falling is falling in love.
The Aerie is a prison of iron and rust, a vertical city hanging by massive chains over a misty void that has no bottom. Life here is ruled by the Law of Suspension: never carry dead weight.
Rhea is the Executioner's daughter and a master Rigger. Her life is a constant calculation of tension and stress, maintaining the groaning chains that keep the city from plummeting. She knows the sound of metal breaking before it happens. She knows how to tie the perfect knot for a hanging. She is pragmatic, skilled, and terrified of the drop.
Cyrus is a "Weightless." A prisoner sentenced to the abyss for a crime he refuses to name. But Cyrus defies the laws of nature-gravity seems to lose its grip on him. He has survived three execution attempts because the rope always goes slack, or the trapdoor jams. He is an anomaly, a man who cannot hang, locked in an open-air cage where the wind howls like a banshee.
When Rhea is ordered to design a rig that will finally kill him, she finds herself drawn to the one man she is sworn to destroy. Cyrus is calm in the face of death, and his touch sends vibrations through the chains that Rhea can feel in her bones. He offers her a truth that could shatter the Aerie's foundations: the city isn't just holding prisoners; it's hiding what lies beneath the mist.
As the chains begin to snap and the city screams under the strain, Rhea must choose: do her duty and send him to the dark, or cut the tether and fall with him into the unknown.
The drop is eternal. But so is the vow.
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