Adrian looked toward Hestia, who remained nearby with Nerion supported beside her. Crimson Vital's ships had reached the damaged vessels, and the disciples aboard them had taken over the rescue work. He blinked to her side, glanced at the unconscious man, and rested a hand against his shoulder.
"Let us go back," Adrian said, and with that, the three of them disappeared from the void.
…
Inside a private room within Crimson Spire, Adrian lowered Nerion onto the floor. The man's injured arm rested beside him, and dried blood covered the torn cloth around his chest. Hestia stood close by, watching Adrian as he straightened. "What else did you learn?"
Adrian reached for her hand and gathered the information he had recovered about the Bloodfang Sovereign Sect, the tailed man, the father protecting him, and the war involving the four Upper Major Sects. A thin stream of energy passed through their joined hands, carrying the recovered knowledge directly into Hestia's consciousness.
She closed her eyes as the memories and Adrian's understanding of them settled through her mind, while Adrian released her hand and turned back toward Nerion.
Emerald light spread from his palm as he cast Breath of Life. Nerion's wounds closed at once, the damaged flesh and bones restored before the light faded from his body. His breathing steadied, but his eyes remained shut. The foreign Will had struck his consciousness as well, and healing his body would not make him wake immediately.
Three hours passed.
Nerion's fingers moved against the floor before his eyes slowly opened. He stared at the ceiling, then pushed himself upright and brought a hand to his chest. His fingers pressed through the tear in his clothing, finding unbroken skin where the wound had been. He moved his left arm, looked around the room, and stopped when he saw Adrian.
Hestia stood beside Adrian, and no one else was present. Nerion lowered his head, his hands settling upon his knees. "Thank you for saving my life. If you had not stopped that attack, I would have died there." He looked up again, keeping his voice low. "You even healed my injuries. I am grateful for your help."
Adrian's gaze remained on him, but he did not answer the thanks. "How did you reach Andromeda?" he asked. Nerion paused, his fingers tightening slightly against his knees before he began to explain.
"I did not mean to come here. I had no intention of bringing them into your galaxy," he said. "My sect is at war with the Bloodfang Sovereign Sect. We were retreating from a battle when I became separated from the others, and those two followed me."
He glanced toward Hestia before returning his attention to Adrian. "I had a teleportation artifact prepared for an escape. It was supposed to take me somewhere safe, but one of them attacked while I was activating it. The artifact was damaged before the transfer finished."
Nerion's hand moved toward his chest, then stopped before touching the torn cloth. "They were close enough to be caught in it with me. When the transfer ended, all three of us were here. I did not recognize the place, and they started chasing me again before I could escape."
Adrian considered the explanation. The damaged memories had shown Nerion among Bloodfang's enemies, but nothing useful had survived of the pursuit that brought them to Andromeda. And now he got the answer for this entire incident. It was a completely unexpected occurrence that, if not for Adrian being here, could have cost the lives of his people.
"Rest here until you feel better," he said, turning toward the door. Nerion lowered his head again, and Hestia followed Adrian out of the room, closing the door behind them.
Daylight entered through the open side of the corridor, falling across the floor beside the railing. Adrian walked toward it and stopped, looking over the streets and sect grounds below. Hestia came to stand beside him, but her attention remained on his face.
"We stopped the immediate catastrophe," she said. "But the man who escaped will probably go to his father as soon as he can. From what you showed me, that elder will not care why you attacked his son. He will only care that you killed the man beside him and nearly killed his son as well. If he comes here, what follows could be far worse than what we saw in the Fate vision."
Adrian's fingers closed around the railing. Hestia watched him for a moment before asking, "What are we going to do?"
The question brought his attention back from the grounds, though he continued facing the open side of the corridor.
"I have to reach Weave," he replied. "I cannot face him while his Will can stop me from using my own strength. If he comes here in person before I cross into that stage, things will be much worse than what happened today."
Hestia nodded slowly. She had felt only the stored portion of that elder's Will, and even from the edge of the battlefield, it had prevented her from gathering a proper defense. Adrian had remained conscious and managed to move under the pressure, but Hestia had seen how slowly his arm responded while the tailed man escaped through the spatial passage. If the father himself arrived, Adrian would face the full consciousness of a Weave-stage cultivator rather than the protective fragment stored within another person.
Adrian finally turned toward her, one hand still resting upon the railing. "I am going," he said.
"Where?" Hestia asked.
"To war."
Hestia's eyes widened, and she immediately faced him fully. "War??? You want to go there? Why?" She searched his expression, almost hoping she had misunderstood what he meant. "Adrian, we just learned that even one senior elder of Bloodfang is someone we cannot properly handle right now. What are you planning to do in the middle of a war between four Upper Major Sects?"
"Find out what I need to learn," Adrian replied. "There are cultivators there who have reached Weave, and they are actively using that strength against one another. I want to understand how they do it and what they can do that I cannot."
"But that is extremely risky, Adrian," Hestia said. "The safest way for you to reach Weave is to remain here and use the Time Formations we already have. That elder's current assignment might keep him occupied for a week, a month, or perhaps even longer. We do not know how much external time we actually have, but even a small amount would give you years inside Origin Headquarters to train. You have already improved enormously through those formations, which proves that what you are doing works."
"I know they would help," Adrian replied. "At Providence Hub, I could barely think beneath the foreign Will that came through Androxus. Today, I could think clearly enough to understand what was happening, and I could even force my arm to move. I only failed because I could not sustain the intent needed to act quickly enough before the tailed man escaped. The years I spent training inside Origin clearly made a difference, so I am not saying that staying here would be useless."
His grip on the railing loosened. "But I was already trying to reach Weave throughout those years. I improved my control, expanded my reserves, rebuilt the techniques we had, and learned to use willforce in ways I could not before. I can maintain several complicated actions at once now, and I can suppress experienced Anchors much more easily than I expected. Yet none of that has shown me how to cross into the next stage."
"You might be closer than you realize," Hestia replied. "What if you only need a little more practice? Leaving might sound like the faster answer because you can observe someone who has already reached Weave, but there is no guarantee anyone inside that war will teach you what you want to know."
"That is true. I might eventually reach it while staying here," Adrian said, meeting her gaze. "But what if I do not? I could spend another thousand years refining the same techniques and still miss whatever separates Anchor from Weave. We already know that a Weave-stage cultivator can interfere with another person's intent before they act, but knowing the result does not tell me how the consciousness develops enough to do it."
He paused before continuing. "I have searched through everything we can access. The public networks, premium services, the records available through our contacts, all of them give descriptions but nothing that explains the actual transition clearly enough for me to follow. And the two times I have encountered this type of suppression, it came from a Will stored inside someone else. I never saw Androxus's protector use the technique in person, and I have not seen the Bloodfang elder use his own consciousness either. I need to meet someone who has reached Weave. If I can watch them use their Will directly, there may be things I can understand that I would never notice while practicing alone."
Hestia remained quiet for a moment before slowly nodding. She understood the logic even though she disliked where it led. Her fingers moved along the railing until they touched Adrian's hand. "I understand why you want to go," she said. "But we still do not know what will happen to you once you enter that war, and we do not know what might happen here while you are away."
Adrian looked toward her. Before he could answer, Hestia continued. "We should read the possible futures before deciding. We can first see what happens if you leave for the war region, both to you and to the people who remain in Andromeda. After that, we can look at the future where you stay here and continue training instead."
Adrian considered the suggestion as Hestia's hand settled fully over his. Their earlier Fate reading had warned them of the danger created by leaving Andromeda at the wrong time, and changing that decision had allowed them to intercept the two Beastborn before the future they saw could occur.
This choice involved a different journey and an enemy they now understood better, but there were still too many things they did not know. Adrian did not know how soon the Bloodfang elder would become free from his assignment. He did not know what kind of cultivators he would encounter if he entered the war zone, or whether his absence from Andromeda would create another opportunity for something they could not predict.
Fate could not give them certainty, but it could at least show them what their present choices seemed likely to lead toward.
Adrian turned his hand beneath Hestia's and closed his fingers around hers. He still wanted to go, because remaining in place while waiting for a stronger enemy to arrive went against everything his instincts told him to do. Yet he could not decide that journey was worth the risk without understanding what it might cost the people he was trying to protect.
"All right," Adrian said. "Let us look at both possibilities before we decide."