A Missile shot out from her palm, flying between two thin maple trees. Akari danced to the left, kicking up snow and pulling the mana back with her other hand.

The glowing sphere whipped around the tree like a boomerang. She stepped back to the right, then pushed the Missile between the trees again. Another step, and she pulled it around the right side.

Four figure eights in a row. A new record.

As always, mana arts gave her a full-body workout, and sweat coated her forehead despite the winter chill. Snowflakes flew around her as she moved, melting into droplets against her glasses.

Three weeks had passed since their hunting trip, and she’d barely seen Kalden or his friends since then. It didn’t help that everyone was on Midwinter break, and they wouldn’t go back to school until after the New Year.

Apparently, Kalden’s parents and stepsister were all home right now, doing a bunch of holiday stuff as a family.

It sucked to be alone, but it was even worse watching people go about their lives as if nothing was wrong. These days, losing her mother felt more like a dull ache rather than a constant pain. But there was something about the change of seasons that brought old memories out of the woodwork.

She still checked the Cliftons’ answering machine several times a day, hoping for a message from Kalden or his informants. Nothing came, of course. He’d warned her he’d be busy, but she couldn’t help herself. Just like she couldn’t help but check her mana watch every five minutes, hoping to see that number increase.

Things weren’t all doom and gloom, though. She had her mana arts to keep her busy. More importantly, she had a goal to work toward.

Silver.

Akari kept darting back and forth, weaving her mana in more figure eights between the maple trees. All the while, the Grandmaster’s voice echoed in her mind: “Missiles can move away from your body, or towards it. But you’d be surprised how much variation this allows.”

He was right about that. It took time for a Missile to alter its course. With the right angle and speed, she could move the mana parallel to her body for several heartbeats before it flew back.

And if she could weave her mana through these trees, she could bypass her opponents’ shield, or knock their Missiles from the air. She’d gotten lucky against the arkions, but she couldn’t count on people to save her next time.

So she kept moving through the snow, sending up sprays of white powder with every step. Left. Right. Forward. Back. She moved until her fingers were icicles and her legs were jelly.

At one point, the Missile grazed the left tree and threatened to vaporize. She gritted her teeth and redoubled her efforts, willing the mana to hold its shape. The longer this technique lasted, the less mana she would spend forming a new one.

Too late. The Missile lost its momentum and shattered into a cloud of pale blue mist.

Akari dropped her shoulders and let out a long breath, more relieved than disappointed. She used her sleeve to wipe her lenses dry, then blinked several times, adjusting to the sudden darkness. Both moons hung in the sky tonight, but her eyes had been so focused on her mana that it might as well have been pitch black.

She took another minute to catch her breath, then she fell back into a combat stance. No sooner had she begun cycling than a sharp pain surged through her arms, from her fingers to her soul.

Out of mana already? She shifted her hoodie sleeve to reveal the mana watch on her left wrist.

5/36.

Go figure—breaking her record came with a price.

She’d gone up seven mana points since she’d bought the watch. This had seemed like slow progress at first, considering she’d started at twenty-nine. Akari had assumed she’d gained all those points in her first few weeks of training. Darren and Kalden were each just a few points above their minimums, after all, and it had been the same for Maelyn when she’d first started.

In hindsight, Akari must have started far higher than zero. Probably as high as twenty-seven or twenty-eight points.

But why? Why wouldn’t she start at zero?

Then again, the directions had listed a range for Bronze rather than a fixed number. She’d also found a few books that mentioned variation in birth-mana counts, but most Bronze babies had less than five mana points. Anything higher than that was unheard of.

Regardless, she was making progress. And if she kept up this pace, she’d definitely reach Silver before she turned sixteen next Tresember.

The others had all seemed skeptical of this plan, especially Maelyn, who’d given her that annoyingly pitiful look.

“It’s impossible to jump ranks,” she’d said as they unloaded Kalden’s car.

Akari wrinkled her nose. “But ranks are based on mana counts. What’s stopping me from increasing mine to fifty?”

“It’s impossible,” she said with a quick shake of her head. “It would be like trying to grow an inch taller.”

“But your height is based on your DNA.”

“So is this.”

“So I can go from forty-eight mana to forty-nine . . . then what? I’ll hit some invisible wall?”

“Basically,” Maelyn said. “I’m nowhere near the peak of Silver, but my parents are, and that’s about how they described it. Hundreds of other people have tried this, too. There are teams of researchers who dedicate their lives to the subject.”

Oh. Even if these ‘research teams’ were some cover story invented by the Golds, what about all the other wealthy Bronze and Silvers out there? Some of them must have tried to advance, right?

Even now—three weeks later—the memory of that talk filled Akari with doubt. Two things kept her going, though. For one, everyone said a Bronze couldn’t learn mana arts, and she’d already proven them wrong.

What’s more, the Grandmaster had claimed advancement was possible, and he clearly knew more about mana arts than anyone else on this island. Not only that, but he’d made advancement sound easy. So easy, that it wasn’t even worth its own video.

Maybe that was the secret? Maybe advancement from Bronze to Silver was effortless, and that was why society worked so hard to keep it from them? What if others had already advanced without fanfare?

She’d find out in a few more months.

Akari stepped across the forest clearing and knelt beside a larger maple tree. She moved aside a pile of leaves to reveal an open space between two thick roots.

She’d found this spot the night after their hunting trip when she needed a place to hide her liquid mana. It was a quarter-mile off the main trail in Phoenix Park—far enough that no one would see her training.

Akari pulled out the wooden box from between the tree roots, uncorked the bottle, and took a swallow of the mint-flavored mana. After taking a second to cycle it through her channels, she checked her watch again.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

33/36. Close enough.

She returned the box to its hiding place and stepped back into the clearing for another round.

~~~

“Pass the tura,” Kalden’s mother said from across the table.

He reached out and grabbed the plate of marbled tuna belly. Their chef had draped the thin slices over balls of white rice and topped each one with a pinprick of wasabi. If nothing else, Kalden ate a lot better when his family was home.

He could have kept the cooks around on the weekends, but he preferred to fend for himself those days. Most of his peers would starve to death if they landed in the real world, stripped of their luxuries and wealth. Kalden refused to be one of them.

Besides, he and Akari couldn’t have any witnesses. As far as scandals went, things didn’t get much juicier than a secret meeting between a Gold and a Bronze of the opposite sex.

His mother grabbed two pieces of tuna with her chopsticks. As always, Sakara Trengsen wore her hair in an intricate knot, held in place with several golden pins. In all Kalden’s sixteen years of life, he’d never seen her without her makeup—whether it was first thing in the morning or the dead of night.

The television echoed from the other room, and his stepsister, Hana, pointed a chopstick at the screen. “They were talking about him at school.”

“Who?” Kalden looked up from his plate. “The Fugitive?” People had been surprisingly close-lipped about this subject during the holiday parties. But that was typical in Gold society. “Gossip is for Silvers,” his mother always said. Not that Golds didn’t gossip. They just pretended not to.

Hana nodded as she slurped up a mouthful of noodles. She had jet-black hair like the rest of them, but she’d dyed the front with several streaks of electric blue. She also had bright blue eyes—a rare trait among Shokenese.

“Do they say where he came from?” Kalden asked. He’d already heard Akari’s theories on the matter, and she made some interesting points. He’d wanted to broach the subject with his own family over the break, but there hadn’t been a good time.

“No one’s even seen him,” Hana replied. “But he’s crazy strong. He killed five Gold Martials up in Keylas, then he sent another ten to—”

“He wounded those Martials,” Genkai corrected his daughter. “No one’s died yet.” The older man sat at the head of the ebony table—the same place Kalden’s father once sat. However, the seat never fit his stepfather quite as well. Genkai might be on Arkala’s ruling council, but Kalden’s father had been a famous general. Even his mother would never think of comparing the two men.

“Right,” Hana said. “People say he’s down in White Vale now—hiding in the forest and living off the land. A few more Martials went looking for him, but no one’s come back.”

Kalden had already heard most of this, so he pressed on. “But where did he come from? Any guesses?”

“Probably Teras or Zoron,” his stepfather muttered into his wine glass.

Kalden furrowed his brow. “I thought Keylas was the only way through the mana wall.”

“A common misconception,” he said. “There are several openings in the wall. Any boat can travel between them, assuming they have a water artist to hold back the tides.”

Kalden weighed his next words carefully. “What if he came from outside the Archipelago?”

“The world beyond is a barren wasteland,” his mother said. “You know this.”

“I know that’s the official story.”

“That’s what the many experts have concluded,” she said. “Unless you’d rather ask the conspiracy theorists?”

A few weeks ago, the expert opinions had been enough for Kalden. He’d trusted them to tell the truth, and he’d seen no need to question it.

Then Akari had done mana arts and everything changed.

When he’d first offered her this deal, he’d expected her to fail. Then she’d proven him wrong and conjured her first Missile technique. In a single moment, she’d defied dozens of academic papers, and more than a thousand pieces of state propaganda.

And then she planned to become a Silver. That seemed even crazier than a Bronze learning mana arts. And yet . . . the Grandmaster had spoken of advancement between ranks. He’d said it so casually, too, as if it weren’t an earth-shattering revelation.

Kalden refused to believe that a couple of teenagers had made discoveries that eluded their top scientists. This implied that someone was keeping secrets, even from Golds.

“What do you think is out there?” Hana asked him from across the table.

“I’d prefer to see some evidence for myself,” Kalden said. “All I can do is ask questions until then.”

“There was an expedition,” his stepfather said. “Ten years ago, a ship traveled to Creta with a team of scientists and mana artists. More than half of them died along the way, and the survivors found nothing but ruins.”

“An expedition,” Kalden echoed. “And what was the name of the ship? How many passengers did it carry? Has anyone ever met them?” He’d learned about these ‘expeditions’ in school, and heard about them on the news. It was a story everyone told each other, but no one ever bothered to dig deeper. Once you did, it was almost impossible to find concrete details.

Genkai furrowed his brow. “I obviously can’t give you those facts off the top of my head. No more than I can prove our planet isn’t flat.”

“Spatial artists have made portals on both moons,” Kalden retorted. “They’ve taken pictures of our planet, and we’ve all seen them.”

“Pictures can be faked,” Hana chimed in.

Genkai nodded along. “Even before those pictures, there was overwhelming evidence for the shape of our planet. And that’s my point. I can’t prove it here at the dinner table, but I could with enough time.”

“What brought this on?” Kalden’s mother asked. “Have you been talking to conspiracy theorists like your uncle?”

Again with that phrase. Quiet acceptance was the default approach, and any skepticism was enough to get you called a conspiracy theorist. He’d once asked Akari why she’d never befriended the other Bronze, and this had been her reason. They were all too quick to accept their lot in life.

“I’m trying to keep an open mind,” Kalden countered. “Aren’t I training to be a scientist? Shouldn’t I try to disprove what I believe is true?”

His mother held his gaze for several seconds as she took a long swallow of her wine. “Only when it’s safe and relevant to your goals. Knowledge without action achieves the same end as ignorance. And some questions are more dangerous than others. Surely I don’t need to remind you how.”

Sozen. She wielded his older brother’s memory like a weapon, trying to guilt him into silence.

Kalden blew out a slow breath. “I miss him too, Mother, but I fail to see the danger here. It’s not like I plan to follow him to satisfy my own curiosity.”

“You still haven’t answered my question,” she said.

Kalden took a trick from his mother’s book, raising his glass to his lips while he studied her expression. Did she know? Unlikely. Her tone seemed more curious than accusatory. If only Maelyn were here right now. She could infer a dozen things from a single glance.

He swallowed his wine and leaned back in his chair. “Like Hana said, this Fugitive is stronger than anyone else in the Archipelago. It makes you wonder what else is out there—if there are other places that don’t follow the same rules.”

His mother drew her lips into a thin line, and Kalden saw his blunder; he’d brought mana arts into the conversation. Not only had Kalden’s father been killed in battle, but she also blamed mana arts on Sozen’s disappearance.

He pressed on quickly. “If the outside world is a wasteland, then what happened to it? And how did we end up here? Why were these islands the only place to survive the destruction?”

“We know what happened,” Hana said. “There was a war between mana artists.”

“And we already lived here during the war,” Genkai added. “That’s why we don’t fully understand it.”

They sounded so confident, but Kalden had read conflicting stories in his research. Some sources mentioned wars, but others mentioned mana storms, or even Storm’s Eye itself emerging from the center of the Inner Sea. Others mentioned the wrath of the Angels, or interplanetary conquerors.

People on the dark web also claimed to remember Espiria, Cadria, and Shoken. They had dreams of their old lives, just as Kalden did. Sometimes, those dreams contradicted their memories of the Archipelago.

“The mystery should make us curious,” Kalden told his stepfather. “But no one seems to care about the outside world. There could be other civilizations out there, and we would never know.”

“They’re all gone,” Genkai said with a firm shake of his head. “I still remember the day it happened. We lost all contact beyond the mana wall. Every radio went silent, and we never saw another passing boat or airship. No one’s keeping secrets here. The state has no incentive to lie.”

His mother cleared her throat as a few staff members shuffled into the dining room. They sat in silence for a long moment, with no sound but the clattering of dishes and the rush of the waterfall.

The staff left a few seconds later, closing the door toward the kitchen.

His stepfather leaned forward again. “I can understand your curiosity. Especially when you’re too young to remember the old world.”

“But questions can lead to action,” his mother said. “How many more people need to die at sea before we accept the truth? We’re trapped here, and we don’t have the means to solve that problem. It might be decades until we do.”

Kalden had to disagree with his mother there. Yes, explorers risked their lives, but that was their choice. His ancestors had explored and colonized half the world. Now they sat here on the shoulders of Masters, with more technology than most of human history.

And what did they do with it? They huddled in fear.

His mother fixed him with her gaze. “As a Gold, your words matter more than most. One question from your lips can sow the seeds of order or chaos.”

Kalden gave a slow nod, retreating for now. Even if his arguments were better researched—which they weren’t—he wouldn’t convince anyone tonight. Not when it was three against one.

Some of his family’s arguments seemed logical, but not all of them.

Genkai claimed there were no secrets. But if that were true, then why was the uncensored dark web so different from the rest of the island? Why were the Grandmaster’s lessons so different from the state’s approved mana arts program? How come they knew so much about ancient history, but so little of the past few decades?

For now, Kalden planned to keep digging until he found the truth.