… Fall was launched into the unknown…
Sir Do was called a hero, a savior of the shadows—but he knew better.
He had once set a city ablaze with his ignorance. He vowed never to make that mistake again. The Academy was his answer—a place where consequence ruled, where knowledge was sharpened to precision, where failure was unacceptable.
Which was a problem for the young student called Fall.
Fall didn’t specialize. Didn’t fit. They explored, experimented, followed every wild spark of inspiration, leaving behind half-finished inventions and impossible ideas. The Academy had a different name for that. “Fail.”
One day, their classmates played a prank.
They locked Fall inside The Canon—a towering machine built to eject failed projects beyond Academy grounds.
When Sir Do arrived, his own invention in hand, the students hid. The lever was pulled.
And Fall was launched into the unknown.
They shot through the sky, through the clouds, and the sea bed of The Sea of Simplicity, their breath stolen from their lungs.
A creature emerged from the depths of an underwater temple, its form shifting like liquid, its eyes old and curious.
As Fall floundered. The creature held out a pearl pointing to their mouth.
Fall took it. Swallowed.
And suddenly, they felt weightless. Free.
It wasn’t a fix. It was an internal light. They were not broken, their unfinished ideas were simply works in progress, a need waiting to lose constraints.
The creature smiled, gesturing to a path through the sea floor.
Fall followed—until they broke through the clouds and saw it.
A field. Lush, golden. Like the Fields of Hopes and Dreams, once burned, now reborn in the sky. Fall thought, if The Dreamweaver could begin again, so too could Fall.
Far below, in The City, a landing balloon waited.
Sir Do and her classmates were watching the skies, anxious for her.
The creature gave a sly grin and nudged Fall. Fall took their meaning and leapt from the cloud to The City below.
They were in freefall, feeling as though they could breathe.
Fall landed gently.
The classmates rushed forward, apologies spilling out. They hadn’t meant harm. They hadn’t thought.
Sir Do looked at them. Looked at Fall. And realized, with a sinking heart, what he had built.
A world where fear of failure had outweighed the value of life.
The system had to change.
“You were in freefall!” someone gasped. “How’d you do it?”
Fall smiled, feeling the pearl’s warmth still in their chest.
Sir Do stepped forward, studying Fall as if seeing them for the first time. Not as a failure. Not as a mistake. But as something else entirely.
“You’re not Fail,” he said, voice steady. “You’re Free, FreeFall.“
The name rippled through the crowd. A hush. A shift.
Fall straightened, the weight of the past slipping away like the wind that had carried them through the skies.
“FreeFall,” they repeated, testing it, feeling it take shape in their chest. It felt right.
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