The canvas snapped in the morning wind.

Two assistants braced the frame at the edge of the bluff, boots set hard in damp grass. The machine looked less like a vessel than a rearranged hull: a narrow body of oak and brass, a sail turned on its side, rigging drawn taut not for wind but for strain. At its heart, the chamber hummed in the containment pattern taught by the Aethermend Lineage.

Only this one was vented.

The clerk stood a measured distance back, tablet beneath one arm, chronometer idle in his hand.

Ilyas checked the intake gauge once more. Planar differential within tolerance. The loop cycling cleanly. The aft ports trembled with restrained flare.

“How’s it holding?” one assistant asked.

“Stable,” Ilyas said. “On my mark.”

They guided the frame forward together. The bluff was not sheer, but it fell away quickly enough that the weight of the world would settle the matter if the engine did not.

He settled into the narrow cradle, fingers firm on the control lever, boots braced. The chamber’s hum deepened as he widened the cycle, converting the pressure, rather than sealing it.

“Release.”

They let go.

The machine rolled the last few paces over turf and stone, then passed the edge.

For a breath, it dropped.

Wind tore at the canvas. The ground rose abruptly in his sight. The hum wavered as the world took hold.

Low and resigned, one assistant muttered, “Knew it was too heavy.”

Then the chamber completed its cycle.

Pressure flared through the aft ports in a clean, directed burst. The hum sharpened into steady vibration that ran through spar and rib and into his bones. The nose steadied. The fall slowed.

Air shifted along the sail, and the machine leveled. Then…it climbed.

The clerk started the chronometer.

Wind pressed cool against his face. The bluff receded. Grass and stone diminished to pattern. The hum held in rhythm, drawing and releasing in a closed loop that fed itself.

Ilyas adjusted the intake fractionally. The response was immediate. The nose lifted another degree. Not a glide. Not borrowed wind. Momentum, created and sustained.

So this is what a hawk sees.

The thought came with the steady certainty of a gauge settling into place. The Sky Shoals, pale shapes on the horizon in every chart he had studied, were no longer abstractions. They were elevations.

I can go higher.

He widened the intake as much as he dared. The vents flared brighter and the hum deepened. The machine answered, rising another handful of body-lengths above the bluff.

He leaned his weight subtly to the right. The machine began banking in a wide, awkward arc. There were no surfaces to command it, only balance and the stubborn cooperation of canvas and air. He leaned back, and it obeyed again. Below, the assistants ran along the edge, faces turned upward. The clerk stood very still, chronometer steady at his chest.

The needle trembled but did not spike. There was margin, he could climb further. The cycle would allow it.

But this…was enough. This was proof.

Ilyas eased the lever back.

The hum softened. The nose dipped, not into a fall but into a deliberate descent. The ground rose in measured increments. He leaned once more to steady the angle as the bluff approached.

The machine struck hard. The left spar shuddered. One strut gave a sharp complaint and snapped, but the greater frame held. Machine and pilot skidded through dew and flattened grass alike before coming to rest.

The chamber wound down to a ticking quiet.

For a moment, there was only wind.

Ilyas unfastened the harness and stepped down. The assistants reached him first, their hands already on the frame.

“You vented more than we calculated,” one said.

He brushed moisture from the spar. “It was too heavy.”

The assistant glanced at the open aft ports, understanding dawning in silence.

The clerk approached last, eyes still on the chronometer.

“Sixty seconds of continuous propulsion,” he said. “Sustained under closed-loop planar pressure conversion.”

The clerk lowered the device and raised his gaze to Ilyas.

“This does not qualify as adaptive stabilization.”

“No, it does not.”

A measured pause.

“This cannot be filed with Aethermend.”

Ilyas looked toward the horizon, where the Sky Shoals hung pale in the morning light.

“No,” he said softly. “It cannot.”