The cabin’s silence remained long after Volkov’s image had vanished from the screen. Miko powered down the terminal, but the static still seemed to hum inside Nathan’s head. His fingers hovered over the place where Volkov’s face had been, as though expecting some final warning to leak through the metal. But there was nothing. Just the ring’s muted warmth against his skin—quiet, but no longer absent. “I think he meant every word,” Harper said from the doorway. She stood with her arms crossed, tension rippling beneath the surface. “Whatever this ‘next phase’ is… he’s ready for it.” Nathan nodded, eyes distant. “Then we need to be ready too.” Harper’s brow arched. “You saying that means it’s time, doesn’t it?” Nathan stood slowly, the tightness in his muscles already receding, pain softening like fog beneath sun. “Yes. The ring is listening again. Time to make it remember who’s wearing it.” --- The next morning, the sun broke early across the ridge, casting gold into the forest cl

The moment Juno's voice cut out, silence fell like a guillotine. The forest no longer whispered—it waited. Harper checked her sniper gear without speaking. Miko sealed off the last outgoing lines of communication. Nathan stood in the doorway of the cabin, eyes hard, knuckles pale against the wood.The Syndicate was coming.And this time, they weren’t interested in sending a message.They were coming to end the war.______The first strike came at 2:13 a.m.No warning.Just the sudden snap of a perimeter tripwire followed by the buzz of cloaked movement—boots too quiet to hear, only registered by the vibration sensors Harper had embedded beneath the moss weeks ago.Miko’s tablet pulsed red. “Ten contacts. Approaching fast. Southern quadrant.”Nathan barely blinked. “Trigger grid. Now.”A stuttering hum swept across the forest as Miko hit the control pad. A web of laser lines shot out silently, refracted through water droplets in the air, invisible to human sight. When the Syndicate age

The beacon’s pulse had stopped, but its warning echoed long after. Miko’s words — “Not from Earth” — haunted the air between them, like a stone dropped into deep, unmapped waters.Nathan stood in the clearing for several moments longer, staring at the quiet disk in his hand. Its faint red light had faded. All that remained was a silence too heavy to be natural. Harper approached without a word, brushing mud from her rifle as if trying to brush away what they'd just learned.No one said anything on the walk back to the cabin. The fight was over, but something greater had just begun.—The forest seemed... different now.As the trio approached the remains of their cabin, it became clear this land had changed. The trees surrounding the perimeter weren’t just untouched—they looked revived. Their bark shimmered faintly in the sun. Leaves rustled with an unnatural vitality. Even the ground felt richer, denser with life, the soil warmer underfoot.Where Syndicate blood had spilled during the

The forest was still humming.After the ring whispered Catalyst, Nathan hadn’t slept. While Harper and Miko rested, he remained at the edge of the trees, staring into the dense woods like they might speak again. And maybe they did—just not with words.At dawn, the trio had gathered near the cabin’s eastern deck. Miko had the calibration unit balanced on her palm, its silver plates shifting like living origami as it tuned to the Sovereign Ring's new harmonic signals.Nathan rolled his shoulders, gaze sharp. “Let’s try projection again. This time… farther.”Miko hesitated. “Nathan, what you’re asking… projecting that far without physical tether, it could break your mind if you're not fully grounded.”“I won’t snap,” he said, lowering himself into a cross-legged position. “Just keep the buffer fields active.”Harper placed her hand on his shoulder. “And if you start convulsing or speaking in Latin, we pull you out.”“Deal.”Miko activated the harmonic field. A thin web of sound, nearly i

The smoke had cleared, but the stench lingered.Nathan stood at the edge of the cratered hill, the stars above flickering through the charred skeletons of trees. The Lisbon safehouse—once a quiet fallback point—was now ash. The Syndicate hadn’t just retaliated. They’d sent a message. Burned staff. Flattened communications. No survivors.He hadn’t screamed. He hadn’t allowed himself to break.But when they returned to the cabin, he sat in the cold, silent war room and stared at the dirt beneath his boots for hours.That night, the ring didn’t pulse with rage or vengeance. It hummed with restraint.And when Miko came in with the psionic stabilizer and said, “It’s time to try something bigger,” Nathan simply nodded.---The setup was delicate.A circlet of harmonic coils wrapped around Nathan’s head, thin threads trailing into Miko’s tablet. Harper stood watch at the cabin window, rifle cleaned and loaded on the sill.“You’re reaching into a metropolitan sector,” Miko said, voice steady