Fractured Skies

Fractured Skies

In a world built on silence, one voice could start a war

I was born into a world that demanded obedience.

They called it the Unity Accord — a grand lie disguised as peace.

When the wars ended and the cities fell, the new leaders divided society into three Orders: **The Loyal**, **The Makers**, and **The Watchers**. Each citizen was tested at age sixteen and assigned their place. Choice wasn’t an option.

Choice was dangerous.

At sixteen, I stood in the Hall of Measures, cold sweat trickling down my spine as the scanner hummed around my head. I squeezed my fists so tightly my knuckles turned white.

“Name?” barked the examiner.

“Sera Kade,” I said, my voice steady even though my heart thundered against my ribs.

A screen flashed before me: three boxes, one for each Order. Most people’s results filled one instantly. But mine didn’t.

Instead, all three pulsed at once — blue for Loyalty, green for Makers, red for Watchers. The examiner’s eyes widened for half a second before he quickly shut off the screen.

I wasn’t supposed to see it. But I did.

I was **Unbound**.

The one thing the Orders feared more than rebellion itself.

“Welcome to the Loyal, Sera,” he said, voice tight.

I nodded, pretending I didn’t notice the way the guards shifted uneasily. Pretending I was just another obedient citizen. Pretending I didn’t feel the fire roaring in my blood.

The Loyal wore white — clean, sharp uniforms that erased individuality. They taught us to speak only when spoken to, to think only what we were allowed to think.

I wore the white. I bit my tongue. I smiled at the right moments.

Inside, I was burning.

Late at night, when the streets emptied and even the stars seemed muted, I would sneak to the rooftop and watch the forbidden skies. I imagined a world beyond the walls. A world where choices weren’t crimes.

I wasn’t alone.

I met Kellan by accident, two weeks into my new life.

He was scaling the wire fences behind the Supply Depot, his boots barely making a sound. His jacket — black and tattered — marked him as an Outlier: one of the Unbound who had escaped the Orders long ago, living in hiding.

He saw me. I saw him.

And something electric passed between us.

He should have run. I should have screamed.

But instead, he tilted his head, a slow grin spreading across his face. “You don’t belong here, do you?” he asked.

And I did something I had never done before.

I told the truth.

“No,” I said.

We met in the shadows after that.

He told me about the world beyond the walls — about villages where people chose their own lives, their own dreams. Where being different wasn’t a death sentence.

It sounded like a fairy tale.

But the way Kellan spoke — fierce and free — made me believe it could be real.

"You could come with me," he said once, his voice low. "You don't have to stay here."

I wanted to. God, I wanted to.

But Mia. My little sister.

Still trapped inside the system.

Still innocent enough to believe the lies.

I couldn’t leave her behind.

So I stayed. I trained. I obeyed.

All while planning something no one had dared in years.

The uprising began not with a roar, but with a whisper.

A note slipped into a pocket.

A signal drawn in chalk on a broken wall.

A look — sharp, burning — exchanged across a crowded courtyard.

We were small at first. A few Unbound still hidden inside the Orders. A few brave souls who had never lost the dream of more.

But dreams, when fed with hope, grow teeth.

It was Mia who nearly unraveled everything.

She found one of my maps — hand-drawn and dangerous.

Her face crumpled with confusion. “Why, Sera? Why can’t we just be safe?”

I knelt before her, my hands on her small shoulders.

"Because safety without freedom isn’t living," I said. "It’s just surviving."

I didn’t know if she understood.

But that night, she squeezed my hand three times — our secret code for *I believe you.*

The night we rose, the air smelled like metal and rain.

We gathered at the old train yards, our numbers tripled from when we first began. Kellan stood beside me, his eyes bright with something that wasn’t quite fear or excitement — it was fiercer than both.

“You ready?” he asked.

I thought about Dad — a Loyal until his last breath. About Mom — a Maker who never smiled after the testing day. About Mia — clutching my hand under the table during endless, silent meals.

I thought about myself — the girl who had swallowed her rage for so long it nearly choked her.

And I smiled.

“No," I said. "I’m ready to *win.*"

We moved through the city like a tide, flooding the sterile streets, tearing down the gray banners that hung from every pole.

The Loyal guards tried to stop us, but they were few — and most of them hesitated when they saw our faces. They weren’t machines. They were just scared kids like us, wearing the wrong color uniforms.

I found myself standing at the Hall of Measures, the place where they had tried to fit me into a box too small for my soul.

I picked up a stone.

And I shattered the scanner that had labeled me.

Glass exploded in a rain of diamonds, and for the first time in my life, I *felt free.*

The battles weren’t clean.

Freedom never is.

We lost friends. We buried dreams.

But we *kept going.*

Because now, for the first time, the skies above weren’t silent.

They thundered with our cries, our laughter, our voices raised in songs older than the walls themselves.

We were fractured.

We were flawed.

But we were **free.**

And no scanner, no Order, no lie would ever own us again.