Above the clouds, empires run on cavorite and iron will.
The Skylarks keep the peace. Not everyone wants them to.
Sterope. Merope. Elekra. The war begins now.
When Fin Howland is dragged from his morning toast by armed men and locked in a river cellar, it's just another Tuesday. What he doesn't expect is the woman on the airship home — Annette Elliston, sharp-tongued and determined to become the first woman in the Skylarks.
Meanwhile, cadet Earskin Weatherall is the finest flier at Elekra Flight School — until the night mercenaries arrive before dawn. War-boxes tear through the barracks. Ships are stolen. Cadets vanish. The base becomes ash.
Two investigations. One conspiracy. And somewhere in the dark, something far larger than a stolen airship is beginning to stir.
© 2026 J.D. Siler · All rights reserved
Nineteen years old, Skylark prodigy, and perpetually outnumbered. Fin has a gift for escaping cellars, rivers, and impossible situations — though anchoring himself to something that matters has always been the harder challenge.
Determined, precise, and the first woman to join the Skylarks. She met Fin on a liner to Sterope and refused to be talked out of her dream. She carries a derringer in her garter and sealed letters to her brother Farringdon at all times.
The finest flier Elekra ever trained. His Henson AC responds not just to commands but to instinct — cavorite panels shimmering beneath a polished hull. He survived the night the attack came. He intends to find who sent them.
Shaggy-haired, asthmatic, and deceptively strong. Brint keeps his head when the world explodes. He manned the top gun in a stolen BAC over a burning airfield, and has been running — with purpose — ever since.
Daughter of Elekra's commander. She arrived before dawn, as she always did, and found the world burned to ash. She fights with the cold precision of someone who has nothing left to lose — except the truth.
Navy coat, golden epaulettes, never a hair out of place. Bruce moves paper with frightening efficiency and watches Annette with a fondness that makes Fin's jaw tighten. He has never seen a swamp — but he sees everything that passes through Sterope.
The discovery of cavorite changed everything. Panels laced with it grant ships negative mass — a Henson AC floats with eerie smoothness, responding not just to commands but to instinct. Aether coils, steam boilers, and plasma filaments power a civilization of airships, flying cities, and cavorite-laced flight suits.
Sterope is the Skylark heartland — marble halls, mooring towers, gaslamp boulevards, the scent of engine oil and roasted nuts. Merope is wilder, its docks watched by men with weighted gazes. Elekra was a flight school. Now it is ash and silence, and the question of who burned it has no clean answer.
An elite intelligence and operations force — the Skylarks keep the peace between the great powers above the clouds. Their motto: "To Sky and Beyond." Agents carry Cogwatches, brass badges, and secrets too heavy for politics. Their Captain trusts no one. That is precisely why they succeed.
Archie war-boxes are iron-treaded killing machines — heavy frontal armour, muzzle flashes glittering like demonic eyes behind armour slits. Mercenaries drove them through Elekra before dawn, under no flag. They took the bodies. They took the ships. They left only an insignia: a blade-winged swan, and questions no one dares answer aloud.
[The Great Minds] fund the Oracles — seers who broadcast warnings over the public telegraph in riddles most people scoff at. "Steel will march under no flag at dawn's first strike." They were right. They always are. They proposed cavorite coastal routes, funded the academies, built the future — but the Treasury rarely listened until it was too late.
The mercenaries who burned Elekra weren't working alone. The Skylarks know this much. The investigation leads somewhere none of them expected — and the further they follow it, the less certain they are that they want to know what's waiting at the end.
The Sky Bridge world doesn't end on the last page. Fight with cards. Manage the pressure. Two browser games — both set in the universe — available now.
Draft your faction from the great powers of the Sky Bridge world. Build your hand, read the board, and outmaneuver your opponent in this strategic card game built deep in the Saga's lore. Skylarks, mercenaries, Merchants — choose your side.
Play NowRoute the pressure. Align the valves. A cavorite engine puzzle game where every pipe matters and one wrong junction floods the boiler room. From the engine rooms of Sterope's greatest airships — how far into the machine can you go?
Play Now⚙ Full UE5 game in development ⚙