"The island... it's moving again!"

Ember and I watch from a safe distance as the rippling purple barrier pushes the enormous mass of stone upward again.

Its upward momentum is far slower than when it initially fell, but every moment that passes, the speed increases.

Now, more than ever, more insects flock to the island as if the chance they're getting now is a life-or-death situation.

Hundreds of orange-cored locusts fly above me, deep into the trees, and I airstep forward to do the same.

"Come on, let's see what they're so eager to find..."

Ember and I run forward through the air and make it onto the edge of the island, touching down on flat rock with the edge of the massive black treeline less than half a kilometer away.

The wind is moving by us at high speeds now, and as the seconds pass, even the air pressure pushing down on us from above gets more intense.

The creaking sounds and rippling of purple fabric beneath the island make reality tremble as it pushes harder and our speed toward the sky increases.

Fewer and fewer insects are able to swarm into the trees as our speed gets too fast for them to catch up to the island moving up into the sky.

At this realization, I lie with my back down on the flat stone with my arms and legs outstretched, and Ember does the same.

Standing up with this downward air pressure would be far too difficult.

The clouds whiz by us, and we're both pushed deep into the earth we lie on by the wind alone.

Every passing second gets more intense.

I hear cracking sounds and even see insects falling from the trees to hit the ground and break apart, making huge craters in the rock from the speed of their falls.

I expect to see leaves or branches from the massive trees fall too, but none of them do.

My head turns to the side one more time to get a look up at the trees, and I see that not even a single leaf is bent downward.

I can't believe my eyes.

The pressure I feel on every centimeter of my whole body is like nothing I've ever felt before; it's like the entire weight of a mountain is being pressed down on me and only increasing with every fraction of a second that passes.

I struggle to turn my head back to the front-facing position and grit my teeth.

If I didn't have the added strength of these orange threads hardening my body and making a thick layer around me, my bones would be crushed to bits by now.

I can feel the divine fabric being compressed more and more, and it gets to the point where everything in my peripherals is a blur.

The only thing I see is the tunnel vision of the sky above.

I can't even move a single finger, as it feels like weights the size of cities are pressed down on each one.

My blood doesn't even flow, and I can't open my mouth to take a breath.

Time feels as if it's stopped, but I can still see the clouds moving in the sky above me in the back of my conscious mind.Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

I focus on them and continue to endure.

It's hard to tell how much time has passed.

It feels just like when I was counting the fractions of a second pass while consuming orange fragments. The only difference is, this time it isn't painful, it's more of a suffocating feeling.

Before the pressure reaches a climax where it's too much to bear, I feel the ground shudder, and the loud clang of a chain below me being pulled tight rings in my ears.

The next thing I know, the pressure begins to fade, and the feeling of weightlessness takes over.

The outer edges of my vision come back, yet I still see the clouds above getting closer and closer.

I turn to my side, feeling air push against my face while the black trees appear to be moving down.

However, once I shake myself out of it and activate my wind magic to stabilize myself, I realize just because the island in the sky was stopped by the chain connecting it below, doesn't mean I was.

The ground is over a kilometer away as my body kept the upward momentum of the enormous push.

I take a gasp of fresh air and slow myself down over the next few seconds before taking a look around.

My eyes widen as everywhere I look, there are more and more black trees.

The chains that all flew by in my vision on the way up here all connect to other islands, and every single island is packed with an obsidian forest.

Flashes of yellow light appear in my mind's eye as hundreds of orange insects are killed by predators all around me.

They swarm in and out of the forests, jumping island to island, trying to sink their fangs into just one of the golden fruits that grow in these trees.

My gaze turns up to see the bottoms of even more islands high in the sky, while when I look down below, countless others are here too, spreading off in every direction.

Slowly, I float down to the two human-shaped holes in the rock where I just flew up from, and Ember is sitting on the edge of the island, enjoying the view and waiting for me.

He turns around once I get close enough and stretches out his arm like he's just woken up from a nap.

"I have to admit, that was more painful than it had to be. We could have just flown up by ourselves; I doubt it would have taken more than a day..."

I look down at the two holes in the hard ground and shrug.

"Sure, but we're here now. It wasn't that bad. Eating my first orange stone was worse."

We both laugh, and at the same time, I do a quick scan of the forest to see if there are any enemies nearby or swarms of insects that need to be dealt with.

The first thing I spot is a large golden fruit glowing yellow, dangling from the same branch where I saw it eaten along with 40 orange-cored insects the last time I ventured in this close to the treeline.

My gaze tightens on it, and I try to boost my perception further to look for any enemies nearby, but nothing comes up.

The eerie sensation of being watched washes over me as I continue to stare into the forest, and I'm almost positive the lizard creature is staring right back at me from behind this golden fruit, even though I can't sense it.

The longer I stare at the unmoving glossy black branch, the more the round golden fruit's yellow aura grows with luminosity and the juicier it appears to be.

Waves of very light yellow light are pushing off the fruit, similar to the incredibly dense wave of yellow intimidation I felt before.

The more I watch it, the larger the fruit grows. It may be just by a few centimeters in the minutes I wait, but I'm sure it's increasing in size. Every pulse it makes grows brighter and stronger until the incredibly faint outline of an invisible lizard shows up in my mind's eye next to it on the tree's branch.

From afar, I never would have noticed, but from watching the constant waves of light, and analyzing them change in intensity, I notice it's there because it absorbs the yellow threads at a different rate than the tree branch it rests on.

I open my link with Ember and speak while staring forward.

"I can see it. It's all alone, and we're both at maximum strength. I don't see a better time to try and take it on..."

I hold up two teleport crystals again, just like when we were running from being crushed by this same falling island in the sky.

"If it's too strong to kill, I'm going to steal its fruit. If we're not even capable of that, we run away and come up with a new plan. We'll crush the crystals as a last resort. This is the only way I'll get to measure what its true abilities are like."

I let out a pulse of enemy detection that stretches out through this full island and a few of the neighboring ones, not getting a reading on any of these stealthy creatures unless they're intentionally making themselves known to attack swarms of orange-cored insects.

It solidifies a conclusion in my mind. "There's no other way for us to get our hands on a yellow fragment. It's either we do this or stay stuck in the same class as those fruit-obsessed bugs."

Ember grins and turns my way, altering his body into his hybrid form layered with orange threads.

"I was thinking the same thing."

I nod and step forward too, moving toward the treeline while keeping my eyes locked on the golden fruit and its deadly guardian.