The Windwalker took three days to finish.

  Not because it was complicated—the design was modular, built for field assembly by people who might be doing it in a storm or under hostile conditions. Everything had alignment guides. Every connection had backups. The manual was clear enough that even I, a guy who’d never touched an aircraft before, could follow it.

  But I didn’t rush.

  Rushing gets you killed.

  I checked every bolt. Every seal. Every hydraulic line. I calibrated the control surfaces twice. Tested the engine startup sequence four times before I committed fuel to it.

  RIKU watched through the tablet, offering technical corrections when I missed something.

  “Fuel line connection at junction seven is loose,” she said on day two.

  I checked. She was right.

  “How did you catch that?” I asked.

  “Pressure differential in the feed system. Ninety-eight percent nominal is not acceptable for aviation.”

  “Fair.”

  By day three, the Windwalker sat complete in the center of the bowl. Small. Sleek. The wings were short—designed for VTOL rather than long glides—and the engine housing looked too compact to be real.

  But it was real.

  I stood beside it, hand on the fuselage, and felt something settle in my chest.

  This was more than transportation.

  This was freedom.

  “RIKU,” I said. “Pre-flight checklist.”

  “Control surfaces: functional. Engine: primed. Fuel cells: full. Avionics: online. Weather: acceptable. Wind at twenty-five miles per hour, gusting to thirty. Visibility: eight kilometers.”

  I climbed into the cockpit.

  The seat adjusted. The harness locked. The controls lit up with a heads-up display that overlaid navigation data, altitude, speed, fuel consumption.

  Simple. Intuitive. The kind of interface built for people who needed it to work under pressure.

  I placed my hands on the stick and throttle.

  “RIKU,” I said quietly. “I’ve never flown before.”

  “I am aware.”

  “If I crash this, we don’t get another one.”

  “Also aware.”

  “So… any advice?”

  A pause.

  “Do not crash.”

  I laughed despite myself.

  “Thanks. Super helpful.”

  “You are welcome.”

  I took a breath. Then another.

  Then I engaged the engine.

  The turbine spun up—smooth, quiet, efficient. The Windwalker shuddered once, lifted six inches off the ground, and held.

  Stable.

  Responsive.

  Alive.

  I nudged the stick forward.

  The plane moved. Smooth. Controlled.

  I nudged it back. It stopped.

  Left. Right. Up. Down.

  Every input translated cleanly. No lag. No drift.

  “Okay,” I whispered. “Okay. I can do this.”

  I increased throttle and lifted.

  Ten feet.

  Twenty.

  Fifty.

  The bowl dropped away beneath me. The wind caught the wings and I corrected, compensating, feeling the controls, learning the balance.

  One hundred feet.

  The ocean spread out in every direction—endless, grey-blue, rolling in long swells that looked almost peaceful from up here.

  I banked left, testing the turn radius.

  Smooth.

  I banked right.

  Smooth.

  I climbed to five hundred feet and leveled off.

  And for the first time since stepping through the portal, I saw the world.

  Not just the bowl. Not just the rocks and the water.

  The whole thing.

  The island—if you could call it that—was a ridge. A volcanic spine that ran north-south for maybe fifteen miles, rising out of the ocean like a broken knife blade.

  Steep. Jagged. Mostly barren.

  The bowl where I’d made camp sat on the eastern slope, about a third of the way up.

  To the west, the ridge dropped straight into the ocean—a sheer cliff face that fell hundreds of feet before meeting the water.

  No beaches. No gradual descent. Just stone and surf.

  To the north, the ridge tapered into a series of broken peaks that disappeared into the water.

  To the south, more of the same.

  And beyond?

  Ocean.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Nothing but ocean.

  I flew south, following the ridge, scanning for anything useful.

  Debris. Containers. Wreckage.

  Anything.

  Ten miles out, I found another container.

  Wedged in a crevice near the waterline, half-submerged, beacon still transmitting weakly.

  I marked the location and kept going.

  Fifteen miles: nothing.

  Twenty miles: the ridge ended. Just… ended. Dropped into the water and disappeared.

  I turned east and flew out over open ocean.

  Five miles. Ten miles. Twenty.

  Nothing.

  No islands. No shallows. No landmarks.

  Just water.

  “RIKU,” I said quietly. “How deep is it here?”

  “Scanning… depth reads at approximately eight thousand feet.”

  Eight thousand feet.

  I stared down at the water, at the endless blue-black that gave no hint of what lay beneath, and felt something cold settle in my gut.

  This wasn’t a water world.

  This was an abyss with a few rocks poking through.

  I turned back toward the ridge.

  I landed ninety minutes later, fuel at sixty percent, hands cramping from gripping the controls too hard.

  The Windwalker touched down smooth. I killed the engine and sat there for a long moment, breathing hard, adrenaline still singing in my veins.

  “RIKU,” I said. “Analysis.”

  “You flew for ninety-three minutes. Covered approximately two hundred miles. Located one additional container. Confirmed the island is isolated with no nearby landmasses within scan range.”

  “So we’re alone.”

  “Affirmative.”

  I climbed out of the cockpit and stood on the rock, staring at the ocean.

  Alone.

  Truly, completely alone.

  No rescue. No backup. No neighbors.

  Just me, RIKU, and a planet that didn’t care if I lived or died.

  “All right,” I said quietly. “Then we build.”

  That night, I pulled out the tablet and opened the next file in the orientation materials.

  The same Togekka appeared on screen.

  “If you are watching this,” he said, “you have survived the first week. Congratulations. The mortality rate drops significantly after day seven.”

  I snorted. Comforting.

  “By now you have assessed your environment. You understand your isolation. And you are beginning to realize that survival is not the goal.”

  He leaned forward.

  “Survival is the baseline. The goal is stabilization. You must establish a permanent presence. You must create infrastructure that will outlast you. You must turn a hostile environment into a functional waypoint that the Empire can use.”

  A pause.

  “This is not optional. This is your contract. And if you succeed, you will have earned something no amount of wealth can buy: the Empire’s respect.”

  The video ended.

  I set the tablet down and looked at RIKU’s housing.

  “He keeps saying that,” I said. “The Empire’s respect.”

  “It is valuable,” RIKU replied.

  “More valuable than money?”

  “In the Empire? Yes. Money buys things. Respect buys access. And access buys power.”

  I thought about that.

  About what it meant to be an SSS pioneer who survived.

  About what doors that opened.

  “RIKU,” I said quietly. “What happens if we actually pull this off?”

  “You will be given a choice.”

  “What kind of choice?”

  “Stay. Or leave. But if you leave, you will carry the designation of a successful SSS pioneer for the rest of your life. And that designation opens doors most beings will never see.”

  I leaned back against the Anchorhold’s wall.

  “And if we fail?”

  “Then you die here. And the Empire mourns briefly before sending the next candidate.”

  “Honest.”

  “Always.”

  I smiled despite myself.

  “Good. I’d rather have honesty than hope.”

  I stood, stretched, and walked to the edge of the bowl.

  The stars were out now—bright, sharp, unfamiliar.

  A sky that had never seen Earth.

  “RIKU,” I said. “Tomorrow we go get that container.”

  “Agreed.”

  “And then we start building something permanent.”

  “Agreed.”

  I turned back toward the Anchorhold.

  Tomorrow, we’d retrieve the container.

  Tomorrow, we’d start mapping resources.

  Tomorrow, we’d begin turning this rock into something that couldn’t be ignored.

  But tonight?

  Tonight I’d flown.

  And that was enough.