The wind was being annoying today.
I stood on the flat-topped rock—the one I'd claimed three months ago when Master Kieran first dragged me out here—and watched the air currents twist around each other like drunken dancers. Most people wouldn't see them. Hell, most people would just feel a nice ocean breeze and think about how pleasant the weather was.
I saw the muted light pink wisp tangling itself in the yellow current about fifteen feet offshore.
"You gonna grab it or just stare at it all day?" Master Kieran's voice drifted up from the beach behind me. He hadn't even turned around. The old bastard was sitting cross-legged on the sand, eyes closed, probably watching me through the air itself or some other show-off technique he refused to teach me yet.
"I'm assessing the situation," I called back.
"You're stalling."
He wasn't wrong. The muted light pink wisp—soul energy from some long-dead mage who'd probably been pretty mediocre even when alive, aged for two hundred years into this pathetic little spark—was weak material. Barely stronger than found air. But it was a start, if I could capture it before it dissipated into the regular wind patterns...
The problem was the yellow current it had gotten tangled in. Found air. Literally just... air. The stuff people breathed. Useless for anything serious, but it moved in thick streams near the coast, and trying to pull soul energy through it was like trying to thread a needle while riding a horse.
A very angry horse.
That was also on fire.
"Tick tock, apprentice."
I crouched lower on my rock, feeling the wind patterns shift around my body. The ocean stretched out in front of me, gray-blue and endless, waves crashing against the rocks below with that rhythmic boom-hiss that had become background noise over the past few months. Seagulls screamed overhead, probably laughing at me.
Everything laughed at me these days.
I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out one of my bottles—the simple kind, round bottom, thin neck, no decorations because I wasn't some rich mage-family kid with fancy equipment. The glass was warm from being pressed against my ribs. Empty. Obviously empty. That was the whole point.
The pink wisp twisted again, starting to break apart at the edges where it touched the yellow current. If I didn't move soon, it'd dissolve completely, and I'd have wasted another perfect opportunity to actually, you know, do the thing I was supposed to be learning.
"Any day now."
"I'm going, I'm going!" I uncorked the bottle, held it up, and reached out.
Not with my hands. With my self. That weird internal muscle that Master Kieran kept insisting I had—the one that felt less like a muscle and more like trying to flex a memory. I pushed my awareness into the wind, felt it push back, found the pink wisp dancing just out of reach—
The yellow current shoved my consciousness sideways like a drunk shoving past you at a bar.
I stumbled on my rock, nearly dropped the bottle, caught it at the last second, and fell flat on my ass.
"Graceful," Master Kieran observed. Still hadn't turned around.
"That current's too strong," I said, getting up and dusting sand off my pants even though there wasn't any sand up here. Nervous habit. "The soul energy's gonna dissipate before I can separate it."
"Then separate it faster."
"Oh wow, thanks, that's super helpful advice. 'Do the impossible thing faster.' Why didn't I think of that?"
He did turn around then, and I immediately regretted my sarcasm. Master Kieran had this way of looking at you that made you feel like he could see every mistake you'd ever made, every shortcut you'd tried to take, every time you'd thought about giving up. His eyes were the same gray as the ocean behind me.
"You know what your problem is?" he asked.
"Your terrible personality?"
"You're scared of the wind."
I blinked. "I'm... what? I'm literally standing on a rock trying to grab magic out of the air. How is that scared?"
"You're treating it like an opponent. Like it's trying to hurt you." He stood up, brushing sand off his pants—actually brushing off real sand, because his pants actually had sand on them. "The wind doesn't care about you. It's not out to get you. It's just moving."
"Yeah, and it's moving the soul energy away from me, so—"
"So move with it."
He didn't even gesture. Didn't close his eyes or make some dramatic hand motion. He just... thought at it.
The pink wisp appeared in front of my face, perfectly still, separated from the yellow current like it had never been tangled at all. It hung in the air, glowing softly with that pathetic muted tint, waiting.
I stared at it. Then at him. "How—"
"Bottle," he said, like he was asking me to pass the salt.
Right. I held up my bottle, and the wisp drifted inside like it had always wanted to be there. I corked it quickly before it could change its mind, and held it up to the light. The pale pink glow pulsed weakly against the glass.
My contribution to that capture was... standing here uselessly. Nailed it.
"Good," Master Kieran said. "Now do it again. Actually do it this time."
"What? There's no more—" I looked out at the ocean and saw three more wisps. Two more muted pinks, one slightly brighter orange farther out.
And something else.
Something black.
Not the yellow-white-clear of found air. Not pink or orange or red. Pure black, like a hole in the wind itself, drifting slowly along the coast about fifty feet out.
My breath caught.
"You're seeing them now," Master Kieran said. It wasn't a question. "The more you practice, the more you'll see. The world's full of dead mages' power, kid. You just have to stop fighting it long enough to notice."
He started walking down the beach, hands in his pockets.
"Wait," I called after him. "Do you see the black one?"
He stopped. Didn't turn around.
"The what?"
"The black wisp. Out there." I pointed. "It's just... floating. Moving south along the current."
A pause. Long enough that I started to wonder if I'd said something wrong.
Then Master Kieran turned around, and his expression was perfectly casual. Too casual.
"You been in the sun too long?" he asked, walking back toward my rock. His voice was light, almost amused. "Hit your head when you fell on your ass earlier?"
"I'm serious. There's a black—"
"Kid." He stopped at the base of my rock, looking up at me with that same easy smile. "Soul energy comes in pink, orange, and red. That's it. Those are the colors. There is no black."
"But I'm looking right at—"
"There is no black," a voice said directly into my mind.
I flinched. Master Kieran's mouth hadn't moved. He was still smiling that too-casual smile, but his voice—his real voice—was speaking through the air itself, bypassing sound entirely.
"You're tired. You've been training hard. Sometimes apprentices see things that aren't there when they push too far." His mental voice was calm, measured, but there was something underneath it. Something sharp.
Out loud, he said, "Come on down. Let's call it a day. You've earned a break."
But through the air: "Don't look at it. Don't point at it. Walk with me. Now."
I glanced back at the black wisp one more time. It was still there, drifting slowly, impossible and real.
Master Kieran couldn't see it.
I could.
And for the first time since I'd met him, I saw something in his eyes that I'd never seen before.
He was scared.