Still rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Kalden trudged down the stairs and opened the door to his alchemy lab.

He liked sharing a room with Akari, but she’d gotten more unpredictable over Midwinter break. Some nights, she would lose track of time and stay on her computer until well past midnight. Then there were days like today when she woke up before the sun and trained with a sudden burst of energy.

Kalden’s brain worked better with a routine, and a part of him liked school for that exact reason. Still, today was a fresh day, and a chance to approach his problems from a different angle. This was another chance to save Relia’s life and help her become an Artisan. That would also open the door for he and Akari to become Artisans themselves—the highest rank in the interschool battlegrounds.

Half a year had passed since they’d escaped Arkala and they were finally on track to pass their peers. But first, they needed a safe version of soulshine. No respectable alchemist would make this, and they couldn’t trust the black market. The surgeball was in Kalden’s hands, as the saying went.

He stepped over to his usual workstation and sank into a rolling stool. The lab itself was the nicest he’d ever seen, with crisp white equipment, stainless steel countertops, and floors polished to a mirror shine. The Darklights never used this lab themselves, but they’d hired their share of alchemists over the years.

Blue light flickered from the mirror to his right, and Glim materialized a second later. “Hey!” She waved a blue hand, half-hidden beneath the sleeve of her oversized hoodie. “How goes the shady drug operation?”

“Same as before.” His gaze fell to his open notebooks. “I’m flattered that everyone trusts me, but this is advanced stuff.”

Glim cocked her head like a bird. “Are you saying you can’t do it?”

“I don’t know.” Kalden rubbed the bridge of his nose, already craving a second cup of coffee. “When’s the last time you heard of a college student making soulshine?”

“Actually,” Glim said. “Someone got expelled for that last year. Or maybe it was the year before.”

“Okay, sure, but how was the quality?”

“Give me one second . . . ah, here it is!” Glim formed a copy of the news article in midair. “He used it on himself for three years straight.”

Kalden spun on his stool and skimmed the article. “Side effects?”

“None. He reached Artisan just before graduation, and he wasn’t even a Combat Artist.”

Well, that certainly bruised his pride. “Please tell me this guy had a craft aspect.”

“He did.” Glim highlighted a paragraph near the top, and Kalden scanned the rest of the article. In addition to his craft aspect, this student had over ten years of experience. Not to mention how he’d grown up in Koreldon City with its modern knowledge and equipment.

Meanwhile, Kalden had spent the past few years on Arkala, which was two decades behind the rest of the world. This profession might be centuries old, but a lot could change in two decades.

“You’re a Knowledge Artist, too.” Glim clasped her hands together and released a burst of tiny blue sparks. “ If he can do it, so can you!”

“Every patient is different,” Kalden said. “And Relia’s case is harder than most.”

Glim leapt from the mirror, taking the shape of a pure Missile and hovering over his shoulder. “What’s the problem? Maybe I can help.”

No harm in humoring her, he supposed. Glim only had a theoretical knowledge of alchemy, and he doubted she’d solve the problem for him. Still, it might help to discuss it out loud.

“The active ingredient is SH9.” Kalden nodded to a row of glass vials to his left. “It’s a mix of plant extracts and synthetic hormones that dilate souls past their usual limits.” He gestured to the far wall where he’d hung the scans of Relia’s soul, along with his math to determine a safe dosage.

Unfortunately, that was the easy part.

“You mentioned side effects?” Glim asked.

Kalden gave a weary nod as he flipped through his notebook. “SH9 has two main issues. The first is metaphysical cell toxicity. Basically, it burns your channels over time. Imagine constantly overtraining with no rest.”

The Glimmissle bobbed up and down, which was normally her version of a nod.

“And there’s the epigenetic changes,” he said. “The dangers here were real, even if they’ve been exaggerated to cover up Aeon bloodlines.” He pulled out a copy of the recipe and tapped his finger on the diagram. “Most alchemists solve this by encasing the SH9 in mana particles. This makes it harmless until it enters your soul. For most people, at least.”

Glim stayed silent, still bobbing and spinning like a balloon in the wind.

Kalden rolled his chair over to an MMI tank where he’d collected various cell and mana samples. “Relia’s body doesn’t play nice with foreign mana.” He’d never known this about her, but it might explain why she avoided liquid mana. Or maybe her tolerance was lower because she’d avoided it for so long. Regardless, she could handle most drugs with limited side effects, but soulshine was different. Soulshine remained in the body for weeks, and the side effects might be more extreme. Possibly even fatal.

“Okay,” Glim said. “So we make the particles with Relia’s own mana.”

“That’s the obvious solution,” he agreed. “But pure mana is made of polar molecules. It would mix with the mana in her channels and release the SH9. Then we’re back to square one.”

Technically, it might still work, but there were too many variables, and he wouldn’t bet his friend’s life on it.

Glim hovered over his notebook. “What aspect does the recipe use?”

Kalden tapped the name on the printed recipe. MS4—or shell mana—was a variation of protection mana designed to keep things contained. Especially at small sizes like this.

“So what if we aspect her mana into MS4? You know, synthetically.”

Kalden gave the mana spirit a flat look. This was the problem with theoretical knowledge; it warped your sense of what was possible.

“What?” she said. “Alchemists do that all the time!”

“You’re thinking of the big corporations,” he said. “Mana has more configurations than any other molecular structure. We’d need years of testing to pull that off.” Besides, it wasn’t enough to make this work with Relia’s biochemistry. It also had to work with the SH9. There were thousands of combinations, and most of them would fail.

“We can do it!” Glim said as she returned to her place in the mirror. “You’re part-Craft Artist, and I’m a Grandmaster who’s twice as smart as a human!”

How in Talek’s name was she even measuring that? He was about to ask, but it was a useless tangent. Glim got off topic a lot, come to think of it.

“Things might be different if I had my Second Brain,” Kalden said with a shrug. “But I’m still months away from that. Besides, my aspect is battle mana.” He made a show of looking around the pristine lab. “This isn’t a battlefield.”

“So make it a battlefield!” she said. “You’re the general, and the enemy wants to pillage and burn your land. You need to redirect them into a mountain pass.”

Kalden furrowed his brow. “A mountain pass?”

She clasped her hands and gave an eager nod. “There’s another army waiting on the other side. You need the first one to fight them on your behalf.”

Kalden blinked, trying to make sense of the analogy. It seemed like the enemy here was the SH9, the mountain pass was Relia’s soul, and the second enemy was Relia’s advancement. Or maybe it was her condition? Either way, she needed to advance as soon as possible.

It all seemed so ridiculous at first blush; this was nothing like a battle. And yet . . . something about this resonated with his aspect. His mana stirred with a primal urge, and his body and mind aligned with its whims.

Kalden cycled his mana and met Glim’s eyes. “Say that again.”

Glim repeated herself, and a smug grin spread across her blue face. As she spoke, a thousand possibilities took shape in his mind’s eye. Far too much to process with his own working memory. But what if Glim processed it for him? He lacked the experience, and she lacked the alchemy knowledge. But together, they might pull this off.

Kalden cycled his battle mana from his soul into his head, using the techniques Irina had shown him. Then he stretched out his hands toward Glim. “I’m sending you my results. Can you display them visually?”

Glim leapt from the mirror once again, and a blue Missile shot toward Kalden’s hands. He poured the battle mana into her, and a thousand images took shape around the lab. Kalden got to his feet and stared at the scene in wide-eyed wonder. It felt like standing in the center of a galaxy with thousands of stars on every side.

Each star represented a different molecular structure, and the experiments he’d need to test it. Even now, it was too much for his mind to comprehend. What’s more, this only proved what he’d already known: he would need thousands of experiments to find the right structure, and they didn’t have time for that.

But now Glim had had access to the data in Kalden’s head. How could he use that?

Kalden cycled his mana once again, pulling himself back into the right mindset. This wasn’t alchemy. This was a battlefield, and his friend’s life was in danger. He could save her, but only if he found a path to victory.

“Can you organize these?” he asked Glim.

“Sure. But how?”

“Probability of success. Better yet, remove any with a high chance of failure.”

Now it was Glim’s turn to frown. “I don’t actually know which ones will work.”

That took some of the wind from Kalden’s sails. Once again, Glim only had a theoretical knowledge of this field. She understood these options, but she couldn’t predict their outcomes like a real alchemist.

If he had a Second Brain . . . but no, he’d been using that excuse all week, and it was getting old. Using Glim was his best path to victory.

“What if you watch me perform some tests?” Kalden asked her. “Can you simulate more on your own?”

Glim perked up at that. “It’s worth a try. But we can’t rely on fake tests. They might be wrong.”

“That’s fine. We don’t need the simulations to be right. We just need to weed out the failures.”

He spent the next few hours teaching Glim about his process, and the equipment around the lab. First, he aspected small amounts of Relia’s pure mana into the particle casing. If that worked, he tested those against her cells with the SH9.

Eventually, he put Glim in charge, having her call out the next steps before he made them. Kalden was ready to correct her mistakes, but she didn’t make any. Even when they hadn’t covered something, the mana spirit filled in the gaps.

They ran out of cell samples by noon, and they had to wait for the incubators to grow more. By that point, Glim had a solid grasp of his process, and she began simulating tests of her own.

Another sea of stars erupted around the lab, each one representing a different path forward. This time, hundreds of stars faded as Glim ran her own simulations. Hundreds of options—months of work—fading faster than he could blink.

Angels above. Was this what having a Second Brain would be like? A part of him itched to go outside and train with his aspect, but he forced himself to stay focused. Training wouldn’t save Relia or help him pass his peers. But every minute spent in this lab might save them ten minutes later in the school year.

Another part of him worried that Glim was overconfident. What if she’d thrown out viable structures and kept the useless ones? What if they’d wasted a whole day going in circles? This whole plan had come to him in a burst of intuition, and he could barely even explain it. He might as well step into a manastorm and trust his sense of smell to guide him.

But then he watched Glim simulate the remaining structures, and hope flared in his chest once again. They worked until sunset, testing dozens of options along the way. They worked through the night, integrating the new structure into the pill.

By morning, Kalden had a safe, working version of soulshine.