The cryo-facility groaned as backup power surged. Nathan stood before the boy’s awakening pod, the Dominion ring humming with a strange synchrony, one that pulsed deep in the earth, deep in time itself. Miko held her breath, watching as the failsafe’s eyes flickered behind closed lids. Not yet awake, but close. Harper’s voice cracked over comms. “We don’t have time. The Syndicate’s hosting a gala tonight. Rivergate Tower. Ethan’s expected to announce some kind of 'new phase.' That’s our moment.” Nathan turned from the pod, jaw tight. “Then we don’t wait for the future to happen. We will break it tonight.” --- The Rivergate Tower gleamed like a blade in the night, its mirrored surface catching the floodlights of the Syndicate’s most ostentatious event of the year. Inside the atrium ballroom, the elite circled like vultures in designer suits, toasting conquest over glasses of diamond-filtered champagne. Ethan stood at the top of the marble staircase, posture perfect, smile practice

As Nathan exited the glass boardroom of Nexora Global, leaving Dresden in security custody, the tension in his chest barely loosened. He had secured one front, but the war ran far deeper than corrupted executives. Somewhere in the shadows, Marion Voss still moved the pieces… centuries ahead of them in knowledge, and one step closer to something larger.In the quiet sanctuary of the Eastern Temple, far from skyscrapers and shattered gala stages, another battle was unfolding. Not a battle of weapons, but of memory._______The monastery archives were built into the mountainside itself, which were sheltered from light, noise, and time. Here, the air was laced with incense and old ink, and silence hung thick as stone. Scrolls older than modern nations lined the carved alcoves. A place untouched by the outside world, except through legend.Miko sat cross-legged on the polished stone floor, surrounded by parchment and fragments of forgotten language. Her fingers were stained with dust. Sym

Harper’s words… “We’re not afraid of you anymore” rippled across every feed. In rebel cells and Syndicate war rooms alike, the footage fractured narratives that had ruled unchallenged for years. Even as Nathan watched it from a dim corner of the safehouse, he knew the backlash would be swift. The Syndicate wouldn't bleed quietly. So when the motion sensor at the perimeter gate flashed crimson, no one moved lightly. ——— Rain fell in dense sheets across the pine-thick ridgeline where the safehouse clung to the mountainside. The perimeter alarms had been silent for hours—until now. Nathan stepped out into the storm, Dominion ring warm against his skin, flanked by Miko with a pistol at her hip and Harper just behind, rifle raised. A figure staggered into view, barely more than a silhouette in the dark. Lightning split the sky, revealing a woman in a torn infiltration suit, one arm cradling the other where blood slicked her side. She moved with the grace of someone trained not to fal

Zurich had fallen quiet behind them, but Nathan carried its echoes through every corridor of the monastery. Ethan was humiliated. The Syndicate’s grip on biotech had slipped. But Nathan couldn’t shake the cold certainty behind Selene’s warning: they were still hunting the Seventh Ring.And he needed answers from deeper than any scroll could give.That night, Tenzin led him through a carved stone passage in the eastern wing, sealed with warded iron and elder runes that hummed faintly when Nathan approached.The ring on his hand pulsed like a heartbeat.Only blood could open what came next._____The hidden vault was carved under the oldest roots of the monastery, a cavern carved before language had names for light. The chamber shimmered faintly with ring-forged glyphs, etched into obsidian pillars that reached skyward into shadow. Six archways, each inscribed with a different ring’s symbol, surrounded a raised platform in the center.But only one responded to Nathan.Dominion.Tenzin

The Syndicate lieutenant’s intel was an entire map of his confessions.There were hidden vaults, strange energy surges, two distinct pulses confirmed by rebel seers and artifact readers.Two rings, and two fronts to manage. Nathan had no time to debate, and stayed behind to stabilize rebel alliances.Volkov, who was already fraying at the seams, had been dispatched east.Harper and Miko went south.______Eastern Ukraine, near Pripyat…The wind howled through shattered concrete shells of the dead city. Volkov stepped over the scorched rebar, his boots crunching bone-dry frost. The radiation here had faded decades ago, but the memory of catastrophe still clung to the ruins like a ghost.Behind him, two Syndicate enforcers checked their perimeter, but Volkov ignored them. He could feel it… there was something deep underground, humming in frequencies only his frayed mind could interpret.The Ring of Null pulsed against his spine like a second heart.He muttered as he moved, twitching fi