Kalden sat cross-legged on his bed, trying and failing to make a new Cloak technique. He’d already spent some time working with Irina’s Cloak of a Thousand Eyes, but that felt wrong for his aspect.

  Irina saw the world exactly as it was, whether she dealt with a patient in the Healing Arts Center, or a battlefield in Vaslana. She gathered the intel with her mana, then she passed it on to her team or her Second Brain. The solutions came later, after careful consideration.

  Battle mana was different, and Kalden felt that difference in his bones. Every crowns player saw the board as it was, but seeing the board was just the first step. If you wanted to win the game, then you had to look deeper, toward the future. You had to know your opponents’ plans before they did. More importantly, you needed to see the path to victory.

  Kalden had always been a careful thinker who considered every angle. More often than not, he found himself overthinking with no cause, or paralyzing himself with too many options. He didn’t need more information on top of that. He needed the right information, and the means to keep up with Akari in the heat of battle.

  His computer sat on the nearby desk, along with a program called Prism that converted his aspect’s data into a list of possible cycling patterns. A elaborate sigil grid sat beside the computer, turning the program’s output into dream mana. From there, a series of small tubes fed the dream mana straight into Kalden’s head. Phantom sensations raced through his channels, leaving a map for his real mana to follow.

  This wasn’t a true Cloak technique. Not yet. But when Kalden cycled his mana, he got a glimpse of what the technique could be. It was slow, monotonous work, but—

  “Hey!” Glim announced herself in a cheerful voice. Kalden opened his eyes and saw the blue mana spirit standing in the nearby mirror. She spent several seconds eying his computer, then she turned and met his eyes. “Akari said you need my help?”

  “Help would be good.” Kalden unfolded his legs and leaned forward on the bed. The Darklights had come and gone these past few days, but they’d left a mana battery in the loft, bigger than a furnace. This gave Kalden and the team limited access to Glim, even when Elend was off fighting on distant battlefields. “I’m working on my new Cloak technique.”

  She frowned back at the computer screen. “Dunno how much help I’ll be with that. Cloaks are—”

  “Complicated,” Kalden finished for her. “I know.” He removed the helmet and shot a small Missile toward the sigil grid. This flipped a small plastic switch, and the grid went dark, disabling the dream mana output.

  “I was gonna say personal. I can’t make a new technique for you. Pretty sure you know that.”

  “We have a system this time.” Kalden got to his feet and stepped over to the computer. “Akari found a program that simulates mana cycling patterns. You input your goal, plus some data on your aspect and channels, then it generates a list of all the possible matches.”

  Glim turned into her Missile form and floated closer to the screen. Kalden spent a few minutes clicking through the various windows giving her a basic rundown of the program.

  “That’s a lot of numbers,” Glim mused. “What’d you do? Sit there like a lab rat while it measured you?”

  “Pretty much,” Kalden said. He’d easily sunk a dozen hours into this project already. Not to mention all that time Akari had spent learning the program.

  “How do you handle this list of matches?” Glim asked.

  “The program outputs the data as dream mana.” Kalden gestured to the nearby sigil grid, along with the tubes and helmet that fed the mana into his head.

  “Okay . . . and then you try the technique for real?”

  He nodded, but Glim still looked skeptical.

  “This is cool and all, but it’s not how real Cloaks are made. You need the right insights. Meditation, reflection . . . all that stuff. You can’t brute force it with a computer.”

  “I agree with you,” Kalden said. “But that approach takes years.”

  “Not always,” Glim replied, but her tone held a hint of uncertainty this time.

  “Nine times out of ten,” Kalden said. “Trust me, I’ve done the research.”

  Most of the current Masters and Mystics had invented at least one new technique in their younger years. This act of creation seemed like a crucial step toward the Master realm, just as the Darklights had implied.

  Unfortunately, the typical approach involved a great deal of trial and error. Not to mention sheer luck. Some people did it overnight, but they were the exception. Most of them chased leads for years, following long, winding paths that eventually led to dead-ends. When that happened, they had no choice but to start back from square one.

  “Elend gave us this deadline,” Kalden said. “And the conventional approach won’t be enough here. We need something new. Besides, this feels right to me. Akari and I both think so. We’re supposed to follow those feelings, right?”

  Glim popped back into the mirror and waggled her hands. “Ehh . . . that’s debatable. Lots of humans follow stupid hunches. They just don’t make it to the history books. Well, except for the really stupid ones. Everyone remembers them.”

  Well, he couldn’t argue with that. “I’m willing to drop this idea if I have to, but I think it’s too soon to give up.”

  Glim rolled a slender blue shoulder and floated several inches off the ground. “Let me guess, you want me to simulate the patterns for you?”

  “That’s part of it,” Kalden said. “The equipment works, but it’s slow.”

  “How many cycling patterns are there?” she asked.

  He’d known this question was coming, but he couldn’t help but sag his shoulders. “Two hundred million.”

  Glim raised an eyebrow, but she didn’t look too surprised. “And how long does it take you to test one pattern? Five minutes?”

  “Close enough,” Kalden said.

  “Let’s say we get that down to, like . . . thirty seconds. You’ve done the math, right? It would take you a hundred and ninety years to test all those patterns.” Her other eyebrow went up. “And this is faster . . . how?”

  “Like I said, that’s just one part.” Kalden gestured back to the open program. “I was hoping you could help me simplify the list, like when we made soulshine.”

  Glim shot a burst of pale blue mana at the computer. The keyboard and mouse moved on their own, and she brought up a single entry in the list. She winced as she scrolled through the parameters. “It would take me years to read all this. I’m fast but not that fast.” She turned back to Kalden. “Have you tried refining your model and having the program shorten the list?”

  “Akari tried that, but we ran into the same problem. Not enough power.”

  “Sorry,” Glim said with a wince. “But Cloaks are way more complicated than alchemy. Even if I find a few shortcuts, we’ll never finish this in time.”

  Damnit. He’d hoped to solve the problem with Glim, but maybe this was a dead-end, after all.

  What had more processing power than a Grandmaster-level mana spirit?

  ~~~

  Days passed, and he and Akari began their new classes among the third years. Needless to say, they received a chilly reception from their fellow students. Everyone else had gotten here the hard way, starting in the pre-Artegium program, and climbing through the ranks over many years.

  This was the second time Kalden and Akari had skipped ahead, and he’d lost count of how many times they’d cheated or bent the rules along the way. Most of their peers had overlooked their admissions scores, but they couldn’t hide their use of soulshine. Especially since Akari had still been a Novice last year.

  Even Relia had spent several years in the Apprentice realm.

  Speaking of Relia, she still hadn’t shown her face on campus—not even in class. The teachers were tight-lipped about the whole thing, but Nightfang claimed they might see her during the first trip into the Hollows.

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  In the meantime, they had a heist to plan.

  ~~~

  “So what do you think?” Kalden asked Arturo one evening in the loft. “Is this even possible?”

  “Anything’s possible, shoko” Arturo leaned back in his desk chair, glancing down at his digital tablet. “The security system’s top-notch, but that’s never stopped us before. All depends on who helps us.”

  “The Darklights are on board,” Kalden said. “They can’t help us with the break-in itself, but they can help us plan and prepare.”

  “And we’ve got this.” Akari held up the Master Key she’d used in her aspecting ritual. Intricate sigils covered its metallic surface, and it shone golden in the evening light.

  Arturo let out a slow whistle as she passed him the key. “Not a bad start. You know how to use this, shoka?”

  Akari shook her head. “Hoped you could figure it out.”

  He hummed in consideration “Yeah, should work fine with my aspect. Just need to practice for a few days.”

  “So?” Kalden glanced at Arturo in his chair, then at Zukan who sat on the floor a few paces away. “Are you guys in?”

  The two of them shared a long look as if they’d discussed something beforehand. Then Arturo cleared his throat. “Just one condition, shoko. We want the whole story.”

  “Sure,” he replied. “Which story are we talking about here?”

  “Something going on with you two.” Arturo gestured a finger between Kalden and Akari. “Aside from the usual, I mean.”

  “You’ll have to be more specific,” Kalden said. His teammates already knew about the plan to save Relia, their deal with the Solidors, their Aeon advancement, and the soulshine. Arturo and Zukan had even begun taking soulshine themselves. What else was there to tell? Unless . . .

  “Tell us where you really came from,” Arturo said. “We weren’t gonna pry before—it wasn’t our business—but if we’re gonna keep doing stuff like this . . .” He trailed off and gestured toward the whiteboard.

  Ah. That story.

  Kalden glanced over his shoulder and met Akari’s eyes. No words passed through their bond; she just gave him a curt nod. And maybe she was right. Arturo and Zukan had plenty of chances to walk away last spring, but they hadn’t. They’d stuck with him through Storm’s Eye’s attack, and the fight against Valeria Zantano. Zukan had even lost a leg in that battle.

  After all that, they deserved to know the whole truth.

  “And let’s not pretend this is all about Relia,” Arturo said. “I’ve never seen anyone train as hard as you two. That includes Zukan, and he’s training to overthrow Creta’s Dragonlord.” He met each of their eyes as if measuring them. “Something tells me you’re shooting even higher than that.”

  “Alright.” Kalden drew a deep breath and gathered his thoughts. They’d never shared this with anyone before, and it felt strange to finally put it into words. “We were raised in a sect called Last Haven.”

  “Last Haven.” Arturo tasted the word, then furrowed his brow. “Never heard of it.”

  “No one has. Five years ago, a Mystic appeared in the sky and wiped the sect off the map. But the Mystic didn’t kill us. He sent us to an archipelago in the Inner Sea, off the coast of Cadria.” Kalden stepped over to the world map which hung on the wall near the door, then he pressed his finger to the exact spot.

  “All three islands were encased in a pocket dimension,” he continued. “And the Mystic took everyone’s power, locking us in the Novice realm. Elend and Relia found us there, and we shipwrecked in Creta on the way home. That’s when we met you.”

  “We left our friends and family behind,” Akari said. “That’s why we train so hard. To get them back.”

  From there, they plunged into a longer, more detailed explanation. Kalden explained their memory loss, and how their attacker had altered or taken most peoples’ aspects. Akari confessed to betraying Last Haven and meeting with Ashur Moonfire in a nearby diner. A meeting that had changed everything in a single moment.

  Then came the Archipelago itself. Pocket dimensions had always stifled advancement as a natural side effect, but this place had weaponized that fact. Someone had built an entire world around stagnation where people were judged by their birth mana.

  From there, they moved onto Last Haven’s attacker, and their theories surrounding his identity. If it was, in fact, a he. They’d always referred to their attacker that way, but the evidence was flimsy at best.

  Arturo named several famous Mystics who might have done it, but his suggestions were nothing new.

  Zukan’s idea was more surprising. “What if it wasn’t a Mystic?” he asked when the conversation fell into a lull. “What if an Angel attacked your sect?”

  Unfortunately, that felt like an even bigger dead-end. Kalden had nothing against religion. He and Akari had Angelic soul shards in their chests, so that proved there were levels of power beyond this world. The Solidors also served as living proof of this fact.

  But Zukan wasn’t talking about powerful humans who’d ascended from their own worlds. He believed in the Angelic Church, who spoke of divine beings, sent by the Creator to guide humanity.

  That all sounded great on paper, but there was one massive problem with the church’s theory: the Angels didn’t actually behave that way. Not even close. When was the last time they’d intervened to help humans in any way they could measure? They certainly hadn’t cared when Storm’s Eye attacked Koreldon City last spring, and they hadn’t intervened during a single war in the last thousand years.

  There was one notable event, two-hundred years ago, when Akariel’s body had fallen from the sky. Cameras hadn’t existed back then, but hundreds of people had seen it happen. A woman’s form, shrouded in white crystals and ashes, plummetting to the earth like a falling meteor. According to the church, the Archangel had died protecting the planet from a foreign invader. She’d sacrificed herself, and Talek and the other Angels had finished it off.

  Needless to say, that story lacked evidence. Any powerful being could have died that day, and for any reason. To make matters worse, the Archangel’s body had fallen deep into the Inner Sea, and they’d never retrieved it.

  Others said the Angels weren’t just guardians, but gatekeepers. They stood at the center of the Inner Sea, preventing the unworthy from ascending.

  “What if your sect opposed them?” Zukan asked. “What if that attack was a tribulation?”

  That seemed a little too dramatic. No one in Last Haven had struck Kalden as overly ambitious. On the contrary, most of them were like Akari’s parents. They wielded enough power to rule a nation, but they’d done the exact opposite, veiling their mana and living simple lives.

  Kalden’s parents had certainly been more driven, but even they hadn’t stood out among the world’s other Grandmasters, much less the Mystics.

  Besides, if the Angels worked that way, then why not go after the Cult of Solidor? That group defied the Angels more openly than anyone else. Better yet, why not go after the Solidors themselves? They supposedly carried the souls of dead Angels inside them, and they helped others do the same. What was more blasphemous than that?

  Zukan didn’t have any answers to those questions, so they moved on to Arturo’s theory.

  “Do you guys know the exact spot where Last Haven was?” he asked. “Before the attack, I mean.”

  “We do,” Kalden replied. “It’s just an empty forest right now, but Elend found the diner where Akari met Ashur Moonfire. That place was just like she remembered it.”

  “Okay, and how about the road from the diner to the sect?”

  “Gone,” Akari said. “Just a bunch of old trees.”

  Arturo gave a slow nod. “I hate to say this, but someone has to. You say this Mystic memory-wiped everyone. Not just you two, but the whole freaking world. Then he destroyed a whole city with no evidence. And then he grew a bunch of trees and made them look old.”

  “I know what we’re going with this.” Kalden rubbed the back of his head. “It’s more logical to assume Last Haven never existed. That Akari and I were born in the Archipelago, and someone planted some fake memories in our heads.”

  “Yeah.” Arturo gave an apologetic shrug. “How do you explain that one, shoko?”

  “Elend remembered Akari’s parents. He used the same techniques on himself that he used on us.”

  “Just Elend, huh? No one else remembers anything?” Arturo shot a wary glance around the loft, and Kalden knew why. They’d warded this room against eavesdroppers, but those wards wouldn’t stop a certain Grandmaster and his mana spirit. “What are the odds of that?”

  “He is the best dream artist in the world,” Zukan said. “That gives him the best chance of retrieving his memories.”

  “Sure, but . . .” Arturo trailed off, then let out an explosive sigh. “Alright. I’m just gonna say it—what if Elend’s in on this?” His words hung there for a few seconds, but he relaxed when he saw their expressions. “You already thought of that didn’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Akari muttered.

  Kalden nodded in agreement. They’d never discussed this out loud before, but that didn’t make a difference. Elend could probably sense their concerns one way or another.

  “Please tell me you’ve got a good answer,” Arturo said. “Cause I’ll be pissed if this rescue mission is just another training exercise. These things feel more contrived every time.”

  Zukan frowned. “How so?”

  “He always swoops in and saves the day. First time was in Creta when he escaped the Dragonlord. Then he showed up just after the qualifying rounds last year.” Arturo raised his fingers as he spoke, checking off the items one by one “Then there was Vordica. And that time he made Akari the team captain to build her moral character.”

  “He doesn’t always save the day,” Akari said in a low voice. “We lost Elise last year.”

  “And my brother,” Kalden added. “Vordica might have been a training exercise, but that fight with Valeria was real.”

  “Shit.” Arturo deflated at that. “Sorry. But you get what I’m saying, right? That’s a lot of coincidences. Elend gave you back your memories, sure—but how do we know he didn’t just . . . Invent them? How do we know it’s not some scheme for our own good?” He lifted his hands and made air quotes around the last phrase.

  Akari cleared her throat. “My parents wrote papers here at KU. Those are all gone, but other papers still build off their ideas without citing any sources.” Arturo still didn’t look convinced, but she pressed on. “We’ve found other weird stuff, too. Photographs with no people, awards with no names, and books with empty pages.”

  “And I have the skills of a Shokenese blade artist,” Kalden said. “I got those by traveling all over the world, training with dozens of Masters. That can’t be faked.”

  “Still sounds easier than erasing a whole city,” Arturo said.

  “We can’t prove it yet,” Kalden continued. “But that doesn’t mean we never will. I can reach out to the people I trained with in North Shoken. Akari can do the same—finding more people who knew her parents. If we can restore their lost memories, then we’re one step closer to solving this. At the very least, we can cross Elend off our suspect list.”

  Zukan nodded in vague agreement. “For now, Elend’s goals seem to align with ours. We should focus on on our next advancements, and saving Relia.”

  “Fair enough,” Arturo said after a short pause. “In that case, I just have one more condition.”

  “Okay.” Kalden crossed his arms. “Let’s hear it.”

  “No more half-telepathic talks. For the love of the Angels, pick a medium and stick with it.”

  He blinked. “Seriously? That’s your biggest concern?”

  “Hell yes,” Arturo said. “It’s annoying as shit.”

  “It is,” Zukan agreed in a serious voice.

  “It’s like listening to one half of a phone call.” Arturo spread out his hands. “Keep the private stuff in your head and say the rest out loud. But no more of this mix-and-match bullshit. Seriously, you two are becoming that couple. The one who—”

  “Alright.” Kalden laughed, holding up a hand to forestall any more complaints. “Alright, we’ll stop.” In all honesty, he’d seen this problem coming for a while now. It just hadn’t been a priority compared to everything else on his list.

  Clearly, the others disagreed.

  “Good.” Arturo got to his feet and stepped over to the whiteboard. “Then let’s get started. This heist isn’t gonna plan itself.”

  Web of Secrets Book 1 is now available for ebook, paperback, and Kindle Unlimited:

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