Akari stepped into the lobby with Kalden at her side. Two rows of stone pillars divided the room, with an ornate fountain sprouting from the center of the marble floor. Orange mana crystals sparkled like tiny flames in the chandeliers, and the blue light of the Aegis shone through the tall glass windows.

  Five Masters loomed at the top of the staircase opposite her and Kalden. She recognized Naomi Thorne and Silas Knox from their last battle, along with three new faces: Atlas Silverstone, Orion Frostborn, and Sora Kondo. All five wore fitted suits of midnight blue armor trimmed with silver

  “Finally ready to talk?” Thorne asked them from the top of the staircase. She sounded more smug than surprised, as if they’d just walked into her trap. No surprise there. Elend had helped Akari and Kalden veil their souls, making them look more like Artisans than the Masters they’d become.

  “No,” Kalden said from Akari’s left. “But we’ll accept your surrender. And your mana.”

  With that, the pair burst into motion. It wasn’t the most subtle approach, but subtlety wasn’t the goal here. Elend was still just a Grandmaster, and he needed those souls to advance.

  Their opponents lashed out with a storm of techniques—wind, fire, stone and steel. Their mana felt impossibly bright, echoing off every surface, striking from every angle. Each one held enough power to vaporize a small town.

  Akari and Kalden charged the storm head-on. Their Cloaks merged in their soulbond, and they saw the future before it happened. Akari sidestepped a flaming Missile that would have turned her to ash. Kalden parried several of Kondo’s blades with a sound like clanking steel. Akari hurled back more techniques with her portals, while others passed harmlessly through her spacetime Cloak.

  Finally, she and Kalden unveiled their souls, letting a burst of raw power fill the room. Blades met glass and stone as Kalden clashed with Thorne. Akari went for Knox in the same moment, forming a web of portals around the wind artist.

  Irina struck from the shadows on Akari’s left, and a dozen blades of pure mana coalesced from the surrounding mist The blades took Silverstone from behind, slicing through his triceps and hamstrings with surgical precision. He dropped without a scream.

  To her right, Elend and Glim appeared from a cloud of dream mana. Glim flew straight into Kondo, while Elend pressed a hand between Frostborn’s shoulder blades.

  Knox hurled a gust of wind mana at Akari. She saw the technique coming with her Cloak, but she didn’t bother resisting. Instead, she kicked off from the staircase, letting the wind carry her backward.

  Her opponent tried to slam her into a stone pillar, but Akari twisted her body in midair, far more graceful than she’d ever moved before. A portal bloomed beneath her feet, and she appeared on Knox's right, propelled by the speed of the wind.

  Knox tried to dodge with his own Cloak, warping the air around his body to slip away like smoke. It would have worked on most opponents, but Akari was faster. Space warped around them both, and her boots collided with his stomach.

  Her opponent backflipped over the railing, and a pair of pistols appeared in his hands as he flew away. Akari saw it happen in slow motion—the metal of the weapons gleaming in the orange and blue light. The recoil as he squeezed the triggers, and the tongues of fire that leapt from the barrels. Two bullets ricocheted off Akari’s breastplate, then space warped as a third passed harmlessly through her windpipe.

  Akari raised her right hand, hurling a spacetime Missile at the center of Knox’s chest. More mana gathered in her left hand, forming a portal straight into her opponent’s soul.

  She , and structural mana flowed out like blood from a wound. A second portal opened between Akari and Elend as she fed him the power.

  Knox tried to resist, but his techniques unraveled with his soul, and he collapsed on the marble floor like a bag of rice.

  Kalden was already feeding Thorne’s mana to Elend across the room, while Irina stood over the other three Masters. All four of them lie unconscious with minimal injuries.

  Barely twenty seconds had passed, and they’d neutralized all five Masters. More importantly, they’d done it without destroying their victim’s souls.

  Just then, four walls of protection mana sprang up around her entire team. Akari should have seen it coming with her Cloak, but she’d dropped her guard when the last enemy fell. Even Kalden couldn’t predict what he couldn’t see.

  Walls of solid metal fell from the ceiling outside the dome, slamming down with earthshaking force. The sound reverberated through Akari’s bones, from her toes to her teeth. She tried to carve an escape, but the enemy had warded the trap against portals.

  There was a flash of pale blue light as Elend shattered the first dome. He and Kalden joined forces against the outer wall, but the metal didn’t budge.

  The tiles slid open beneath their feet, unleashing a storm of blades. One hit Akari between the legs, too fast for her mind to process. It cut through her armor and opened her torso down the middle. The pain was indescribable, white-hot agony that consumed every thought. Her vision blurred, and she barely kept her insides from spilling out on the floor. The marble felt cold against her cheek. When had she fallen?

  Three more blades cut through Kalden. First his thigh, sending an arc of blood across the white marble. Then his stomach and chest, each wound deep enough to see bone. Even the Darklights fell. Kalden was shouting something through their bond, but her mind couldn't comprehend it. The words came as distant echoes through an ocean of pain. He fed her battle mana through their bond, but that didn’t help. Nothing made sense anymore. This couldn't be real.

  Clouds of green smoke followed the blades—some sort of toxic mana. Akari tried to break down the fumes with her Aeon soul, but no . . . this wasn’t mana at all. This was something else. Something she couldn’t feel with her mental senses.

  Green flames erupted around the others. Kalden's arm caught fire, flesh bubbling and blackening. More flames erupted over Elend's back, and even his Grandmaster body couldn't resist the destruction.

  Akari felt a sudden pain in her feet as the smoke ate through her boots like acid. Another wave of agony followed as the flames ate through her flesh. First her feet, then . . .

  ‘’ Kalden’s voice said through their soulbond.

  Akari cycled mana to her mother’s watch, and time flowed backward before her eyes. Her flesh and armor formed back into existence, faster than any healing technique. Her body stood upright again. The clouds of green gas vanished back into the floor, and the blades followed, sealing her wounds as they fell.

  The floor tiles slid back into place. The impedium wall rose back into the ceiling, and the dome of protection mana faded around them.

  Akari should have stopped there, but the pain had numbed her mind. The entire battle rewound itself before she finally reigned the technique back in.

  Now, she and Kalden stood back at the entrance to the lobby, and all five opponents loomed at the top of the marble staircase.

  And . . . Did she just watch Kalden and the Darklights die? How was she supposed to fight after that? Not to mention the pain. She still felt the buckets of blood running down her legs. Her hands threatened to shake at her sides, and the scent of burnt flesh still clung to her nostrils.

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  ‘,’ Kalden said through the bond.

  He was right. The pain and death were just memories now. An Artisan might have dwelled on that experience for hours, but her Master brain moved on. There was no trauma there; just images, sounds, and sensations.

  Still . . . that was far too close.

  “Finally ready to talk?” Naomi Thorne asked in her smug voice.

  Kalden didn’t acknowledge her this time. He just cycled his battle mana, working with the Darklights to reverse-engineer the trap.

  Normally, only time artists could witness the future. But Akari’s memories flowed through her bond with Kalden, and Kalden passed those same memories to the Darklights. As a result, all four of them remembered the future, and they knew exactly how to avoid it.

  Elend formed a semi-transparent illusion over the teams’ vision, highlighting the traps. Kalden also spotted three more danger zones scattered throughout the room. They should be fine as long as they steered clear of those.

  Portals bloomed around her and Kalden, taking them around the traps to the back end of the room. The five Honor Guards whirled to face hem. Akari and Kalden attacked on foot, dodging the enemy techniques as they ran.

  Once again, the Darklights appeared behind the Honor Guard and neutralized three of them in quick succession. Silverstone, Frostborn, and Kondo all fell like dominos. Kalden attacked Knox this time, while Akari went for Thorne.

  The stone artist charged her head-on, encased within a shell like black obsidian. The woman didn’t bother with any fancy techniques this time; her body slammed straight into Akari’s, knocking her back against the floor.

  Akari rolled with the blow, just like she’d done with Knox’s wind mana. She’d avoided direct clashes as an Artisan, but her Master body could take a much harder beating.

  Besides, chaos always favored the spacetime artist.

  Two portals wrapped around them as they fell. One pulled Thorne from the air, using the woman’s momentum to hurl her against the nearby pillar. A second portal opened beneath Akari. She fell through it back-first, twisted her body around, and emerged in front of Thorne with a pair of blades in her outstretched hands.

  These weren’t just pure mana blades. These were more like Kalden’s weapons, woven with Angelic mana that looked like solid crystal. Each one hummed with raw power, demanding to be used.

  Thorne lashed out with a dozen stone projectiles, but Akari trusted her Cloak to handle those. She swept her twin blades like scissors, cutting through her opponent’s armor in a horizontal crosshatch. The stone cracked and crumbled from the impact, falling away like a broken shell. The blades cut deeper—two sharp lines from hip to ribcage. Blood welled up around them, dark red against pale skin.

  Thorne kicked Akari back, and her cuts began to heal. Probably a hidden item or somethingAkari brought her blades back around and—

  Kalden's voice cracked like a whip in her mind.

  Things were going fine this time. Why would they . . .

  Just then, two ghostly images flew through the center of the battlefield. They looked like rocket-propelled grenades, trailing clouds of thick smoke.

  Where the hell had those come from?

  Kalden’s aspect directed her gaze toward the edges of the room. The walls had opened on either side of the chamber, revealing two more Masters armed with Grandmaster-level cannons.

  The explosives hadn’t launched yet, but when they did, they would hit both the Darklights and their prisoners.

  Akari cycled mana to her mother's watch, reversing the flow of time by three seconds. She felt her body step away from Thorne. She pulled the blades from the woman's stomach with a wet sound that played backward. Then she flew back through the portals—just before Thorne tackled her.

  Kalden said.

  Akari abandoned her assault and opened a portal into one of the secret chambers. Her future-past self had seen the room, so she knew exactly where to go.

  Unlike the Masters in the main chamber, this man wasn’t expecting an attack. He was still assembling his rocket launcher when Akari slashed both her blades in an upward arc. The Angelic mana severed her victim’s arms at the shoulders, sending them tumbling away. Blood splattered the walls and ceiling of the cramped space, and the pain forced him to his knees.

  From there, Akari formed another portal into the opposite chamber, neutralized the Master inside, and rejoined the main battle.

  Two Masters down in less than ten seconds. A year ago, she would have struggled to take down an Apprentice that fast, and Artisans had felt like dangerous threats.

  The rest of the battle was smooth sailing after that. Thorne tried to flee, but Akari caught the woman in a portal and brought her back to the main chamber. Meanwhile, Elend and Glim rounded up the others.

  Then Akari saw several ghostly shields in her Cloak. They surrounded the entire chamber, layers upon layers of power.

  ‘’ Kalden said.

  Her thoughts exactly. Akari rewound time just as an explosion tore through the floor beneath their boots. The shockwave hit her even through the reversal, phantom pain racing up her legs.

  They were about to destroy the entire room, even if it meant sacrificing all seven Honor Guards to do it.

  She brought them back to the start of the battle this time. Whatever that explosion was, they’d have to deal with it right away. Anything else would just waste her time and mana.

  She fought back waves of dizziness as she and Kalden stepped into the main lobby, just before the fight.

  Glim disarmed the explosives beneath the floor, while Akari dealt with the rocket launchers in the walls. Unfortunately, things got even trickier from there. No sooner had Glim disarmed the trap than the Honor Guard made a full retreat into the next room. They must have realized Akari had a time bubble around the palace.

  Then a grinding sound echoed through the lobby as the whole place shifted into lockdown. Impedium blast doors fell from every archway, along with shields and anti-portal wards. Their opponents clustered beyond the first door, encased in a shell of defensive Constructs. They weren’t fighting to win anymore; they just had to drag things out until Akari’s technique ran out of mana.

  She restarted that round before they succeeded.

  Every restart drained her Construct’s mana, but so did moving time forward in a lengthy siege.

  Her team took out the rocket launchers on round four, but they left the explosives alone. Instead, Akari teleported all seven prisoners into the room beyond the lobby. Things were going well until their captives bit down on some fake teeth. She half-expected a mass suicide, but the result was even worse. Not only did the guards drop dead, but her Cloak revealed several anti-mana pulses going off in quick succession.

  How’d they even fit those in such a small space? Pocket dimensions? What powered them? Regardless, AMPs would completely neutralize her time mana. That meant no more restarts if they sprang another trap.

  All in all, it took three more tries to get a perfect run through the main lobby. The Darklights managed to knock each guard unconscious before things got out of hand, then Akari and Kalden drained their mana in the next room.

  Two more souls, and Elend could advance to the Mystic realm. If their intel was right, they should find two more Honor Guards inside the palace.

  Kalden asked. He was walking right next to her, but they still spoke through their bond. It made sense with so many cameras around.

  Besides, talking was too slow at this pace. It just complicated things for the whole team.

  Akari said as she warped through another blast door. The palace had gone into lockdown again, but the wards weren’t made to handle her spacetime Cloak. They also couldn’t stop Akari from opening portals for her teammates once she’d gotten through.

  he asked.

  And they were lucky she was a spacetime artist. An ordinary time artist would have burned out by now. Even Grandmaster techniques weren’t this efficient.

  Kalden said.

  Akari shrugged as she opened another portal into the residence. She knew exactly what Kalden meant; they’d run the numbers with her time bubble, but they hadn’t expected so many tricks from their enemies. Not to mention the structure itself. Other groups had attacked the Palace Prime over the years, and they’d never met this sort of resistance.

  Then again, most prime ministers had Grandmasters or Mystics serving in their Honor Guard, but those had all died during Storm’s Eye’s attack.

  Moonfire’s team had clearly gotten creative after that.

  The residence sat on the third floor of the Palace Prime, with a few sections extending to the lower levels. It looked surprisingly warm compared to the cold hallways and reception rooms of the palace proper. Rugs covered the dark wooden floors, and the walls were all muted earth tones. Mana crystals shone from sconces and chandeliers, casting everything in a golden glow that reminded her of the Darklight’s old estate

  They passed a sitting room with leather furniture arrayed around a fireplace and a wall-mounted TV. Beyond that, a formal dining room with crystal glasses catching the light, and a kitchen with stainless steel appliances. She even spotted some unwashed coffee cups by the sink.

  It seemed too normal for someone like Ashur and Clara Moonfire. But even tyrants had to relax sometimes.

  After a quick sweep for traps, everyone split up to search. The team practically moved like a hive mind at this point, never checking the same place twice. They covered over forty thousand square feet in less than two minutes, but there was still no sign of Relia

  What if she wasn’t even here? What if they did all this work just to leave empty-handed?To make matters worse, her time Construct only had five minutes left.

  When that ran out, they’d have no choice but to retreat.

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