Nathan didn’t sleep after Elise’s words.The Red Conduit.He sat beneath the swaying limbs of an ancient pine tree, still feeling the warmth of the healing he’d channeled—though his muscles throbbed with the price. The stars above flickered between high clouds, quiet but distant, like gods too tired to intervene.Harper had gone to patrol the perimeter.Miko hadn’t spoken much since the revelation. She was already inside, scanning data logs and beacon telemetry with her signature frown of concentration.But Nathan felt it in the soil again.The pulse. The whisper.Only this time, the word hadn’t come from the ring. It had come from within him.“Catalyst.”He stood slowly, heart steady.Tomorrow, the war will change.---The cabin was alive with quiet activity.Miko's lab table looked like a nest of coiled wires, interface crystals, and blinking modules. Screens flickered with geospatial blueprints—partial renderings of Black Hollow’s electromagnetic profile, stitched together from the

Nathan watched the storm roll across the peaks, the monastery walls groaning under the wind’s pressure. He stood at the window, ring pulsing faintly against his skin, listening as distant thunder echoed like a war drum.Miko entered quietly, her tablet tucked under her arm. “It’s starting,” she said.He didn’t need to ask what she meant. The news feeds had been crackling all morning through the monastery’s patched-together uplink, bringing headlines from the outside world. Nathan followed her down the narrow stone corridor into the makeshift communications room, where Harper stood glaring at the screens.The largest monitor showed Ethan seated in a sleek studio, wearing a polished suit and that same practiced grin he’d worn the night he betrayed Nathan in Berlin. Syndicate banners fluttered behind him as he leaned toward the camera, voice oily-smooth.“Nathan Hale was a reckless upstart,” Ethan declared, gesturing expansively. “He thought he could challenge the Syndicate’s order, disr

Nathan stood at the monastery gates, the wind tearing at his coat, the ring pulsing faintly against his skin. The distant echo of Syndicate broadcasts still rang in his ears—Ethan crowing over Nathan’s supposed demise, Imperium Corp under Syndicate control. Harper had wanted to strike back immediately, to drag Ethan’s smirk into the dirt, but Nathan had only shaken his head.“Let them think the world is theirs,” he told her. “And we'll knock the wind from their sails.”The words hung between them like a shield, buying time while the storm gathered strength behind monastery walls. That night, Nathan barely slept. He sat cross-legged in the meditation chamber as Tenzin lit incense and murmured soft chants, the thin mountain air crackling with cold. Miko worked through the night, stringing copper wires across ancient stone, setting up a counter-frequency array built from scavenged Syndicate tech and local minerals.By dawn, the chamber hummed with low resonance, vibrating through the fl

Nathan followed Tenzin through the winding halls of the monastery, the night air thick with incense and the soft hum of chanting from distant prayer rooms. The echoes of his last meditation clung to him: Ethan’s dreamscape fracturing under his whispered torment, Syndicate investors scattering, Ethan’s mask slipping in public interviews. But there was no triumph in Nathan’s chest—only a gnawing sense of unfinished threads, of another darkness he could almost feel pressing at the edges of his mind. Tenzin stopped before a heavy iron-banded door, set deep in the oldest part of the monastery. Two younger monks stood guard, their shaved heads bowed, hands clasped. Tenzin gave them a subtle nod, and they pulled the door open with a groan of old wood and rusted hinges. Inside lay the forbidden library. Dim lanterns flickered along towering shelves, each packed with scrolls and crumbling books bound in cracked leather. The air smelled of dust, age, and something older—like the ghost of hi

Nathan left the library with Tenzin’s warnings echoing in his mind. As dawn crept across the mountains, he moved into the monastery’s training yard, the stone cold beneath his feet, the mist curling low around him like restless spirits. His muscles ached from hours hunched over brittle scrolls, but he welcomed the strain of practice: something real, something he could control.Tenzin stood nearby, arms folded, eyes watchful. Nathan inhaled slowly, grounding himself as Tenzin had taught: measuring each breath, slowing the racing of his heart, letting the Dominion ring’s gnawing hunger ebb for a moment before he called on its power.When he extended his hand, a ripple of force shimmered across the yard, scattering gravel in a shallow wave. Nathan clenched his jaw, holding the power steady, feeling the strange electric pulse in his blood. With each surge, he felt the ring’s cost: a dull ache in his bones, a faint tightness in his chest, the streaks of silver threading further through his