Earth and sky 02 skysw.., p.1
Earth & Sky 02 - Skysworn, page 1
part #2 of Of Earth and Sky Duology Series
Copyright © Oct 2025 Katee Stein
All rights reserved.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
No generative AI was used or consulted in the creation, drafting, or editing of this work. No permission is given for any part of this work to be used in the training of AI models or to be used by generative AI for any purpose.
ISBN: 978-1-0688495-4-1 (ebook)
ISBN: 978-1-0688495-6-5 (print paperback)
ISBN: 978-1-0688495-5-8 (audiobook)
Cover design by Andrea.Renae
Interior art by Jykor Art and Eliana Stein
Map by Katee Stein
Printed in Canada
SKYSWORN. Copyright 2025 by Katee Stein
SKYSWORN Paperback Edition: September 2025
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
The Story Thus Far
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
Forty-Four
Forty-Five
Forty-Six
Forty-Seven
Forty-Eight
Forty-Nine
Fifty
Fifty-One
Fifty-Two
Fifty-Three
Epilogue
Glossary
Earthbound
Acknowledgements
About The Author
To those finding their way home
The Story Thus Far
The Mercurial, a land of changing earth, is ruled by the Order of the Sky. Bound by oaths and gifted with strength from the Sky, Overseers are charged to protect the nation.
Overseer Tehran is adjusting to the new normal of leading the rural cluster of Rikken on his own after fellow Overseer Knox was stripped of his power for wanting to start a family.
As the two men navigate the change, a flood of earthbound monsters invade the region. While trying to help others escape, Knox is swallowed into a liquefaction and is believed dead.
Under the shock and strain of grief his wife Emilia miscarries. Tehran, convinced their only hope lay with the Order, prepares for an emergency trip to the Capital to plead for help. Emilia joins him, determined to confront the Order for making Knox lay down his power and leaving him vulnerable.
Knowing she is thrusting herself into a dangerous world of secrets she doesn’t understand, Tehran exchanges vows with Emilia to ensure she is protected when she confronts the Elders.
As they travel to the Capital the two discover there is a mole within the Order disrupting communications under the code name Breakwall. The more they uncover, the harder it becomes for Tehran navigate his oaths to both the Order and to Emilia, as her suspicion of corruption grows. Added to this, the bonding oath begins to work in unexpected ways, drawing them to each other, until they finally relent and seal the oath with their bodies.
Meanwhile, Knox wakes within one of the massive earthbound creatures. While searching for a way out, he forges a new bond between himself and the Sky, a feat never done outside of the Order. With his strength returned, he breaks his way to the surface, determined to return to Emilia. He is shocked to find the earthbound has traveled to the edge of the Tumult, where an invading army is gathering.
There Knox aligns himself with others displaced by the conflict and while fighting discovers that the earthbound are being pressed from the Tumult and into Mercurial lands by the raiders. Desperate for answers he infiltrates the enemy camp only to be captured and held by technology designed to negate his strength.
The Tumultian Commander in charge believes Knox to be a spy and leverages hostages in the hopes of gathering more information about the Order. Her extensive knowledge of the Sky’s carefully guarded secrets disturbs Knox and hints at a deeper treachery. When one of the hostages sacrifices himself, Knox is able to escape and rescue the man’s young daughter, Kipp. Urgency driving them, they return to Rikken to warn of the coming invasion.
Although, instead of finding Emilia waiting Knox learns she left with Tehran and exchanged vows with his best friend. Blinded by sorrow and rage he is tempted to go confront them, but when he’s reminded of his larger responsibilities, he chooses to stay and protect his home cluster.
The Tumultian forces arrive sooner than expected and in the ensuing chaos, Kipp is taken hostage. To ensure the girl’s safe release, Knox surrenders to the Commander. Quinmarq uses new
technology to subdue Knox, making it impossible for him to escape.
Back in the capital, Tehran and Emilia become more entangled in the political games—and with each other. In a desperate bid to flush out the traitorous element within the Order, the Elders ask Tehran to function as a double agent and send him back to the Reaches in hopes of drawing out the dissenters.
The gamble pays off when Elder Venier is revealed as actively working against Elevated Dareous. When she purposely pushes on Tehran’s conflicting vows, the strain begins to show. Emilia, finally recognizing the toll her personal vendetta with the Order is taking on Tehran, urges him to renounce his oath to her to save his sanity. He instead lets go of his connection to the Order, relinquishing his strength and preserving his promise to protect her.
As the team continues into the Reaches, they are confronted by a Tumultian barricade blocking the road. Hoping to negotiate a truce, Elder Venier leads a small team of Overseers into the enemy camp to meet with the Tumultian Commander. It quickly becomes clear that the communications interruptions are the least of the Mercurial’s problems. Someone within the Order has been traitorously negotiating with Commander Quinmarq. While the specifics of the deal are never uncovered it comes to light that pieces of the Reaches were bartered away. When Venier refuses to surrender claim over the land, Quinmarq reveals her leverage in a prisoner, an almost lifeless Knox in powered manacles.
Venier attacks the Commander and is killed while Emilia rushes to Knox’s side, shocked to find him alive. Tehran fights the raiders who rush to support their leader. Free of Elder Venier, Quinmarq turns her attention to Emilia.Knox, realizing Emilia is in trouble, connects to the Sky.
Still blocked from using the power on himself by the technology in the Tumultian manacles, he instead finds he can share his strength with Tehran. Strength temporarily restored, Tehran knocks the Commander unconscious and kills the guards.
Knox, breaths from death, releases Emilia from their bond and
begs Tehran to leave him and save Emilia. Using the last vestiges of Knox’s power, Emilia and Tehran escape the barricade moments before Knox falls unconscious and the connection fails.
Armed with knowledge their Order is being undermined from within and with the help of Elder Venier’s Acolyte, Charyls, they escape back to the Mercurial.
Knox’s body is burned in a funeral pyre by the Tumultians, but in the quiet hours before dawn, he awakes surrounded by ashes.
Prologue
Awakening
Knox awoke to fire.
Flames caressed his skin and coloured his vision. Around him, burning embers piled high among blackened logs tipped at offset angles.
What in the Sky?
He pushed himself up, hands sinking into ruby coals as he looked around. Fragile white bones glowed with heat next to him. His brow furrowed at the rivulets of liquid metal moving through the ash as if trying to escape into the depths. Three skulls with vacant sockets stared skyward. Knox followed their empty gaze, looking up into the night sky. The twin moons were absent, leaving only ghostly shadows. Lights flickered in the distance, challenging the stars with their brazen amber glow.
Knox rolled his shoulders and ran a hand down his forearm experimentally. His skin tingled like he had scrubbed himself with sand, fresh and new. He touched his face. A short beard covered his jaw. He hadn’t shaved in weeks, and yet it lay neatly trimmed. His brow compressed as the questions continued to pile up.
Where in the Mercurial am I?
Frantic Tumultian words broke the stillness. A soldier stood at the edge of the fire, eyes wide, pointing a tipped long pole towards him. Knox waded forward through the deep bed of coals. The soldier screamed, dropped his weapon, and scrambled back, tripping over his feet as h e ran towards a camp in the distance.
As his shouts faded, a single word whispered into his mind.
Once.
Knox looked around but knew he wouldn’t find the source. As he stepped from the fire, his foot caught on something buried deep within the charred wood. Knox bent and brushed aside ash to reveal a blackened handle. The leather wrap had burned away, but the gnarled contours of his petrified weapon, Impression, greeted him like an old friend. He stepped free onto the cracked surface of fire-baked earth.
Cool night air twisted eddies into the dust. Goosebumps prickled across his skin at the change and he looked around. A cloak lay abandoned where the soldier had stood moments ago. Knox moved to the wrap and flung it around his shoulders, appreciating the weight of the fabric. The scratch of the wool and smell of wood smoke felt solid against the haze of the fire.
I died.
The words felt wrong somehow. He didn’t feel dead. Quite the opposite, in fact. His whole body was alight with warmth, power thrumming through him without even being called forward. That’s new. He stared into the dying flames.
Tumultians wanted their bones to rest within the Earth. With this pyre they’d meant to rob him of peace. He exhaled a breath and it hung before him as a cloud. Mercurians were of the air. Ash and smoke released the soul back to the Sky. For all her knowledge, the Commander still didn’t understand the land she claimed.
His eyes settled back on the bones glowing within the heart of the conflagration. Yet, ignorance can still be deadly. The remains flickered in passive agitation giving no hint of who they were in life. He froze, fear rippling through him in sudden memory. Emilia. Tehran.
“Hang on, Knox—” Tehran had pleaded, Emilia’s cries echoing behind the request. His friend had pulled on the thread of power between them one last time. The smell of pine and a sense of relief had settled over him before he’d slipped into darkness.
They made it clear. Tehran and Emilia had escaped through the barricade and hopefully were on their way back to the Capital.
Without me.
Knox stared into the blackness where the mountains blotted out the stars and sucked in a sharp breath, searing pain lancing through his lungs. I released her. She’d been his every heartbeat, but she was gone. Emilia. The realization stuttered through him as a numbing poison. I was dying. She needed to live. Tehran could save her. He stepped into the night, feet moving of their own accord. I have to find—
Let go, came a whisper. He stilled, and with a sigh turned back to the fire.
His eyes caught on the small puddle of silver metal cooling at its edge. The manacles. The cursed restraints had nearly cut him off from the Sky completely. Knox’s path had been set. Death beckoning. He’d released them both because he wanted them to find another road. And now what? I chase them down and demand my future back? They were safe and in the Sky’s hands, but not all had been so lucky.
Phantom pain from once-raw skin flared around his wrist. He rubbed the place scars had laid raised and inflamed, and a different heat ignited in his chest. Who else bore their weight? Had Maven? Emilia’s mother had been a voice of hope when his own faith had failed. She’d protected Kipp and paid the price in her skin. Are her ashes mixed with these? He winced as another wave of grief moved over him. Please, not her.
An image fixed in Knox’s mind. There had been other Overseers with Tehran, he’d sensed them as he’d slipped from his body. Their lights dimmed, restrained. Fellow children of the Sky, cut off, like he had been. And then killed. Moving back to the fire’s edge, he clenched his fists over his sternum in respect to the bones still glowing white.
This invasion had turned to an occupation. Those left in the Reaches needed leadership and protection. He could offer both. Resolve steeled his veins, willing the rawness from his throat. I can’t abandon those here in hopes of reclaiming a life that is no longer my own.
Smothering down the last vestiges of melancholy, Knox turned his eyes to the Tumultian camp in the distance and with a running step, launched himself into the sky. Those that dared enslave and murder his people needed to die.
Power surged through him, raw and untamed. His grip tightened around Impression in surprise as he shot higher than ever before. He’d felt the infusion of this new power in the fire, but this torrent now manifested in strength, stole his breath. Skies above, what have I been given? Wind rushed over his skin as he dropped to the ground like a descending meteor. He absorbed the impact with a feral roar and this time when he jumped, he drew on every ounce of strength churning through him, testing.
Ahead, the pyre’s sentry had roused stumbling ranks with his panicked shouts. Raiders spilled from tents, disoriented and confused. A sinister satisfaction bloomed in Knox’s chest as he hung over them, a pale flash of skin across a midnight sky. Momentum spent, he plummeted back to earth. Dust erupted around him at the collision. For a shocked heartbeat, stillness held. Every eye turned to where he stood.
Then chaos erupted.
Captains barked commands in the guttural Tumultian language. Floundering soldiers found their feet and remembered themselves, gripped their weapons, and fell into formation.
Knox straightened, the long cloak flowing around him as he turned and took in the whole camp. Bolt throwers were joined by long glowing whips and the usual tipped long poles. His hand itched. He shifted his grip on Impression as the heat flowing through his veins became an inferno.
A hoarse voice shouted an order and the first row of raiders took a measured step towards him, weapons raised.
Calm settled in his chest. No fear leaked through his heightened senses. With the wool cloak heavy on his shoulders and warmth radiating off his skin, he narrowed his eyes searching for the Tumultian in charge. A burly man stood atop one of the large hovercraft at the perimeter of the camp.
Thickly muscled, his chestnut beard hung in intricate braids and torch light glinted atop his shaved head. He pointed in sharp motions, directing the troops to close in around Knox in strategic layers. Quinmarq, the formidable Tumultian Commander, was nowhere to be seen.
Knox lifted his chin, focusing on the distant Lieutenant, and projected his voice. "Where are those you held here?”
Chirps of nightbugs, sluggish in the cool night, filled a defiant silence. Somewhere nearby, Maven could still be captive. Worried agitation broke through.
“WHERE ARE THE PRISONERS?” he roared.
Those raiders nearest him shifted and cast nervous glances to one another.
“We hold none,” the Lieutenant answered in broken Mercurian. “This realm is not for you, Deoman. Go welcome the ghosts of your people to the mists. You and yours do not belong here.”
Knox ignored the comment, eyes searching beyond the troops for the largest tent. They had been holding him and Maven within the large structure—before they killed me. A shiver slid through him and the warmth within his core faltered at the memory, leaving him once again on the hard-packed floor, nerve endings seared, and body giving out under the harsh treatment. His wrists tingled as if still clamped within the deadly shackles.
Tears tracking down Emilia’s cheeks. Torment pressing Tehran’s brow low. It remained a moment etched into his soul. They knew he was about to die, and their anguish was a wound he never wanted to bear.
The enemies before him blurred in and out of focus.
Knox blinked, trying to regain control even as he relived having relinquished his bond to Emilia in rasping whispers. In that moment, their souls had pulled from one another, like sweet refrains fading into the distance. She was no longer his, and the agony he felt at her loss met an inexplicable acceptance.
The Lieutenant, sensing Knox’s hesitation, snapped an order. A group rushed forward, whips coming alive with golden energy.
Knox lifted Impression in a clumsy block, mind refusing to leave the past. Empowered in those last moments and connected to Tehran’s mind, Knox had experienced his friend’s distress as if it were his own. Guilt, shame, grief, loss. Stripped down and void of power. Desperate to keep Emilia safe.
A crack split the air, pulling Knox to the present. Another flash of yellow streaked toward his face and he caught the filament on his forearm. Energy coursed up through his elbow and the air left his chest in a guttural huff. He braced, waiting for his muscles to contract and nerves to react to the golden power.
