POV: Captain Thane Blackwater

The air was thick with smoke and the terrified screams of the innocent. Aeridor was no longer a kingdom; it was a battlefield. Captain Thane Blackwater, crouched behind a downed market stall, watched as Royal Guards clashed with Maven Rix's "Descent" faction in the central plaza of the Sky Citadel. Las-fire sliced through the night, illuminating faces contorted by fear and fury.

“They’re breaking through the Outer Defenses!” Thane barked into his comm, the words barely audible over the din of combat. His crew, a mix of Scavenging Corps veterans and newly armed civilians, hunkered down beside him. “The Sky Guard’s aerial patrols are too spread out!”

“We’re doing our best, Captain!” Kael’s voice crackled back, strained. “But the ‘Descent’ has hijacked three of the auxiliary maintenance skiffs! They’ve got heavy weaponry!”

Thane swore under his breath. Maven Rix had promised a controlled descent, a demonstration of force. Not a full-blown civil war. But desperation bred chaos. And the rapid deployment of the Sky Guard, commanded by Prince Garrett, had turned a protest into a full-scale insurrection. Thane was caught in the middle, his loyalties torn. He believed in survival, in action, but this… this was madness.

A civilian freighter, commandeered by Rix’s forces, careened past, spitting a volley of repurposed harvesting lasers at a Royal Guard patrol. The patrol returned fire, tearing chunks from the freighter’s hull. Aerial combat. It was what Thane excelled at, what he understood. But he wasn’t supposed to be fighting his own people.

“Target the stabilizer arrays on the Citadel’s East Spire!” a voice boomed from the rebel comm-channels – Maven Rix, rallying his troops. “Bring their communications down! Show them we mean business!”

Thane looked up. The East Spire held crucial comms relays, but also integral atmospheric regulators. Hitting it would cripple the Citadel, but could also cause unpredictable energy fluctuations across Aeridor. Rix was desperate. Too desperate.

Then, he saw it. Not just Rix’s hijacked skiffs. Three other sleek, dark craft, smaller and far more agile than anything Aeridor possessed, were weaving through the chaos. They weren't engaging the Sky Guard directly. They were targeting key infrastructure nodes, precision strikes that disabled automated defenses, overloaded power conduits, and, most disturbingly, jammed specific comm-frequencies – the very ones Aldric had tried to use.

“Kael, focus on those dark craft!” Thane ordered, his blood running cold. “They’re not Descent. They’re the ones from the debris field! The ones with the weird symbols!”

He pulled out the strange, insectoid device he’d salvaged. It pulsed faintly in his hand, almost as if sensing its brethren. Garrett’s allies. The alien figures. They were here, amidst the chaos they had helped foment, furthering their own agenda. They were playing all sides, using Rix's revolution as a cover.

Suddenly, a massive explosion rocked the plaza. A section of the main tether support structure, near where the Tether Station Two crew would have tried to stabilize their crippled cable, collapsed in a shower of sparks and mangled metal. Not Tether Two itself, but a crucial support that distributed the load.

"They're attacking the tethers!" Kael shouted, his voice filled with fresh horror. "During a civil war! They want Aeridor to fall, no matter who's left!"

Thane sprinted forward, his mind clear. This wasn’t about revolution anymore. This was about survival. The true enemy was neither Garrett nor Rix. It was the manipulating force behind the scenes, using Aeridor’s internal strife to achieve its own, devastating goals.

He reached his personal air-skiff, a modified Scavenging Corps vessel, sleeker and faster than most. "Kael, keep the Glimmerwind clear. Get ready to extract anyone you can from the outer districts. The rest of you, with me! We're engaging those dark craft!"

He launched the skiff, weaving through the chaotic aerial battle. Lasers crisscrossed the sky. Royal Guard frigates, hampered by the internal sabotage, struggled to maintain formation. Rix’s forces, though disorganized, fought with the desperate courage of those with nothing left to lose. And in the midst of it all, the sleek, alien craft danced like silent predators, targeting weak points.

Thane locked onto one of the dark crafts. Its design was chillingly efficient, its movements eerily fluid. It was no human pilot behind those controls.

He opened fire, his salvaged pulse cannons spitting green energy bolts. The craft dodged with impossible speed, returning fire with a burst that grazed Thane’s wing, sending his skiff spinning.

“They’re too fast!” Kael cried over the comm.

Thane gritted his teeth, wrestling the controls. He had one advantage: he knew Aeridor. He knew its currents, its blind spots, the hidden routes. He plunged his skiff into a narrow service tunnel, used for conduit maintenance, its entrance barely wide enough for his craft. The alien craft hesitated, then followed, confident in its superior speed.

He emerged into an open plaza, just above the Royal Archives. He pulled a sharp, unexpected maneuver, using the updraft from a ruptured steam vent. The alien craft, surprised, overshot.

“Now, Kael!” Thane roared. “Fire on my mark!”

Kael, anticipating his move, had repositioned the Glimmerwind. Its harpoon cannons, usually used for securing debris, were now loaded with explosive-tipped anchors.

Thane juked left. The alien craft, recovering, swerved to pursue.

“Mark!”

Two harpoons shot out from the Glimmerwind, trailing glowing lines. They struck the alien craft’s wings, embedding themselves. The craft shuddered, momentarily snagged.

Thane unleashed a full volley from his pulse cannons. The alien craft exploded in a silent, brilliant flash of light, showering the plaza with debris. The alien symbol, the three interlocking triangles, was briefly visible on a piece of its shattered hull before it vaporized.

But the victory was fleeting. More dark craft were emerging from the storm, drawn by the explosion. And below, the civil war continued to rage, threatening to tear Aeridor apart from within. Thane looked at the smoking wreckage of the alien craft, at the symbol that haunted his childhood. The true enemy had finally shown its face, pulling the strings of Aeridor’s demise. He had to reach Aldric. He had to reach Kira. The revolution had been ignited, but the real war, the ancient war, had just begun.