The Ring of Unity was safe… for now, but the vision of Volkov haunted Harper long after Cairo’s skyline vanished behind their retreating convoy. She hadn’t told Nathan everything. Not about how Volkov looked at her. Not about the way he whispered to the wind.Nathan didn’t press. He already knew.The rings were converging.And Volkov was too far gone to leave unchecked.So Nathan followed the resonance trail alone—through ruins east of Lviv, into the mountains, and up toward the skeletal remains of a forgotten fortress that had once housed kings, and now only housed ghosts.The Dominion Ring pulsed on his hand as he crossed its threshold.Volkov was waiting.________The fortress was a carcass of stone, devoured by time and ice. Frost clung to the archways like white rot. Great halls sagged into rubble. And at its center where once banners had flown and soldiers had sworn fealty…someone was standing. Volkov.Or what was left of him.He wore no armor, no insignia. His coat hung in tat

The memory vault closed behind Nathan with a low, thunderous hum. The echo of the long-dead Sovereign King's warning still rang in his bones: “She wanted eternity. And now she’s made it bleed.”Outside the monastery, the sky was no longer calm. Static shivered across the horizon. Communications faltered. The world beyond was changing, fast.Nathan stepped out into the courtyard, wind clawing at his coat. Harper met him with grim eyes and a satellite tablet in hand.“You need to see this,” she said.The screen lit up.Blackouts, crashes and panic everywhere._________At 4:03 AM GMT, Frankfurt’s power grid failed, triggering a cascade of market closures across the EU. Twelve minutes later, New York’s stock index froze, before blinking red with mass liquidation. In Jakarta, satellites went dark mid-orbit. São Paulo’s metro systems collapsed in sync, stranding millions. Mumbai’s water purification facilities shut down. Tokyo’s central AI hospital coordination unit began dispensing fatal

The winds at Nova Point howled like wolves, dragging sea-spray high into the misty air. Cold water pounded the jagged cliffside below, echoing in rhythmic crashes. Perched atop those cliffs was the rebel outpost: little more than a radar dish, a rusted comms station, and a bunker carved into the granite. But in the fractured world Marion had left behind, this scrap of land held weight. Nova Point was the last uplink feeding secure rebel transmissions across the Atlantic. If it fell, coordination across half the continent would fracture. Nathan had just left hours ago, recalled to Geneva. Harper had stayed behind, overseeing diagnostics, half-hoping for a quiet shift. Instead, the storm came. “Drone swarm inbound!” shouted Velan, a wiry teenager barely out of training. “Hundred-plus contacts. No IFF tags. All hostile.” Harper leaned over the edge of the bluff and saw them, dark specks against the roiling sky, emerging from the horizon like a plague. Syndicate tech. Fast, aggressiv

The silence at the rebel base had turned ceremonial.After Bishop’s defection and the discovery of the Seventh Ring’s purpose, the war room had run red with overlays—ring lattices, encrypted beacon pulses, and dozens of Syndicate codenames flickering to life across forgotten territories. But Nathan Maddox, the rebel commander, was no longer at the table.He had been summoned.The UN Tribunal in Luxembourg had issued a formal warrant for his presence, citing allegations of unauthorized warfare, civilian endangerment, and worst of all—telepathic intrusion without ethical clearance. The rebel council had protested. Nathan had only raised his hand and said, “Let them see.”Now, the world was watching.The tribunal hall was a crescent of marble and iron, sterile as a tomb and wired with global feeds. Every channel carried the live stream. News banners screamed contradictory headlines: REBEL WARLORD ON TRIAL, SAVIOR OR PSYCHIC TERRORIST?, SYNDICATE WHISTLEBLOWERS DENIED ENTRY.Nathan stood

The upper ruins of the Syndicate lab gave no hint of what still thrived beneath its shattered shell. Above ground, it was nothing but scorched concrete and collapsed scaffolding, a casualty of earlier drone strikes. But under the facade, Nathan knew, something older and darker lingered, something alive in thought, if not flesh.He moved carefully, hand brushing the carved stone walls of the sub-bunker’s main corridor. They pulsed faintly under his touch—ancient psionic etchings, reactivated. The glyphs weren’t just there to amplify psychic energy. They reinforced mental constructs, stitched illusions into reality, and made escape near impossible once the chamber sealed.This was not just a laboratory.It was a trap!Still, Nathan pressed forward.He passed through the archway into the core chamber, the entrance locking behind him with a magnetic hiss. The air instantly shifted. Thicker. Charged. Like walking into the center of a thunderstorm.They were already there.Three Syndicate t