“Did they find anything?” Kalden asked through gritted teeth. His wound screamed with every bump in the road, but he shoved the pain into his Second Brain and locked it away. Akari needed him now.

  “Nothing,” Irina said as she turned the car onto Main Street. "But we're looking at a search radius of seven-hundred square miles.”

  The Darklights had evacuated the clinic several minutes before. If Nightfang had kidnapped Akari, then she could easily make trouble for the rest of the team. The Honor Guard and local police were no match for the Darklights, but Moonfire had other tools at his disposal. Like the entire Espirian military.

  Besides, their soulbond only worked over a fifteen-mile radius, and movement increased their odds of staying connected. Those odds weren’t great—maybe thirty percent at best—but it beat sitting still.

  “The cuffs are impedium, correct? ”Irina wove through the late-night traffic, the city lights blurring past them in streams of gold and crimson.

  “With a titan steel alloy,” Kalden confirmed.

  “How much impedium in the alloy?”

  Kalden closed his eyes and tried to process the cuffs through Akari’s senses. “At least half.”

  "That's Master-grade,” she replied. “But her spacetime Cloak should let her warp free.”

  “There’s a ,” Kalden said. “She can’t cycle at all. Plus Nightfang and Trask are watching her.”

  “That won’t matter if she advances.”

  Kalden's fingers dug into the door handle as they took a sharp turn onto the highway.

  “Things don’t look good,” Irina said. “Trask and Nightfang have a ten-mile head start, and we don’t know their destination. “You want to help her? Then find her revelation. That might be our only chance.”

  “You can’t give someone a revelation,” Kalden said. “You taught me that.”

  “You can’t,” she agreed. “But you can guide her to it. You know Akari better than anyone.”

  “Better than her parents? Even they couldn’t help her.”

  Irina glanced toward him, not quite meeting his eye. “Who says they didn’t help her? Who says they weren’t preparing her for this exact moment?”

  “We tried everything,” Kalden said. “Every thought exercise and technique.” He wasn’t trying to be difficult here, but it was the truth. What were the odds Akari could advance now, with her thoughts half-frozen, and two hostile Masters looming over her?

  If anything, her chances were worse than ever.

  “You haven’t tried everything,” Irina said. “If that were true, you would already be Masters.”

  ~~~

  Trask tilted his head to the side, speaking into the radio on his collar. "What's our ETA?"

  Akari strained her ears, fighting through the effects of her captors’ techniques. Most Artisans couldn’t hear sounds this quiet, but she’d spent long hours in Elend’s pain machine last year, bursting her eardrums countless times and reinforcing them with mana. As a result, she could pick up sounds that most people missed.

  “Five minutes," the driver's voice crackled back. "Airfield is—”

  “I told you to turn that off,” Nightfang interrupted.

  His sharp eyes flicked toward her, confused and annoyed all at once.

  “We have to assume Zeller has a telepathic bond with Trengsen,” Nightfang told him. “She’ll report back every word you say.”

  Trask didn’t silence his radio, but he also kept his mouth shut.

  Akari passed that along to Kalden. That should help narrow things down. How many airfields could there be around here?

  Kalden replied a second later.

  Of course there was. Stupid rich people and their airships.

  Kalden's voice echoed in her mind.

  Akari cut in. She'd heard it all before. But you couldn’t brute-force these things. It wasn’t even like her revelation in Creta, where her dreams gave her the answers on a silver platter.

  Akari needed a new insight—something she hadn’t thought of before. But she hadn’t been polishing her glasses these past few months. If she could force a breakthrough on command, she would have done it already.

  “,” her father had said. “.”

  In other words, she couldn’t let her past failures weigh her down. She hadn’t stopped trying to learn mana arts on Arkala, even when the whole world called it madness. She wouldn’t stop trying to find her revelation today.

  Kalden suggested.

  Sure, the present. Right now, she was tied up in a van, facing Nightfang and Trask. Nightfang’s technique held her muscles in place, and the cuffs stopped her from cycling. Trask held his own mana on top of that, freezing her like a human popsicle.

  Kalden replied.

  Akari realized with sudden clarity. This whole thing sucked, but she could deal with it. The worst part was how she’d let Nightfang get the better of her. The Darklights had given her a list of the people they trusted, but she’d forgotten that list in the moment.

  She should have fled the second Nightfang revealed herself. She should have found Elend and told him. This was all her fault.

  Kalden said.

  Akari tried, but it wasn’t easy with the ice mana slowing her thoughts. A part of her just wanted to fall back asleep . . .

  ‘’ Kalden’s voice was surprisingly calm, despite their fading connection. ’ He sent more mana through her bond, fighting through the waves of despair.

  Right. She’d also been helpless in the Archipelago, but that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was how people treated her, acting like she was crazy for trying to learning mana arts. Just like when Noella used to abuse her and erase the evidence.

  Maybe she cared more about helpless? That implied external validation, which went against all the rules of revelations.

  Then again, Akari wasn’t just the protagonist of her life. She was the audience. She watched herself every day, and she didn’t always like what she saw.

  she finally said. Elend had mentioned that word back on the mountain, and it seemed to fit her better. She hadn’t just lost her power in the Archipelago. She’d lost all knowledge and her skills. All because of one bad choice.

  Incompetence was her worst fear. But what was the opposite of that?

  ~~~

  Kalden dropped his eyelids and slowed his breathing, closing himself out to the rest of the world. He didn’t feel the moving car or the leather seat beneath him. Instead, he existed in the space between himself and Akari.

  His aspect sprang into overdrive, and memories raced through his mind like a deck of shuffled cards. Some were his, and some were Akari’s. Most were shared memories between them.

  She was so close now—he felt it like the gathering power before a storm. But Trask’s mana blocked her path. Kalden could guess the words, but he might ruin everything if he pushed too hard. She had to find them on her own.

  The memories kept racing through the ether of his mind, pushing the limits of his aspect. One memory held the key to all of this. One moment that got to the heart of who Akari truly was. One feeling that expressed the words in their purest form.

  But even as he searched, the bond began to fray at the edges like an old rope. They were moving apart; Irina was driving the wrong way.

  Kalden wanted to open his eyes and tell her, but it wouldn’t make a difference. Any direction might be wrong, and it was too late to catch up. And if he broke his trance now, he would steal Akari’s only hope of advancing.

  His aspect showed him a thousand paths to victory, but it struggled to find the best option. He couldn’t do that in the next few seconds. The Cloak of a Thousand Blades was meant for physical battlefields. Not .

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  But Cloaks could adapt as a person climbed through the ranks of power. That was why they learned these techniques as Artisans, planting seeds that would bloom in the Master realm.

  Kalden could make his Cloak stronger, but only if he advanced first. He had to use his own advancement to help her. But how . . .

  Kalden trained for battle every day, honing his body and techniques to perfection. But that wasn't the music that truly moved him. When he trained for himself, he couldn't help but overthink every action. Hardly a surprise; a mind could never find peace when it thought only of itself.

  But when he focused on someone else, things snapped into sudden, perfect clarity.

  He remembered the first time he’d ever talked to Akari, that fateful day in Last Haven. He’d been eight or nine years old, training with Sozen in their backyard. There was a punching bag marked with a jaku sigil that converted kinetic force into light. No matter how hard Kalden tried, he couldn’t light up the sigil. The harder he pushed himself, the worse it got.

  Then Akari leapt over the fence between their two yards—all determination and raw fury. Her form was even worse than Kalden’s, but that didn’t stop her.

  In that moment, Kalden stopped focusing on his own failure and started teaching her. He showed her how to throw a proper punch, how to channel force from the ground up through her legs and shoulders. Then his own breakthrough had appeared like a gust of wind on a hot day. The sigil blazed with light on his next strike.

  Ten years had passed, but nothing had changed. Not for him, and not for Akari. His biggest breakthroughs didn’t happen on the battlefield, or even the training mat. It was moments like this. Helping Akari learn mana arts in a world that held her back. Memorizing a pill recipe, and using it to save Relia’s life. Seeing the flaws in his school’s qualifying rounds and using that knowledge to forge a team from the chaos. Trusting Akari with his life, even when her plans defied all logic and reason.

  These were the moments that defined him. These were the moments he lived for.

  Kalden’s mouth moved on its own, and he spoke the words: “I train to propel my friends forward.”

  No sooner had the words left his mouth than power erupted through his soul like a breaking dam. It raced through his channels faster than thought, faster than light, transforming every cell in his body. This was nothing like the pain of his previous advancements. This was total clarity of mind and soul.

  His Cloak exploded outward, stretching a hundred yards in every direction. The world opened in ways he'd never imagined. He felt the flow of mana in the surrounding cars like rivers of light. He sensed the emotions of the drivers they passed—frustration, boredom, anger, and peace. He felt the very energy in the air, and the potential in every molecule.

  It was like he’d stumbled through life before this moment, making the same mistakes in an endless loop. He’d caught glimpses of mastery along the way, but he’d always fallen back toward the earth when he reached too high.

  Now, Kalden finally saw that loop as a tangible thing in his mind’s eye. More importantly, he had the clarity to step outside that loop and carve the path to victory.

  He didn’t just feel the world with his battle mana, he it with mathematical precision. Irina’s car traveled south by southeast at seventy-six miles per hour. Akari traveled east at seventy-two miles. Eighteen and a half miles stretched between them, but the bond hadn’t broken. His own advancement had strengthened it, turning that fraying rope into a cord of steel.

  Kalden felt her position in space as a tangible thing, and the path was as clear as words on a page.

  Crimson Missiles flew from his hands, flowing between himself and Irina. He forged a telepathic link between them, and that link extended to Elend and Glim. He shared his findings, and they moved as one force, all converging on a single point.

  ~~~

  Akari thought through her haze of ice. It always came back to that. Her soul craved power for its own sake, but power was just a ticking bomb that would destroy her and her friends.

  Kalden’s voice was firm in her mind.

  An older memory flowed through their bond as he spoke. A memory of her and Kalden training together in his backyard. Akari saw her younger self through Kalden’s eyes, and the joy and determination on her face as she learned how to throw a proper punch.

  She had no goals in that moment. No enemies or pain or grand causes. No reasons for power or personal advancement. Just the joy of training. To become the best version of herself, like her father said.

  The right answer filled her like a sudden warmth, and it was impossible to say whether it came from her or Kalden.

  .

  Power and mastery seemed similar at first glance, but a vast canyon spanned the distance between those words. Mastery meant control over her emotions, whims, and desires. It wasn’t just power, it was the knowledge and wisdom to use that power in the ways that mattered most. It was the difference between a technique and the mana artist who wielded it.

  Akari smiled up at Nightfang and Trask, and her soul stirred in anticipation.

  “I train for mastery,” she said aloud. “Mastery for its own sake.”

  Power rushed through her soul, spreading through her channels until it slammed against the cuffs and collar. Trask’s mana cleared from her brain like morning mist before the sun. Every cell in her body sang with purpose. Every channel blazed with light.

  This was nothing like the violent pain of her last two advancements. This was completion, like finding a piece of herself she hadn't known was missing. It felt like coming home.

  But her captors weren’t idle. Nightfang stretched out her hand and hurled a technique across the van. Chaos slammed into her body and channels, woven with killing intent. Nightfang had held back in the clinic; she’d been willing to capture an Artisan, but she wouldn’t hesitate to kill an enemy Master.

  The mana hit Akari like a flashbang, but worse. Pure white light exploded over her vision, searing through her eyelids. Sound hit next—a thunderclap that ruptured her eardrums in an instant. Hot blades twisted through both sides of her skull. Blood trickled down her neck, warm red streams against the cold metal of the collar.

  A third wave hit her muscles and channels. Akari couldn’t feel the van, her body, or her mana. For one terrifying moment, she seemed to float in place with no sense of up or down. Not dead, but close enough.

  Still, she fell back to her training and forced her soul to cycle. Her spacetime mana flowed through the cuffs like liquid starlight, finding the microscopic gaps. These cuffs were built to contain Masters, but Akari didn’t need to break them. She just had to convince reality that she wasn’t there.

  Her spacetime Cloak surrounded her like a second skin. Her body warped free from her restraints, then the van itself. She landed on the cold asphalt of the highway. Cars honked and swerved around her, and she saw their ghostly images in her mind’s eye. Her body flickered again, letting a truck pass straight through her.

  Her vision started to clear, but everything came back wrong. Double images. Triple. Colors that shouldn't exist. The road shook as more cars soared past her. Crashes followed, but they all sounded far away.

  Then a wave of ice formed around her body, spreading in small crystals over her skin, pinning her to the road. It was the perfect counter to her spacetime Cloak; she couldn’t dodge techniques she couldn’t sense. Especially when the mana came from everywhere at once. She couldn’t even move her body to make a portal.

  Kalden said through her bond.

  Two minutes was too long. Nightfang’s aspect struck her nerves. If she attacked again, then Akari might forget how to breathe. Her heart could stop beating, or she could fall unconscious. Already, her mind seemed to sink into a deep pit, unable to claw itself free.

  She didn’t reach the Master realm just to lose this fight.

  Akari reached for her Aeon soul. While the rest of the world blurred around her, the Angelic mana felt clear in her mental senses. Clearer than it had ever felt before. Her senses spread to her enemy’s mana. As an Artisan, this power had seemed wild and untamable—like trying to grab a storm with her bare hands. Now, she saw the truth of things. It was all just energy. Just another source of power. She’d always known that, but knowing wasn’t the same as feeling.

  Akari drank in her opponents’ techniques, just like Sozen had done with Dansin Roth’s mana after the qualifying rounds. Ice broke into pale mist, and Nightfang’s mana did the same. It swirled around Akari like a whirlpool, spinning into her open soul.

  Her mind crawled back from the pit, and the world snapped back into sudden focus. She felt the cold rough asphalt beneath her cheek. The night wind cut through her torn clothes, carrying the smell of burning rubber and mana crystals. Sirens and car horns struck her eardrums. Her eyes blinked away melted snow, and she saw her enemies ten paces away.

  The van had stopped diagonally across two lanes, its tires still smoking. The backdoors sat wide open, and Nightfang and Trask stood there with outstretched arms.

  Akari climbed to her feet, still drinking in their techniques with her Aeon soul. Each wave filled her with Angelic mana that demanded to be used. Her opponents grew more desperate, attacking her with cruder techniques than before. Bonebreaking Missiles that screamed through the air, and blades of ice that could cut steel.

  Before her advancement, those techniques would have hit her with impossible speed. Now, their shadows seemed to creep toward her in slow motion. The mana flowed around her Cloak like raindrops, and she didn’t bother to block or dodge.

  Spacetime Missiles flew out from Akari’s hands, surrounding Nightfang and Trask like a storm of silver insects. Two dozen portals opened around them, while two more formed around Akari’s hands. She unleashed the Angelic mana in two blades, sharp enough to slice through their Cloaks and armor. These weren’t the random strikes she’d used against Dain; these were calculated cuts designed to cripple.

  That was another perk of Mastery. She didn’t have to kill her enemies in some wild fit of desperation. They were far more useful to her alive.

  Nightfang's left arm dropped uselessly to her side, blood soaking through her dark jacket. The woman's face went pale, her breathing shallow and rapid. Her right hand jerked back mid-technique, and the mana dissolved into harmless sparks.

  Trask tried to raise an ice shield, but Akari's portals were already behind him. Her Missiles carved through his shoulders, finding the gaps between bone and sinew. His techniques died half-formed as his arms went limp.

  Nightfang's aspect lashed out—not through her hands, but from her entire body. The technique tried to scramble Akari's nervous system, to make her forget how her own body worked.

  The mana broke down in midair, flowing into Akari’s open soul. She slashed again, targeting her opponents’ calves and hamstrings. Trask fell first, his legs buckling as crimson spread across his uniform. Nightfang fell an instant later. Her knees struck the cold asphalt, but she kept herself up through sheer force of will.

  The night sky split in half as Elend descended. He rode a glider of pure mana that shimmered like captured starlight, its wings stretching thirty feet across. Thousands of feathers made up the wings. They shifted and flowed with each movement, catching the highway lights and throwing them back like tiny crystals.

  The glider dissolved into clouds of pale blue mist as he landed. His eyes swept over the scene—the stopped traffic, the blood on the asphalt, Nightfang and Trask on their knees. Then he saw Akari’s soul, and his eyes crinkled at the edges. “Guess you didn’t need me after all.”

  Akari let out a long breath, then gestured to her former captors. “I got you something,” she said with a humorless smile. “Happy Midwinter.”

  Understanding dawned on Elend’s face as he stepped forward. This had always been part of their plan, but no one had expected it to start like this. Not with Nightfang.

  Even now, guilt threatened to hold Akari back, and excuses bubbled to the surface of her mind. What if this was just some training exercise? What if it was a misunderstanding? This wasn’t like the fight at the Solidor’s safe house. No one was threatening her friends. She could still walk away if she wanted to.

  Her revelation smothered that guilt with sudden clarity. Nightfang chose to be her enemy. Akari didn’t want this, but it was necessary

  She loomed over the kneeling woman, ignoring the puddles of blood around her, and the terrified expression on her face. Nightfang’s lips tried to move, but the words never made it past her throat.

  Glim leapt from Elend’s hand in the same moment, and both her captives’ expressions went suddenly blank as the dream mana took over. That was one small mercy, at least. Akari didn’t want her victims to suffer—even if they deserved it. She just wanted to save Relia.

  Nightfang’s eyelids grew heavy, and her head slumped forward, somewhere between sleeping and waking. Trask did the same beside her.

  Akari reached out with her right hand, hovering it a few inches over Nightfang’s soul. It resisted at first, far stronger than the mana beasts and Artisans she'd captured. This was a Master who’d spent years perfecting her craft, anchoring her soul with millions of repetitions. The resistance felt personal, as if her very identity fought back.

  Then the soul began to crack, hairline fractures spreading across its surface like breaking ice. Akari pulled harder, and the soul crumbled in her mind’s eye. Nightfang’s body shook as years of training dissolved in mere seconds.

  The power filled her with a pressure that demanded to be used, threatening to burst from her channels if she held it too long.

  Finally, she turned back to Elend. His soul opened willingly, and the power passed between them in a stream of pale blue light.

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

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