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Web of Chaos - Chapter 33: Mastery Part 2

Power rushed through Akari’s 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 str...

Web of Chaos - Chapter 33: Mastery

Akari’s eyes snapped open, and her soul ached with a sudden pain. She tried to move, but cold metal bit into her wrists and ankles. Impedium. Not to mention Nightfang’s technique—whatever the hell that was. Her old teacher had never made her aspect public.

A dark hood shrouded Akari’s vision, scratching her face with each shallow breath. Something sharp dug into her stomach—Nightfang’s shoulder, maybe? The world swayed and bounced with each step, but her body hung l...

Web of Chaos - Chapter 32: A Hidden Knife

Akari followed the Darklights through the empty clinic. The halls stretched endlessly before them, all gleaming floors and harsh fluorescent lights that made her eyes water. Or maybe that was something else. 

Kalden leaned heavily on her shoulder, and his hand squeezed hers as they walked. Four days since the battle, and he still shuffled around like an old man. Even this procedure would just slow down the foreign mana in his body. Kalden might not make a full recovery until he adv...

Web of Chaos - Chapter 31: Borrowed Time

Elend sat in the hotel room, watching the shadows lengthen as evening approached. His tablet lay dark on the table in front of him, and he drummed his fingers against its smooth glass surface.

Akari was sleeping off her training session, curled up against Kalden like a protective cat. Zukan dozed on the floor by the window, and Arturo slept in the chair with his computer open on his lap.

“His body keeps fighting the healing,” Irina said from her spot beside Kalden’s bed. The...

Web of Chaos - Chapter 30: True Clarity

Akari curled up beside Kalden in their hotel room, listening to his steady breathing as he slept. The healers in Pine Hollow had done good work, but Master-level techniques left their mark. He could walk if he had to, but he still couldn’t train or fight if it came to that.

Zukan watched the parking lot below while Arturo hunched over his laptop at the small wooden desk. The blue glow of the screen cast shadows across his face as he cycled through police frequencies. He’d been liste...

Web of Chaos - Chapter 29: Broken Pieces

Relia stood with her father in the Palace Prime’s medical wing. Dain’s body had been scattered across three separate gurneys, draped with white sheets. Crimson stains seeped through the fabric, and the scents of blood and antiseptic filled her nostrils.

Eduardo Dain—always so composed, so unshakeable. Now reduced to a dozen pieces.

Her friends had changed so much. Relia had watched the footage from the guards’ body cams, and she’d seen the truth for herself. Kalden had a...

Web of Chaos - Chapter 28: A Thousand Blades - Part 2

Akari stood with her back to Kalden’s, cycling spacetime mana through her channels. The snow stung her bare feet, while her dark hair thrashed in the mountain wind. Puffs of white air blew out through her nostrils.

‘They’re trained to work as a team,’ Kalden said through their bond. ‘We need to separate them.’

He was right. She’d been ready to gang up on Thorne or Knox, but the others wouldn’t twiddle their thumbs while that happened. Several more...

Web of Chaos - Chapter 28: A Thousand Blades - Part 1

Kalden sprang up in his bed, glancing at the digital clock on the nightstand. Three o’clock in the morning. Battle mana surged through his channels, and his heart beat like a war drum.

Akari rolled over in the bed to face him. “What’s wrong?” The only light came from a small gap between the curtains, but her face was clear to his Artisan eyes. 

“I don’t know.” He pushed the blankets aside, feeling a rush of winter air on his bare skin. “My aspect...

Web of Chaos - Chapter 27: Soul Reapers

“Breaking tonight on KCN—exclusive footage of the criminal duo known as the Soul Reapers.”

The screen showed a grainy video from a dark alley, where two black-clad figures fought a squad of armored police officers. The figures moved like Masters, too fast for the cameras to track. They used no aspects or visible techniques—nothing that would give them away. Just quick flashes of mana, and overwhelming power. Bodies slammed against brick walls while others slid across the alley�...

Web of Chaos - Chapter 26: No Justice

Detective Evan Trask stood in the middle of Silver Court, scanning the crowd of protestors as they marched through the dark mist.

"Form a line!" he called out.

Rows of officers spread across the street, blocking the intersection with walls of protection mana that rose twenty feet into the air. Rain misted around as they worked, and their helmets gleamed in the street lights.

The crowd filled the space between the buildings, at least two thousand strong. Their unmarked faces ...

Web of Chaos - Chapter 25: Haste

“How’d she look?” Elend asked as he stepped through the open portal. His dark gray armor bore the scars of battle—not just dirt, but scorch marks, and the craters from enemy Missiles.

Akari scrambled for the right words to describe Relia, but came up short. She looked . . . normal, but definitely not in a good way. Almost like Kalden after he’d lost his hand and fingers in Creta.

Glim followed Elend through the portal in the form of a blue Missile that darted around the ...

Web of Chaos - Chapter 24: Breaking Point

Shit hit the fan later that night.

A group of Artisans struck the mayor’s home after sunset, and three civilians died in the crossfire. The news showed footage of the aftermath, including close-up shots of the corpses, half-buried beneath the stone rubble.

The Cult of Solidor was obviously behind this attack, just like that time they’d summoned Storm’s Eye for a dramatic showdown. The news loved beating that dead raptor to death, but Akari wasn’t surprised. It wou...

Web of Chaos - Chapter 23: The Coming Storm

Rain pounded against the loft’s windows, warping the skyline in a blur of hazy lights. A wall of storm clouds hid the morning sun to the east, dark gray with traces of bright blue mana around the edges.

Akari and her team stood in a loose semicircle around their TV. She didn’t normally waste her time on the news, but today was different. Storm’s Eye had just attacked New Sakai—a South Shokenese colony in the Inner Sea.

“How close is that?” she asked the others.

�...

Web of Chaos - Chapter 22: Shattered

Ashur pushed open his office doors to reveal the familiar space beyond. Bookshelves lined three walls from floor to ceiling, and tall glass windows dominated the fourth, looking out over the Inner Sea. His wooden desk was gone, replaced by a stand that looked almost like an alter. Elise’s metal coffin rested on its surface, closed and opaque.

Several large metal cylinders sat beside the coffin, each one larger than a refrigerator. They’d done several trial runs already, and she knew...

Web of Chaos - Chapter 21: Fate

Relia sat cross-legged on her bedroom floor, back pressed against the foot of her bed. The room looked like a dark chapel with its polished marble floors, high ceilings, and ornamented glass windows. It was far too large for comfort, and Relia felt like a bottle cap rolling around the bottom of a trash can.

A Mystic-sized bed dominated the center, big enough to fit four or five people. Empty bookshelves sat nestled into the walls on either side, surrounded by polished obsidian pillars t...

Web of Chaos - Chapter 20: Possible Futures

Akari kept waiting for a knock on her door, but the days stretched into a week with no word from Trask or the KCPD. The Artegium also kept quiet about the break-in, along with their missing quantum computer. Not that she’d expected a big announcement from them. KU ranked among the world’s top schools, and their reputation mattered more than anything in their vaults.

Student enrollment had also plummeted after Storm’s Eye’s attack, and the school had responded with a bold stateme...

Web of Chaos - Chapter 19: Rewinding Time

An enemy Missile tore through the forest with a whistling shriek. It came as a faint pinprick of light on the horizon, but Akari couldn’t dodge or block it in time. One second, it was there beyond the trees. An instant later, the sharpened mana struck her hard in the stomach.

Talek. Why was it always the stomach? If not for healing mana, her abs would look like a street map of Koreldon City.

Pain spread through her body like liquid blades. The impact sent ...

Web of Chaos - Chapter 18: Escape Part 3

Step Six: hide the evidence.

Zukan stood his ground as the chief stepped through the front doors of the Mirage. He looked like an older version of Trask with his pale Espirian complexion and sharp features. However, the chief had a more weathered face with creases around his eyes and lines of silver streaking his temples. The two of them might be related, but Zukan couldn’t say for sure. Human faces all looked soft and squishy to his eyes.

Most of the students made way ...

Web of Chaos - Chapter 18: Escape Part 2

The officer stopped at the end of the aisle, turning to face Kalden’s group. He was a broad-shouldered man with a blue uniform and a jagged scar that ran across his left cheek. “I found something,” he said in a low voice. “Aisle Seven.”

Boots clicked against the marble floor as another man circled around by the room’s outer wall. The first man pulled a grenade from his leather belt pouch and pulled the pin with a distinct click.

“Now!” Kalden shouted.

Web of Chaos - Chapter 18: Escape

Step Five: get back to the Mirage.

Kalden cycled his battle mana as the newcomers fanned out across the restricted section. Trask headed straight for the row of locked doors while the others scanned the surrounding aisles.

They couldn’t see Kalden’s group through the camouflage device, but Trask was a knowledge artist. He probably had techniques to deal with this exact scenario.

“How much longer?” he asked Arturo.

“We’re close, shoko. Three minutes...

Web of Chaos - Chapter 17: The Restricted Section

Chapter 17: The Restricted Section

Step three: open the locked door.

Arturo led the others up the stairs toward the library’s top floor. Unlike the rest of his team, Arturo had actually been inside the restricted section several times. Not this year with all these silly rules and regulations, but before. Back when he’d been a third-year in the sigilcraft program.

His heart should have been racing right now, and his thoughts should have been scattered without his...

Web of Chaos - Chapter 16: The Mirage

Step one: Find an alibi.

“Here’s another problem,” Akari told her team. “Everyone at school thinks I’m a troublemaker now.”

Arturo chuckled from his desk chair. “You were always a troublemaker, shoka. But everyone thought you were harmless before. Now the kitten’s got claws.”

She rolled her eyes. “Point is, they’ll blame me if something goes missing. Especially time techniques.”

“Who says they have to go missing?” Arturo tw...

Web of Dreams Cover Reveal

Web of Chaos - Chapter 15: Impossible Standards

Relia watched a dozen memories unfold from Elend’s childhood, from the day he created Glim, to the moment he trapped her with the soul oath.

Akariel’s ashes. This explained so much. 

Elend and Glim were inseparable today, but few relationships started out like that. People faced hurdles and hardships along the way, and children made mistakes. 

If they weren’t careful, those mistakes could ripple for decades, even into the Master realm.

Gli...

Web of Chaos - Chapter 14: Moonfire

Relia loomed over her patient’s bed, fingers splayed, shaking with the force of her technique.  Angelic mana surged through her like a storm, cleansing every cell in her body. The rush sent shivers down her spine—colder than winter frost and sharper than a blade artist’s weapon. 

But for all its power, it refused to leave her channels.

“You’re still thinking like a mana artist,” her father said from a few paces behind her. “You see barriers where none exist...

Web of Chaos - Chapter 13: The Whole Story

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 information with her mana, then she passed it on to her team or her Second Brain. The solutions came later, after careful consideration.

...

Web of Chaos - Chapter 12: New Rules

Akari woke up early the next morning, then she and Kalden headed straight for the Student Admissions Office on the north side of campus. They turned in their second-year insignias at the front desk, expecting a quick exchange. 

Instead, their appearance caused an uproar among the staff. It had been several decades since anyone skipped a grade, and no one knew how to handle it. Several staff members had to consult the books in the back room. When that didn’t work, they had to cont...

New Design Direction for Covers

Hi everyone,

For various reasons, the illustrator for the first Web of Secrets cover ended up not being a good fit for me right now, so I won’t be continuing the series in that style.

I did research some other illustrators, but there’s a lot more stress and effort involved in overseeing that style of cover design. I'd like to try that approach again, but it might work better to re-do an existing series rather than fitting the process in with book launches. In the meantime, I d...

Web of Chaos - Chapter 11: An Act of War

Silence fell over the chamber, and Kalden took in Akari’s words. She’d been quiet these past few minutes, seemingly lost in her own thoughts. He’d known she was plotting something, but he’d been too distracted to ask what.

All eyes turned to their new teacher. Whispers flew back and forth like mana, and the crowd’s excitement was thick enough to taste. Kalden had never seen a teacher duel a student. At least not in a way that mattered. Even if they traded some techniques in th...

Web of Chaos - Chapter 10: Back to School

The next week flew by, and the team continued hunting mana beasts around the Trenches. That first gloomfang had been a headache to kill, and Akari had barely squeezed out fifty mana points from its soul.

They’d killed half a dozen more since then, and each one gave them more mana than the last. Now, she and Kalden were earning well over a hundred points every day.

Back on Arkala, she’d trained for months just to gather twenty-five points and reach the peak of Bronze. But mana ...