Web of Blades - Chapter 19: Missing Pages

Kalden flooded the canyon with his mana and cycled the Cloak of a Thousand Blades. 

As always, this told him every detail of his surroundings. He saw the path of his opponent’s techniques as they soared through the darkness. He saw her stance, her expression, and the angle of her boots on the stone floor. Everything but the why.

But that didn’t matter now. Tori Raizen was a Corded Master—the first true threat he’d faced in the Shadow Garden. Hesitation meant death in a fight like this.

The attacks closed in like shards of broken glass, converging from every angle. Crimson met silver in midair as Kalden unleashed his own blades and knocked them aside. He dodged the rest as he ran toward the main bridge.

Then his opponent vanished in a cloud of silver mist. 

Kalden whipped around to find Tori standing on the path behind him. Her Veilcord moved before the rest of her—a blur of liquid silver that caught the waterfall and sprayed the droplets across his face.

He ducked at the last instant. Tori’s weapon cut deep into the wall, releasing a cloud of dust and broken stone. A second attack lashed at his feet, followed by a vertical strike from above. 

Kalden dodged the first and scrambled back from the second. He conjured two new blades of his own. Not crimson battle mana this time, but the pale blue of Moonshard. The blades rang like splitting glaciers as they clashed against Tori’s Veilcord. The ground vibrated beneath their feet, and the shockwave shook the canyon for miles.

“Why?” Kalden shouted as their blades clashed again. “Talk to me.”

Tori swung her Veilcord without answering, and they exchanged several more blows.

 “Orders from your father?” he pressed. “From your Mystic?”

Tori's blade split apart, becoming four smaller swords. These teleported around the stone walkway, surrounding Kalden from all sides. Silver light flickered at the edges of his vision as each blade found its position.

Her Veilcord had a space aspect.

Tori followed her blades in a blur of motion, flickering through space faster than he could blink. One second, she stood on his left, then his right. She was above him, then behind him. It felt like facing three blade artists at once.

But that was nothing new. For all Tori’s speed, she was still no match for Akari’s displacement technique.

Wherever his opponent vanished, Kalden was one step ahead, spinning around and forcing her to parry his attacks when she emerged. It all happened too fast for conscious thought. His vision was a blur of pale lines against the darkness, but his aspect guided his movements, carving a path toward victory.

“Someone stole your memories,” Kalden said as he dodged another attack. The words came in bursts between blows, timed to the gaps in their clashing blades. “Not just yours—your whole family. Including your Mystic.”

Tori’s eyes widened at this—the first crack in her perfect focus.

“I’m trying to put the memories back,” Kalden said. “That’s why you’re here. Someone’s afraid of the truth.” Her next few attacks came slower, and Kalden pressed forward. “I’m not your enemy. Give me two minutes to explain.”

For a heartbeat, he thought she might listen. Something shifted behind her eyes—not trust, but doubt.

Then Lyra Skyfall joined the battle. 

He’d known she was there. He’d even seen the attack coming in his Cloak, but seeing it wasn’t enough to stop it. Tendrils of ice mana struck from his blindspot, coiling around him like frozen snakes. One pinned his arms to his sides. The other bound his legs and made him lose his balance. 

Kalden collapsed on the stone path, twisting upward to face his opponent. The ice tightened with every breath, squeezing the air from his lungs. Tori loomed over him and raised her Veilcord for the kill. 

A burning blade struck the back of Tori’s head before she could finish him. She stumbled forward, and that was all the distraction Kalden needed.

He opened his Aeon soul and drank in the ice mana that bound his legs in place. Then he seized the advantage and kicked Tori in her right flank. Zukan launched another fire technique, and Tori fell into the canyon below.

Lyra hit the dragonborn with more ice mana and pinned him to the stone wall.

Kalden destroyed the remaining bonds with his Aeon soul, sprang to his feet, and charged back toward the bridge where Lyra waited. Tori wouldn’t stay down for long; best to balance the scales while he still could.

Lyra unleashed more ice projectiles, but Kalden deflected these with ease. She turned the bridge to solid ice, but Kalden slid forward, trusting his aspect to guide him.

Tori’s Veilcord wrapped around the bridge like a grappling hook. She emerged from the canyon an instant later, landing directly behind him. Surrounded. 

What would Akari do here? 

Total chaos.

Kalden reached out with his Aeon soul and drained the power from the surrounding crystals, plunging the canyon into darkness. Then he conjured two blades of Moonshard and hurled them toward the ceiling.

The blades arced back down an instant later, straight for Tori and Lyra. They dodged the attacks, but Kalden’s blades cut through ten feet of solid rock, severing the bridge where it met the canyon walls.

Stone crumbled all around him. Kalden shot a burst of pure mana into the shifting floor, vaulting his body fifty feet up through the canyon. Tori and Lyra tried to do the same, but Kalden was one step ahead as he launched two more blades at their heads. 

The blades knocked them back down into the canyon. Tori transformed her Veilcord into a hook and tried to climb back up, but Zukan melted the stone around her. Meanwhile, Kalden sent another burst of pure mana to propel him back to Zukan’s side of the canyon. 

Before he could land, the waterfall itself came to life, wrapping around him like strands of living silk.

The silk transformed into chains of ice, slamming Kalden against the canyon wall hard enough to drive the air from his lungs. Once again, he tried absorbing the ice with his Aeon soul, but Lyra put her full power into the Ritual technique. For every thread he dissolved, two more tightened in its place.

Then Tori leapt up from the canyon once again, hurling a silver blade toward Kalden.

Kalden abandoned his struggle with the ice mana, falling into the space between heartbeats. And as his body slowed down, his brain worked on overdrive, searching for a path forward.

That flying blade wouldn’t hit him—the angle was wrong. Tori planned to use it as an anchor.

What else?

Ice encased Kalden from head to heel, but Masters didn’t need their bodies to form techniques. His own blades were too slow here. Any trap he set, Tori would dodge or parry. 

But dream mana was a more subtle game. He’d spent weeks practicing the Ivory Fox’s technique, with dozens of botched attempts along the way. He’d failed to use this on the gloomfangs of the Shadow Garden. He’d even failed on Zukan.

Not this time.

He followed the path of Tori’s flying blade and saw her next move like a written promise. She would teleport to the blade just before it reached him, then she would aim her Veilcord for his throat. 

Kalden worked faster than ever before. The sigil grid formed in midair. Battle mana turned violet as it passed through the technique. Then the grid masked itself in the darkness. No light, no color. Just a web of unseen mana, thin as thought itself.

Tori blurred forward an instant later, landing on her blade like a hoverboard. Her body collided with Kalden’s technique, and the dream mana flooded her mind.

~~~

Tori’s vision blurred as a burst of memories assailed her.

She was fourteen again, training in the Zekuro Province with Grandmaster Trengsen. A blanket of snow covered the ancient courtyard, and their mana rang like breaking glass as they exchanged techniques.

Tori sparred with a boy her own age—Sozen Trengsen, their host’s elder son. He fought with sharp, reckless energy, always pressing forward, always grinning.

A younger boy waited his turn from the edge of the dueling ring, watching the exchange with quiet eyes, That had to be Kalden.

They’d known each other—more than six years ago. They’d even been friends.

The memories came faster now—one after the other like pages torn from a journal. She and her parents sharing meals in Kenzo Trengen’s hall. Her father laughing at something Kenzo said. Tori and Sozen racing through the snow-covered gardens while Kalden trailed behind them

They’d lived in that fortress for an entire month. They’d shared dozens of meals, lessons, and duels. Together, they’d planned to make a better world. A better future for North Shoken.

The memory dissolved, and Tori was back in the Shadow Garden.

She broke off her attack on Kalden, landing on the stone path beside him. Her boots scraped against the rock, and she stood there for a long moment, breathing hard, her Veilcord hanging slack at her side.

He’d been telling the truth. Those memories were real, and someone had taken them from her head. Not just her memories, but the pages in her journal. An entire month of her life, erased but not destroyed.

She blinked back sudden tears and glanced around the battlefield. Lyra still held Kalden in thick chains of ice mana. Another technique bound Zukan Kortez in place.

“Stop!” Tori turned back to Lyra, hoping to all the Angels she wouldn’t regret this. “Let them go!”

“Are you crazy?” Lyra shouted from her spot across the canyon. 

“Just do it!” Tori shot back.

Lyra complied after a short pause, and the icy chains melted around Kalden. He fell twenty feet before he landed on the path beside her, but he made no move to cycle his mana or attack her.

Tori stepped forward on shaky legs.  Her throat was tight, and her hands trembled where they gripped her Veilcord

“You remember,” Kalden said in a horse voice.

Tori’s weapon vanished in a cloud of silver mist, returning to its place on her arms. Then she bowed her head. “Please—tell me everything.”