Brothers understand three simple rules. First, fighting is allowed, but grudges are not. Never get romantically involved with each other’s women. And the most important is to always have each other’s backs. True brothers don’t need to be told these rules because they might as well be Truths engraved in their bones. It is why even though my brother was wrong, I sided with him to take down Arawn and have no regrets.

~Gwyddion, God of Illusions

Otto paced around a stone chamber, but they didn’t chain him up like Crow. Looking at the manacles, he realized why. There was no way those would have fit his gigantic frame. He considered it a miracle they could drag him in here.

Electricity coursed through his veins as it vaporized the last of the drug they poured down his throat. Unlike Crow, he couldn’t use lightning to burn most poisons or toxins. However, his body was highly resilient, so it’d eventually expel them. There wasn’t much that could cause lasting harm to his body, which was why he never got sick or suffered wounds he couldn’t recover from. The people on these lower floors lacked the ability to harm him. Nin was like him, which is why she was also part of what Crow joked about as the Muscle Team.

Otto had an innate cultivation method. It was something he’d known how to do since he was born. Not able to communicate effectively, Otto couldn’t explain it to Crow. That didn’t mean his little brother didn’t understand, which is why he didn’t offer him one. The only things Crow assisted him with were finding techniques that he might be able to use and anything related to lightning.

Sensing Crow’s agitation, he moved toward the door and couldn’t find a handle. A guard stared at him through the bars and smirked. The smirk died when he saw Otto shrinking down in size, and before he could shout or trigger, the door ripped off its hinges. Otto held the door like his prized coffin lid and rushed forward, smashing the guard between the wall and the door.

Bones snapped with loud popping noises, and the man’s head deformed. Otto stepped back and let the man and the door fall to the ground. The only thing the guard could do before death was let out one last wheezing sound.

The only actual technique he’d managed to master was the one he found in the Sweet Onion. It allowed him to condense his mass and size, which allowed his physical power to grow exponentially. If he shrunk himself down to Crow’s size, he’d become twice as powerful.

Otto never figured out how to use the Constellation, but he could always find Crow through their bond. That old man really gave them a powerful tool because it made it easy to locate his little brother. Otto found the place he was looking for, but he felt conflicted looking at the archway. Something about it tickled at a buried memory, but it wasn’t his memory. Or at least he didn’t think it was.

Putting aside his misgivings, he entered and wasn’t sure what he was witnessing. A man he didn’t recognize was down on his knee, placing a ring onto Crow’s finger.

“Otto come back,” Otto interrupted. Kitten looked up in shock, and Crow rolled his head back, trying not to succumb to unconsciousness. When he activated his Night Fire to burn the cuffs, Kitten immediately attacked him. Practically knocked him senseless.

However, he came to full awareness when he saw what Kitten was doing to him. Crow tried to resist, and seeing his panic, Otto rushed forward, sending a fist the size of a human head crashing into Kitten.

Even though they could clearly hear Kitten hit the wall, the man reacted quickly, casting a spell that arrested his momentum. It was too late to prevent the damage from Otto’s fist, so Kitten still fell to the ground in a daze. But the critical point was that he didn’t die in that exchange. Otto didn’t mind and walked over and slapped the man’s face.

Kitten used some other ability and managed to redirect the kinetic energy so that it felt like his face was just slapped with a pillow. Otto and Crow were both surprised at the man’s tenacity to live. Crow was even more impressed by the technique used because it somehow invalidated a natural law.

Kitten coughed, spitting out blood. Crow realized Kitten’s ability didn’t negate the kinetic energy, just dispersed it throughout his body. No matter, he still found it an interesting ability.

“You can… kill me. But—” Kitten raised his shaking hand and pointed at Crow’s hand. “—too late.”

Everyone paused, waiting for the bad news. Crow looked down at the ring on his finger and felt absolutely nothing. Several long seconds ticked by while everyone practically held their breaths, but Crow’s laughter broke the tension.

“Like I thought, it’s trash,” Crow said.

“Impossible. The symbol on that ring is the same one on that wooden pillar,” Kitten declared and kept talking while he attempted to heal his injuries as fast as he could. “You can’t see it because it’s on the side facing the door. Every item with that marking has harmed the wearer.”

“Harmed, how?” Crow asked, curious as to the backstory of the wooden ring.

“No one knows because they are never found again. Dead. Buried without a corpse. Worse, no one has found a way to remove them. Even cutting off your finger won’t work as it’ll reappear on another one.”

“Otto, chain him up. I’m going to break free…” Crow gave orders to Otto, but he first came over to him and one by one crushed the manacles anchoring him to the wall. Even the collar on his neck was shattered in the giant’s beefy hand. “Or not.”

After releasing him, Otto grabbed Kitten and chained him to the wall. The manacles didn’t require and key to lock click them into place. Otto watched over his shoulder as the four gouges on Crow’s face flared up with Night Fire.

“What do?” Otto asked.

“Kitten over there put some kind of poison in the wound, preventing it from healing. Need to burn it all out,” Crow explained. Once he was finished, he took a handful of water and scrubbed his face. Crow had ignored the ring on his finger and didn’t notice it when it started to absorb the blood from his wounds. At the same time, he cut off the connection between the spider-like device on his chest and extracted it. Crow placed the hand with the ring against the wounds in his chest to staunch the bleeding. While the ring was drinking his blood, he drank a healing potion that Song Lin crafted.

“Brother!” Otto growled and pointed at his hand, but it was too late. The ring sprouted thorns and dug into his finger, sucking away blood essence and binding itself to him.

Crow wasn’t sure what was happening, but the loss of blood essence was never a good thing. The only blessing was that it took a little and stopped. The previously plain-looking ring had transformed into something else entirely. The wooden texture turned dark, and where the thorns sprouted were little raised bumps. Crow had no doubt that those bumps would turn into thorns once more if he tried to remove the ring.

Other than feeling slightly sick to his stomach, which might have been from the beatings he had recently taken, he didn’t feel anything wrong. Otto and Crow looked at each other, unsure what to do next.

Curious about Kitten’s comments, Crow walked around the pillar and found the symbol he’d talked about. The man hadn’t lied. There really was an etching that looked eerily similar to the one on the ring. Even though it now sprouted thorns, the symbol hadn’t changed—no, that wasn’t true. It now had a canopy. It looked exactly like the Fireheart Oak inside his Soulscape.

Out of some kind of instinct, Crow moved the ring closer to the emblem on the pillar. As if it had just been waiting for it, the tree morphed and took on the shape of a Fireheart Oak, too. Somehow, the entire room brightened along with it.

“Okay, Kitty, I think you better tell me what the fuck is going on.”