The floor leveled with a violent shudder as the secondary stabilizing cables seized, screaming against their iron winches. Rust rained down like iron frost, speckling Basir's soot-streaked coat. "Stabilizers held," Basir croaked, wiping soot from his temple. "Only forty leagues above the smog basin, but... still hanging." Before Nabiya could shake out her skirts, the heavy bronze chime at the manor’s air-lock gantry chimed with sharp, rhythmic malice. Footsteps echoed along the rusted catwalk. Safura swept into the suspended atrium like a peacock wading through an ash pit. Her silk gown was dyed in radiant solar gold—the unmistakable hue reserved for the highest terraces of Qalari, where the sun hit without filter. Behind her trailed Dalun Hesh. The doctor’s famous posture was gone. His high linen collar was stained with sweat, purple bruises hung under his sunken eyes, and his hands trembled against the brass clasp of his medical satchel. "Oh, sweet sister!" Safura trilled, pressing a perfumed handkerchief against her nose. "I heard a dreadful cable snap all the way from the Sun-Spires. I told Dalun, *We must check on poor Nabiya before she falls into the dregs.*" Nabiya offered a vacant, dazzled grin, clasping her hands before her chest. "Safura! You brought the doctor! Isn't this place just fascinating? The whole house swings like a hammock when the wind picks up! It’s like a carnival ride, truly!" Dalun looked at Basir, then looked down, unable to meet the sickly scholar's gaze. Safura had clearly been running him raw. The ink beneath Dalun’s fingernails told the story: illicit research, late nights spent trying to force the golden formulas she believed would make them untouchable. "A hammock? It’s a suicide pit," Safura snapped, her lips curling into a cruel smirk. She took two strutting steps forward, her gold-heeled boots clattering on the oxidized floorboards. "Dalun has already secured three exclusive contracts with the Aer-Guild. Millions of brass-marks, Nabiya. Real wealth. Not a decaying tomb suspended over poison vents." "He looks so tired, though," Nabiya murmured, tilting her head innocently. "Do you let him sleep, sister? Or do doctors in the Sun-Spires run on pure brilliance?" Dalun’s mouth twitched, but a venomous glare from Safura pinned him in place. "Pioneers do not sleep," Safura hissed. She turned her heel, and with a casual, rehearsed brutality, drove the metal spike of her boot hard against an irregular brass latch set flush into the floorboards. *Click.* A subterranean valve gave way beneath the iron planks. A hissing cloud of sour, sulfurous vapor—the killing rot of the lower canyon—began to whistle upward, directly targeting Basir's fragile chest. Safura stepped back, feigning shock. "Oh my! The floor is rotting right under you, Basir! How tragic if your delicate lungs couldn't handle—" "Eeeeeek! A spider!" Nabiya shrieked. With theatrical terror, Nabiya hurled herself across the iron walkway. Her balance, perfected on the grease-slicked guide cables of the canyon depths, shifted in a microsecond. She snatched the edge of a massive, double-woven wool blanket draped over a laboratory crate, ripped it free, and stumbled directly over the vent. She fell in a flailing tangle of pastel petticoats. The heavy, dense fabric landed square over the iron grate, smothered the rising plume, and choked the vent shut. Nabiya scrambled up with wide, frantic eyes, stomping the rug down with both slippered feet. "Did I kill it? Did I get it? Oh, Safura, tell me it’s dead!" Safura stared in disgust, her murderous trap foiled by raw, blundering stupidity. "Control yourself, you ridiculous child! You're rolling on the dirt!" "I just hate bugs!" Nabiya whimpered, throwing her arms around Safura's neck in an impulsive, desperate hug of gratitude. Safura recoiled violently, shoving Nabiya off. "Get off me! Keep your filthy hands off my silks!" "I'm sorry! I was just so scared!" Nabiya squeaked, retreating behind Basir and clutching his arm like a terrified child. Under the cover of her sleeve, however, Nabiya’s agile fingers slipped a heavy, cold disc of polished brass and cut crystal from her palm into the pocket of her apron. The ancient translation lens Safura had procured through Dalun's stolen accounts—the very piece her past self had earmarked in the coded cipher—was now safely hers. Safura smoothed her crumpled skirts, nostrils flaring. "We are leaving. Dalun, come. Let them rot in their suspended trash heap. In two weeks, sister, this place won't even be a memory." Dalun offered one last, miserable glance toward the ancient obsidian pillar humming in the center of the room before Safura hauled him away toward the catwalk. The gantry doors clanged shut. The mechanical locks hissed into place. Yaraim stepped out from the shadows near the corridor archway, his expression carved from gray granite. "They have boarded their skiff, mistress. The air space is clear." Nabiya instantly dropped the trembling, bubbly posture. Her spine snapped straight. The vacuous glitter in her eyes hardened into polished flint. "Good," she said, her voice dropping an octave into crisp command. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the circular brass instrument, spinning it once between her fingertips before tossing it to Basir. Basir snatched it reflexively. His chest hitched as his fingers traced the cut-glass facets. "A multi-phase refractive lens... calibrated for pre-Cataclysm wind-glyphs. Where did you—" "Safura's purse has terribly loose clasps," Nabiya said calmly. "Stop staring at it and mount it to the glyph bracket. If the support chains are already snapping, we don't have twenty days to waste on trial translations." Basir stared at her, the soot on his cheeks contrasting sharply with his sudden confusion. The silly, doting bride who had screamed at a fictional spider was completely gone. In her place stood a woman whose gaze cut like an executioner's edge. He didn't ask questions. The scholar in him overtook the shock. Basir scrambled up the iron scaffolding surrounding the monolithic Obsidian Glyph. The violet light pulsing from the slab reflected across his feverish eyes. He slid the brass ring into the rusted armature positioned before the central glyph-matrix, adjusting the focal dials with practiced, frantic precision. The crystal captured the violet glow. It fractured the light into sharp, geometric beams of crimson and gold, projecting crisp ancient script directly onto the soot-stained limestone of the far wall. Basir leaned in, murmuring the runes aloud. "*Breathe the sky... anchor the mantle... ignition threshold...*" His voice faltered. The color drained entirely from his face, leaving him a sickening shade of ash. "Basir?" Nabiya stepped toward the scaffold, her boots silent against the iron grating. "What does the core cycle read?" Basir looked down from the platform, his hands trembling so violently he nearly knocked the lens from its mount. "The severed chain changed the resonance frequency," Basir whispered, terror stripping the strength from his voice. "It didn't just destabilize the floor. It cut the decay cycle in half. We don't have twenty days, Nabiya. We have ten—and the countdown just accelerated."

Sisterly Venom and Stolen Time