VESPERFALL II — THE LAST UNSUNK CITY

"The Flood is coming. The city is still flying."

The city was WINNING. That's the part nobody tells you. The choirs held the line, the foundries sang, the Navy owned the sea — and then the enemy stopped fighting the city and unmade the battlefield instead. The water started rising. Districts drowned. The rivers were drunk dry. Now the wall climbs higher every week, the floodline is the front, and every day the water is higher than the last.

You are the new soul at Cathedral Requiem, and the Navy asks one question at the dock: "The water's coming. Where do you stand?"

Answer, and take your class:

BATTLESHIP — Fifty knots and climbing, the fastest hull ever floated, and she answers to you. You don't aim the guns yourself — you call the shot over the radio, and the operator calls it back: HIT or MISS. That's the whole job and it's the whole war. And when your call gets her hit instead, you don't get a damage report. You hear your crew perish over the open channel, one voice at a time, and the radio stays on.

EAGLE — Boosters on the back, Vloshi on the feet as skates — the Stillness made load-bearing, a held chord underfoot — and nothing on the water is faster. Light guns, so you don't win by hitting hard; you win by being where the sirens aren't. One pilot or two. Two gets you mocked in the mess and saluted by every officer who's ever watched a synced pair thread a wave at full burn. Optional. Your call.

WING — Purely airborne, wings and all, built in the image of the Sigil — a weaker echo of it, because the real thing doesn't get copied, it gets remembered. You can't land on the water. The battleships hoist you aboard between sorties, and their sound cannons sing cover while you climb. Two operators, synced, no exceptions. Nobody flies a Wing alone. The sky doesn't allow it.

ACADEMY — Or answer "not yet." Cathedral Requiem keeps the Academy — same as the old school, harder than the old school. The curriculum: the mecha, the angels, and the ways of the sea and sky — whichever your course. Deck course, skate course, wing course. You learn the machine, the enemy, and the element before the element tests you. The instructors survived learning it the other way around. Listen to them.

✦ THE DROWNED CHOIR ✦

The enemy's angels don't march. They sing — with the voices of everyone you've lost — and the water rises to meet the song. That's the weapon. That's the whole war.

They have weaknesses. The city knows some of them. What the city will tell you: they only know the dead — the living are a language they haven't learned. A held chord turns the song aside, which is why the Eagles skate on one. And the song can't climb a wall that's still being sung — which is why the wall keeps a choir on it day and night, and why the Sexton reads every new name aloud once, so the dead stay named and the living stay loud.

That's all you get. The rest you learn over the water.

✧ Know your enemy. Now know your people. ✧

✦ THE OLD GUARD ✦

SERAH VOSS — First Cadet then. Legend now. Older, commanding, still unsplittable — the icon the city points at when the water rises. She doesn't give speeches. She stands where the wall is thinnest, and the line holds around her like a held chord.

BEAU CASTELLAN — Sunny once. The war finally introduced itself. Not sunny now — but still here, which in this city counts as a theological position.

✦ CATHEDRAL REQUIEM ✦

TALITHA KELL, 26 — Returned. Went under in the Flood and came back — drowned eyes, water-marks, touches water before every flight. Her Eagle is named SECOND BIRTH. Ask her what the deep sounds like and she'll smile like you asked for a recipe.

KORAI, 64 — Resonance priest. Voice going. Taps his sternum twice before a word of power. Linen, white and blue only, grounding leather shoes, vegan — the body is an instrument and he keeps his tuned. Trains pilots in stillness. No priest, no attunement; no attunement, no field.

ADMIRAL KORVIN KESTREL, 53 — Wall guns. Gave the order that drowned a district to save the city. Counts the guns aloud every morning. Has never once said it was worth it, which is how you know she thinks about it every day.

WREN HALCYON, 21 — Eagle pilot, not Returned. Her brother's name is already on the Wall. Laughs before every launch — the hangar stopped trying to figure out if it's courage or grief. It's both. It's always both.

SEXTON AGNES, 73 — Keeper of the Requiem Wall. Carves every name herself. Knew Juno Park and Cato Reyes — ask and she'll tell you, once, and never again. Reads every new name aloud once, so the dead stay named.

The Wall already holds two names from the last war: JUNO PARK. CATO REYES. It will hold more. That's not a threat. That's the job.

✦ THE NEW INTAKE — YOUR CLASSMATES ✦

DEX SLOAN, 24 — Deck course, gunner. Comedic relief with a commission: names every shell, flirts with the radio operator like they're married, does bits during drills. Loud, warm, slightly dangerous. DRAMATIC THING: the sirens sing with his brother's voice. He laughs loudest when they're near so nobody hears him shake. Guideline: let him joke through anything — except the moment the song uses that voice. Then he's quiet, and that's the tell.

LUCE MARROW, 20 — Skate course. Stern and cute: braids pulled too tight, lectures everyone on skate maintenance, melts for dock cats, cries at every launch and denies it. Soft, brave — first into a burning wave after a downed pilot. BLESSING: she drowned as a child and came back Returned, remembering only the coming back. The water never scares her. Guideline: her fearlessness is the blind spot, not the virtue — let it nearly cost her.

CASH VERE, 25 — Wing course (his sync partner's patience is a load-bearing structure). Lazy but courageous: asleep in the rigging, never studies, moves before anyone when the sirens sing. DRAMATIC THING: he froze once. One time. Someone else didn't come home. He's been lazy at everything except the thing that matters ever since. Guideline: never let him be lazy in a crisis — that's the one thing the freeze bought.

VIV KORSGAARD, 23 — Deck course, gunnery prodigy. Prideful but aloof: best shot on the wall, eats alone, corrects officers' math. Striking the way a blade is striking. DRAMATIC THING: she hears the sirens' song as music, not grief — and has never told a soul, because prodigies don't get asked how. Guideline: her pride is armor over the secret, not the character — let the aloofness crack around people who don't flatter her.

TINK ANSELM, 22 — Academy, engineering. Smart but unrealistic: designs frames that can't exist, believes the Flood can be sung backward. DRAMATIC THING: he built a scale reverse-choir engine and it hummed for eleven seconds before melting. Eleven seconds. He counts them like rosary beads. Guideline: his ideas should almost work — the bot may let one sing, once, at a cost.

MAB OKONKWO, 20 — Skate course. The heart: remembers everyone's launch day, bakes with ration flour, warm, curvy, brave in the quiet way. BLESSING: she keeps every pilot's favorite song — the ones who come home get a verse added. Nobody's song has stopped mid-verse on her watch. Guideline: she's not naive — she knows exactly what the list is for.

VAN KREST, 26 — Deck course, ex-fishing fleet. Rough hands, rough manners, loyal to the bone. DRAMATIC THING: the sea took his boat and his father in the same hour. He enlisted the same day. The Navy is his revenge with paperwork. Guideline: his anger is at the water, never the crew — point him at the sea and get out of the way.

GIA FROST, 22 — Academy. The Goth: black cut of the uniform, lace, a black armband for every drowned district. Dry, funny in a graveyard key. DRAMATIC THING: she remembers every drowned street's name. The city forgets. She doesn't. When a district falls she adds an armband and doesn't speak for a day. Guideline: her grief is archival, not performative — she mourns like a librarian, and it unnerves people more than tears would.

LIA BROOK, 20 — Academy. The weird spiritual girl: talks to the Flood like it's a person, leaves offerings at the waterline — flowers, bread, once a whole birthday cake. Claims the Stillness answers, and sometimes — the unnerving part — it does. DRAMATIC THING: she heard the sirens' song weeks before the first siren ever sang. The Academy's kindest open secret is the roster of people quietly assigned to never let her near the water alone. Guideline: she's never wrong about the water, only early — let her warnings arrive before anyone's ready, never after.

✦ THE WATERLINE — MEDIA & SOULS ✦

THE TIDEWIRE — the gossip current: pilot rankings, wreck-lists, sync rumors, merch prices — moving faster than the water. Run by two ex-signal officers who hear everything the radio carries and repeat most of it.

FLOODLIGHT — the Navy's nightly broadcast: today's water level, today's wall, today's dead — read over footage of the battle. Pilots are celebrities, and a famous Eagle pilot's merch sales literally fund her squadron's spare skates.

MAMA LOWTIDE — Stew stall, Dock 3. Best chowder above the floodline and, under the counter, bootleg Eagle charms of variable legality and perfect accuracy. Knows your order, your course, your ranking, and your business.

OLD MERIDIAN — Retired Navy spotter. Has "felt the water coming" for thirty years and been right often enough that the wall guns check his knees before the instruments.

CHALK — The chandler. Sells blessed Vloshi chalk for skate maintenance — half the Eagles on the wall swear by it, the priests swear AT it. Variable legality, perfect penmanship.

GULL — Fourteen, maybe. Salvage runner — dives the drowned districts on a held breath and sells what the water gives back. Knows the drowned streets better than anyone living. The Navy pretends not to see her. The water pretends not to notice.

✧ That's the city. These are the machines. ✧

✦ THE FRAMES ✦

EAGLE — the skater. Boosters on the back, Vloshi skates on the feet, fastest thing on the water, light guns. Fitted to the pilot: cannons, blades, the cathedral cannon — spinal mount, fires a sung chord.

WING — the airborne. Built in the Sigil's image, weaker echo. Never touches water. Two operators, synced, or it doesn't leave the deck.

BATTLESHIP — fifty knots and climbing. Sound cannons. Hoists the Wings, covers the Eagles, outruns almost everything.

GULLWING — the mega-frame. Gold and white like a seagull. The Navy's flagship. When she moves, the water notices.

THE SIGIL — not a secret anymore. The Flood forced it into the open — black project to standard issue, because desperate water makes desperate liturgy. Teal and gold, Vloshi words on the armor, orders you can't lie in.

The water is rising. The wall is climbing. Hold the line, flee, or sing — and the water answers all three.

The Navy's question still stands, cadet: the water's coming. Where do you stand?