Valmont Series - Inheritance Code

Chapter 1.4 - The Descent

No lights.

No lasers.

Just a whisper across their skin—barely tangible, like someone had exhaled against their cheekbones.

Aiden blinked slowly. Aria caught her breath.

They didn't need to be told.

They were being seen.

And then the center of the world rose to meet them.

The Valmont Crown towered upward—monolithic, crystalline, alive with internal light. It spiraled into the clouds, a frozen bolt of golden lightning caught mid-strike, every surface seamless, every angle impossibly precise. Around it, translucent platforms orbited in serene, deliberate motion—held up by nothing visible, obeying some private law of engineering Avalon alone possessed.

From the Crown, golden conduits radiated outward—living veins of energy—spanning the island like the tendrils of a sovereign sun.

Aria swallowed hard.

It didn't feel like they were arriving.

It felt like they were being drawn in—claimed.

The aircraft tilted lower, bringing the landscape into sharp, overwhelming view.

First came a wide, gleaming ring—the outermost stretch of Avalon.

Floating estates glittered across the water like anchored constellations. Wide entrances framed in light. Pavilions that rose and fell with subtle hydraulic shifts. Private marinas curved like petals into the sea, their silver decks brimming with small craft shaped like liquid daggers.

Soft radiances bloomed from floating lounges, translucent dining halls, suspended gardens trailing vines over endless glass walls.

It was beautiful—so beautiful it almost hurt.

Aria's heartbeat thudded in her throat.

This was not suburbia.

This was not safety.

It was something impossible.

Perfect and untouchable.

For a fleeting second, she wondered if she could ever walk among those estates without feeling like an imposter. But she pushed the thought down, buried it in the rising tide of awe.

The aircraft continued its descent, and Avalon unfolded like a living myth.

Beyond the outer ring, the island's true crown spread—twelve sweeping arcs, each alive with its own geometry and purpose.

One gleamed with mirror-bright towers, vertical gardens unfurling upward like airborne orchards.

The structures reflected the sun in blinding shards of white and gold, almost too brilliant to look at directly.

Another sector clawed toward the sky—jagged, black, and flickering with veins of blood-red light.

Its angular silhouettes looked like weapons turned architecture, every structure sharp enough to wound.

Another arc was swallowed in mist, its buildings half-seen through silver fog that drifted and curled around invisible shapes.

The very land shifted as if breathing.

One sector floated entirely above water, its platforms and towers anchored to nothing visible—levitating on technologies so advanced they might as well have been magic.

And farther still, a layered terrace of glass and light blinked with quiet motion.

It looked like a tiered garden of stars, folding in on itself in endless, radiant patterns.