The Skybound Mechanical City

I met an alien. Her name was Gray Prince. She took me to more than a hundred alien worlds and showed me the lives and cities that exist beyond planets. Higher beings had repeatedly created and destroyed life in the solar system, until they came to Earth, built a mechanical city in the sky, and created beast-headed giants. Humanity was what remained after one rebellion against those higher beings: a people they forcibly left behind. Gray Prince told me just one thing: humanity survived not because of luck.