The revelation of @Tenemi Helsingr image was no idle vision. At the base of his staff gleamed a hidden sigil, and through the will of the Ring, Theseus discerned its true meaning: not ornament, but wayfinder. The painting, once blurred, now revealed a distant peak rising above the clouds: the @Peak of Saint Estes Monastery , an austere sanctuary in the @Frevia Mountain Range where saints once broke their bodies and wills to find enlightenment.
To reach it would demand sacrifice. No climbing gear. No hesitation. Only faith in flesh, spirit, and brotherhood. Theseus swore as much before Lance Topper, who, though too hardened to bless, nonetheless gave his grim approval:
“The mountain doesn’t care for blessings. It cares for strength.”
Thus began the journey.
The companions set out for @Silverpoint , hoping to ferry across the seas to Frevia. A Daemos taxi bore them along the shimmering artery of progress: the Daemos Superhighway, a ribbon of silver and light. Within the humming vehicle, resolve deepened. Theseus reminded his companions that the Ring was not a crutch but an amplifier, that their own “dragon’s breath” would be the true foundation of battle. Goten listened for once, nodding with uncharacteristic gravity. Hermoine clutched her bag, whispering “No mercy” as though testing the weight of the creed upon her tongue.
Yet fate did not intend for their road to remain smooth. For even on man’s most advanced roadways, the old horrors hunt.
It began with a shudder, then a violent lurch. The taxi swerved as the onboard systems screamed “Debris Impact Imminent.” Out of the dust came monsters — Broodspawn, twisted spawn of draconic corruption, their bodies half-stone, half-inferno.
The battle was sudden and brutal. Theseus unleashed a searing kinetic beam that staggered the creatures. The driver’s EMP blast slowed them further, but not for long. Seizing the moment, Theseus cast the Ring to Goten. The boy fumbled — then wore it — and for the first time, the artifact surged with him.
Together, they fought. Theseus with blistering martial strikes, Goten with chaotic, barely-controlled waves of emerald energy. Hermoine shielded the driver with a hexagonal barrier, her voice trembling yet unbroken. Concrete cracked, tendrils lashed, and the highway became a war-zone of stone, fire, and willpower.
Then the cave-in came. With a concussive “Dragon’s Breath” unleashed without the Ring, Theseus collapsed the tunnel ceiling upon one of the brutes, burying it alive. The second fought on, until Theseus and Goten — in a rare moment of synchronicity — struck as one. A double lariat, fueled by raw trust, crushed its throat and silenced its flames.
But victory bore no time for rest. The tunnel shook, debris falling in waves. The boy-saints had survived the ambush, yet their way forward led into darkness.
Amid dust and ruin, something subtle shifted. Theseus did not strike the last blow himself. Instead, he crossed his arms and trusted. Trusted @Goten Namaki — the skeptic, the loner, the boy who once sneered at “family.” And Goten delivered.
The Ring had chosen not one, but two. And in their victory, battered and raw, the lesson became clear: strength alone could not master the Ring. Trust, too, was an anchor.
The companions emerged bloodied yet alive, the road to Silverpoint still ahead. Beyond it lay the ferry, the sea, and at last the Frevia Mountains. And there, somewhere atop the clouds, the Peak of Saint Estes Monastery awaited — with Tenemi Helsingr, and perhaps the next anchor of the Ring.
The war of dragons and broodspawn was no longer distant myth. It had found them on the highway. And it would find them again.
Next Chapters The companions had braved broodspawn and collapse before, but never had they faced a horror like this. In the dim tunnels beneath the @Daemos Superhighway , the walls split open and from them crawled an impossibility: the Gravi-Maw, one of the Awakened. Its obsidian carapace swallowed light, its many eyes burned like fractured stars, and its very presence bent the laws of nature.
Men whispered that it could devour matter, thought, and even destiny itself. Against such a foe, Theseus struck with every ounce of Ki, weaving through the crushing gravity wells it exuded. Yet it was not his fists alone that turned the tide — it was the desperate courage of @Goten Namaki , still learning the burden of the Ring.
The @Saint Estes Ring ’s glow pulsed in time with the Maw’s distortion. When Goten wavered, it faltered; when his fear began to rule him, its light dimmed. @Theseus shouted the creed: “No hesitation! No mercy!” Only then did the emerald anchor within Goten awaken enough to guide him through falling rubble and collapsing stone.
The Gravi-Maw was not slain, but it was left behind in the ruin of the tunnels. The companions, and the trembling vagrant who had tried in vain to repel it with a sputtering device, fled deeper into the unknown.
Safe — or as safe as damp stone allowed — Theseus confronted Goten. In the heat of the Maw’s assault, Goten had clutched the Ring not as a brother but as a hoarder. Fear had twisted his grasp into greed, and for the first time, the bond between them cracked.
@Theseus , stern, reminded him that they were not chosen as individuals, but as anchors of a shared burden.
@Goten Namaki , trembling with both pride and shame, cried that the Ring was the first thing that had ever “chosen” him, the first thing that was his.
Their voices echoed off the glowing rune-etched walls, the tension thick as the earth above threatened to bury them. At last, Theseus broke through his companion’s anger with truth: they had both been orphans, both nothing, both wards of Saint Estes. One had not been chosen above the other; both were bound.
Shamed yet relieved, Goten relented. With trembling hand, he returned the Ring. Theseus received it anew — and in that moment, the tunnels erupted with light. The EMP device struck the Ring and revealed a fleeting map of hidden paths, another clue guiding them toward the Frevia Mountains. Then the floor gave way.
They fell not into death, but into velvet. Through fractured stone and dust, they landed amid silks, rich tapestries, and rare perfumes. They had crashed through the ceiling of none other than @Vontrese's Underground Mansion , long believed dead, once the enigmatic mayor of Silverpoint.
But death had not claimed her. Instead, @Vontrese Cole had turned her genius inward, weaving machines with living tissue, bending nanoweave and EchoThread to her will. Where the world saw a vanished politician, the companions found a hidden weaver of power.
At first, she regarded them like a scholar studying an anomaly. The Saint Estes Ring in Theseus’s hand drew her focus. She spoke not with disbelief, but with recognition. She knew of binding artifacts, of anchors, and of the tapestry of distributed power.
When @Theseus — brash as ever — asked for armor and even a cape, she indulged him with a faint smile. What she offered instead were adaptive undersuits, prototypes of Project Loom, designed to harmonize with Ki signatures and to stabilize the resonance of the @Saint Estes Ring .
Under @Vontrese Cole watchful eye, @Theseus and @Goten Namaki synchronized their Ki. Blue and green harmonics bloomed in the projection, revealing that each anchor bore a unique resonance. @Hermoine Peppermint , too, had glimpsed symbols invisible to the others — proof that the Ring’s map could only be fully deciphered by all four anchors together.
Yet not all was harmony. From the EMP strike lingered a jagged scar of energy, a counter-resonance, alien to known Daemos technology. Vontrese warned that another power, ancient or hidden, might be watching — and that their probing could wake it. Still, Theseus, with boyish confidence, urged her to trace it.
Vontrese agreed, though not without warning. In the meantime, she shaped for Theseus a garment unlike any other: a flowing cape of midnight nanoweave, lined with EchoThread, tuned to his cerulean resonance. Functional, yes — but also a symbol. The boy who had once been just another orphan was becoming something more.
Thus, beneath the earth of Vontrese’s hidden sanctum, the companions gained both knowledge and armor. They learned that the Ring was not a relic of solitary might but a loom of many threads — a burden shared, a weapon woven.
But they also learned of shadows deeper than broodspawn and Awakened: forces that sought to disrupt, to fracture, to tear the tapestry before it could be completed.
The path to Frevia still awaited. The monastery atop the clouds still beckoned. And the War of Men loomed nearer with every revelation.