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The sunlight feeds their blue armor and gives them otherworldly strength. First they took the enlightened among us. The kings, artists, philosophers, and alchemists. Without them, we lost it all... the only remnants of our splendor are the paintings... they teach us everything we believe about our past.

We sucked Her blood and became mighty. Our Mother became our prey. We'd thought that She'd punish us, but she never did. She wasted away, so we abandoned Her for the sky. In our hubris we thought that we escaped. The alchemists claimed that with unlimited resources, they could make something better. We could capture the sun.

Their creations—gods—hunt us for our blasphemy. The monsters keep us under siege, here in the Sky Fortresses. There are many of us, our once mighty empire scattered across the Aether. We will either starve, or be captured. The armored gods float around outside, humming their chants for long periods before they showcase their power.

Somehow they open the Gateways to the Aether—no man has ever found a way to do this—then a small group of them enter. The ones that have feet clank on the fortress floor, while their priests hum those undecipherable chants. Those damn chants always numb our hearts and freeze our bodies! When they find us, all it takes is one look into those unnatural glowing red eyes to make us disappear. We have no way of fighting back...

We should never have murdered our Mother...

It's short but you do a lot with the word count. I have never been able to manage flash fiction.

For whatever reason I don't like the word 'blue' in the opening line, it's such a minor thing but to me the sentence flows better without that detail, which means it has more impact, and the first sentence is so important in establishing both the tone and situation.

Anyway once it becomes clear it's a sci-fi scenario framed as fantasy it's fun going over it all and figuring out the context. My assumptions is AI rebellion/robot uprising but there's so much passage of time implied here, the fact these people are living in what sound like space stations without any idea of the science involved makes me think they must have been reliant on robots to do everything for them for a long time.