The actual words didn’t register, but Broadhorn was still talking when Jake's fist connected with the side of his smug jaw.

  Not wild. Not angry. Jake had pulled stone affinity through the bones of Thornback's borrowed hand, amplified the density, threaded Life force through muscles to maximize impact. One punch. Precisely calculated. Delivered with the cold efficiency of someone who'd done the math and knew exactly what the result would be.

  The bull's head snapped sideways. His eyes rolled back. Legs buckled. He dropped into the dusty road with enough force to raise a small cloud around his unconscious form.

  Jake didn't look down. Didn't check if Broadhorn was breathing. Didn't pause to see if the punch had done permanent damage or just put him to sleep.

  Jake just kept walking.

  Toward the fortress gates. Toward the Champions. Toward whatever came next. Like Broadhorn had never existed. Like dropping someone unconscious in the road was worth the same amount of attention as stepping over a rock.

  The chosen behind him froze. Stonehoof's eyes went wide. Dustmane's jaw hung open. The Arieti and Cervini stopped mid-stride like they'd walked into an invisible wall.

  And the Champions roared.

  Not disapproval. Not shock. Pure delighted approval that echoed off the fortress walls like thunder. The female Centaur threw her head back and laughed with genuine pleasure. The Bovari Champions slapped their thighs. Even the quiet Arieti smiled.

  Krove's expression didn't change. But something in his scarred posture shifted. Recognition. The kind that passed between predators who understood exactly what they were looking at.

  The female Centaur trotted up beside Jake. Her voice carried the same amused approval as her laughter. "I'll buy the Priest his first ale! That was beautiful. Clean. No hesitation. You'll fit right in here."

  Jake nodded. Kept walking. Didn't break stride. Didn't look back at Broadhorn's unconscious form or the stunned chosen or the laughing Champions.

  And somewhere in the crowd, someone said it. One of the chosen. Curlhorn maybe. Voice carrying shock and something that might have been awe.

  "He just walked away. Didn't even look back."

  The words hit Jake like cold water.

  Not because they were wrong. They were absolutely correct. He HAD just walked away. Had done exactly what predators do when something stops being worth attention.

  But the observation triggered something. A memory Jake hadn't meant to access. One that surfaced with the perfect clarity Hope's curse preserved everything with.

  Jonas.

  Not the rage. Not the necromancy. The specific moment when the Pantathian blade had separated Jonas's head from his shoulders in the clearing a quarter mile outside the tower.

  Jake had BEEN Jonas in that moment. Had felt the cold metal. Had felt the instant of separation. Had felt consciousness tear away from biology in ways no living thing should ever experience. Had felt everything that was Jonas just... stop.

  And the Pantathians had kept walking.

  Hadn't looked back. Hadn't paused. Hadn't registered that a life had just ended at their feet. Jonas had died in the dust and the snake fuckers had just continued their march like his existence had never mattered at all.

  That indifference had been absolute. Total. The kind of dismissal that came from power so complete that individual lives weren't even worth acknowledging.

  Jake knew what that felt like. From the inside. Knew what it was like to be the thing lying in the dirt while something more powerful walked away without caring.

  And he'd just done it.

  "When did that happen? When did I become the thing that walks away?"

  The thought arrived unwanted. Uninvited. And immediately Jake recognized it for what it was.

  Not his thought. Fallen's.

  The real Jake wouldn't care. Wouldn't make the connection. Wouldn't pause for even a second to think about what it meant to drop someone and walk away like their existence didn't matter.

  Earth Jake had done that a hundred times. Had walked away from people he'd used up without ever looking back. Without ever questioning whether he should feel something about it. That was just what you did when someone stopped being useful.

  So why was he thinking about it now? Why did the Jonas memory surface at all? Why did walking away from Broadhorn trigger any kind of reflection?

  Fuck you Fallen. Still in here. Still trying to make me feel guilty about being what I am.

  The contamination might not be gone. But I don’t have to listen to it. Making me question things I shouldn't question. Making me SEE my own actions through a lens that shouldn't even exist.

  The real me wouldn't even notice. Would drop someone and move on without a single thought about parallels or meaning or whether I'm becoming something.

  I’ll find a way to be rid of you. That will be moved to the top of the list. Latin bullshit and secret councils can fuck right off.

  Jake pushed the thought aside with physical force. Shoved it back down into whatever part of his consciousness the contamination still occupied. He didn't have time for borrowed conscience. Didn't have energy to waste on guilt that wasn't his.

  He was Jake. The villain who blew up buildings and didn't turn to watch them burn. The predator who took what he wanted and moved on without looking back.

  That's who he'd always been. That's who he was returning to.

  And if some piece of Fallen's personality wanted to make him question that, wanted to create doubt or guilt or moral weight where none should exist, then that was just more contamination to burn away.

  "I know what I am. Don't need to feel bad about it."

  The fortress gates loomed ahead. Massive. Wrong. Nothing like the geometric perfection of the grid towns.

  And Jake kept walking.

  - - -

  Everything about the grid of the Golden Fields had been order. Perfect spacing. Identical templates. Serpentine temples and straight roads and buildings that looked like they'd been stamped from the same mold across hundreds of miles.

  The fortress was chaos given form.

  It jutted from the mountainside like a tumor. Stone structures stacked at angles that shouldn't work. Walls leaning. Buildings growing from the mountain itself in ways that suggested organic growth rather than planned construction. Like something alive had pushed its way out of the rock and hardened into permanent architecture.

  The walls were scorched black in sections. Other parts had melted into glass that caught afternoon sun in ways that hurt to look at directly. Massive stone formations had been crushed and reshaped into new configurations that served no obvious purpose beyond proving someone could do it.

  Every surface carried marks. Scars. Evidence of Champions using affinities to carve their presence into the fortress itself. Fire that had burned so hot it turned stone into obsidian. Cold that had shattered rock into crystalline patterns. Force that had compressed entire sections into densities that shouldn't exist in nature.

  The fortress wasn't built. It was MADE. Generation after generation of Champions leaving their mark. Shaping the mountain. Claiming space through raw application of power that made the grid's careful construction look like children playing with blocks.

  Jake's enhanced senses cataloged details faster than conscious thought could process. The melted section near the eastern wall would have required Fire affinity pushed to temperatures he'd never attempted. The compressed stone formations suggested Earth manipulation on scales that made his rock-pulling look like party tricks. The crystalline patterns spoke to Cold fusion so complete it had fundamentally altered material structure.

  And the time required...

  Jake ran the calculations. With his current understanding of Stone affinity, he could probably carve a small room from the mountain. It would take him weeks. Maybe months. Constant application of power he barely understood.

  The Champions who'd carved THIS? The ones who'd reshaped entire sections of mountain into functional fortress?

  Hours. Maybe days for the larger sections. The battle with the prairie wyrms had shown him what Champion-level power looked like in combat. This architecture was the same thing applied to construction. Casual. Efficient. The kind of work you did between more important tasks.

  I spent months pulling pebbles from dirt. They reshape mountains in afternoons.

  The gap between Jake's abilities and what Champions could do wasn't just large. It was a chasm so wide that Jake's borrowed body felt small just looking at the evidence.

  But that feeling. That sense of inadequacy. That wasn't fear.

  It was hunger.

  The fortress had been built around something. Jake could feel it even from the gates. A presence at the heart of the structure. Something that tugged at the scaffolding in his structure. It pulled into his gut with recognition that felt almost conscious.

  The cave was in there. At the center. And the entire fortress had grown up around it like a shrine built to something that predated the builders.

  Jake filed the sensation away. The shard reinforcements reaction. The pull. The way his parasitic biology responded to proximity with something that felt like coming home.

  Later. That mattered later. Right now he needed to observe. Learn. Catalog the culture that existed in this place.

  He followed the Champions until they split off, one by one. Some of the chosen following when given their commands. The female Centaur gestured for Jake to follow her along with one other Champion.

  “Since you haven’t met the Blessed Bitch yet, I’ll get a few rounds. I expect repayment.”

  The alehouse sat near the fortress's outer ring. Stone and timber construction that looked newer than the surrounding architecture. Less scarred. Less carved. Like something built by people who still cared about function rather than just proving they could reshape matter.

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  Inside was chaos.

  Champions everywhere. Dozens of them. Every species Jake had encountered and several he hadn't. Bovari and Arieti mixing freely. Cervini darting between tables with the kind of speed that suggested they were working rather than celebrating. Creatures Jake couldn't immediately identify laughing and drinking and brawling in corners while others just watched.

  The noise was overwhelming. Not just volume. The sheer cacophony of suppressed emotion finally released. Laughter that went too loud. Arguments that escalated into physical confrontation without anyone intervening. The sound of people who'd spent their entire lives under grid control suddenly given permission to BE something.

  Jake let the female Centaur guide him to a table near the room's center. Good position. He could see most of the space from here. Could read the social dynamics playing out in real time.

  She returned with two massive tankards. Clay construction. Simple. Functional. The ale inside smelled strong enough to register even through Thornback's less sensitive nose.

  "Drink up, Priest. You earned it."

  Jake drank. Let the alcohol hit his system. Felt his parasitic biology start to process it immediately. The toxins that would have made Thornback drunk tried to filter out before they could affect consciousness. But Jake held them. Didn't purge them. Let the effect build deliberately.

  If ever Jake needed a drink, it was now. He looked around the large open room in wonder. At all the things he had seen in this strange world, this, by far, was one of the absolute weirdest shit that any earth imagination could have come up with.

  The female Centaur drank with the kind of practiced efficiency that suggested this was routine. "I'm Swiftmane. Five runs. No losses. Well, one loss, but he came back three runs later so I don't count it." She grinned. Sharp. Predatory. "You're going to do fine here, Priest. That punch told me everything I need to know."

  "What did it tell you?" Jake kept his voice level. Playing the role of someone genuinely curious rather than cataloging information.

  "That you're not afraid to hit first. That you calculate. That you don't waste energy on performance or posturing. You wanted him down so you put him down and moved on." Swiftmane took another drink. "Champions who hesitate die. Champions who need to justify their violence die. You didn't hesitate. Didn't justify. Just acted. That's survival."

  Jake nodded. Let the compliment sit. Didn't deflect or deny. Just accepted it as accurate assessment and moved on.

  "How does it work here?" He gestured at the room. "The grid has rules. Structure. This looks like..."

  "Chaos?" Swiftmane laughed. "It is. Deliberate chaos. The fortress is outside the grid's laws. Our only duty is to the cavern. Everything else is whatever we make it."

  "No rules at all?"

  "One rule. Runs matter. That's it. How many times you've gone into the cavern and come back alive. That number is everything. Respect. Status. Authority. All of it comes down to runs." She pointed at her shoulder where Jake noticed a series of small brands burned into the hide. Five marks. Five runs. "Zero runs? You're meat. Fresh. Untested. Could die on the first descent. One or two runs? You've proven you can survive but you're still learning. Three or four? You're competent. Five or more? You're a veteran. People listen when you talk."

  "And disputes?"

  Swiftmane's grin widened. "Physical. Always physical. Someone disrespects you, you hit them. They hit back. It escalates until someone stops or someone with more runs steps in. Teams protect their own though. Five person units. You mess with one, you mess with all of them. Most disputes end before they start because nobody wants to fight an entire veteran team."

  Jake cataloged the information. Teams. Five person units. Bound together by runs and survival. That explained the protection dynamic. Also explained why pledges were being observed so carefully. Teams needed members. Attrition meant constant recruitment.

  "What about..." Jake gestured vaguely at the room. At the mixing of species. At the obvious intermingling that would never happen in the grid towns.

  "Sex? Relationships? Whatever?" Swiftmane shrugged. "Life's short. Especially here. Most of us don't make it past three runs. You want to die a virgin? Go ahead. But most Champions figure out pretty quick that the grid's rules about purity and species separation are just another way to control you. Here we do what we want. With who we want. As long as both parties are willing, nobody cares."

  Jake took another swig and felt slight drunkenness building. Let his posture relax slightly. Let his eyes drift around the room with the kind of unfocused attention that suggested alcohol was taking effect.

  And that's when he saw her.

  Across the room. Near the far wall. A Verrin female. Obese like the Champion Verrin who'd demonstrated gravity manipulation. Tusks. Porcine features. Quadruped lower body that marked her species as clearly as Thornback's horns marked his.

  She was obviously drunk. Actually drunk. Her team surrounded her. Four others. Mixed species. Celebrating something with the kind of loose joy that came from genuine affection.

  And she was looking right at Jake.

  Not subtle glances. Direct eye contact. The kind of interest that didn't need words to communicate intent.

  Jake met her gaze. Held it. Let his expression suggest reciprocal interest while his mind ran completely different calculations.

  "Champion. Verrin. Five runs if she's part of a veteran team. Which means she has affinities I don't. Understanding I need. Structures in her brain that I can copy if I can get access."

  The plan formed with crystalline clarity. The kind of cold precision that defined Jake's true nature.

  Let her come to him. She was drunk. Interested. Would do the work herself. Get her to a private room. Didn't matter if they actually did anything. The shadow vine would put her to sleep before that became relevant. Then Jake could slide into her mind. Copy what he needed. Take everything her brain had to offer. Walk out before she woke up.

  She'd remember nothing except getting drunk and passing out. Wouldn't know she'd been violated. Wouldn't know Jake had been inside her consciousness cataloging structures and stealing understanding.

  Clean. Efficient. Completely parasitic.

  Jake took another drink. Let the eye contact continue. Played the role of interested recruit while his mind cataloged everything about her. Her team. Their obvious bond. The way they celebrated together. The genuine affection that marked them as family rather than just co-workers.

  Five runs. No losses. Almost unheard of. That's what Swiftmane had said about her own team. If this Verrin's team had similar statistics, they were exceptional. The kind of unit that survived through skill and coordination rather than just luck.

  Which made them valuable. Not emotionally. Jake didn't care about their bond or their survival or their celebration. They were valuable as information sources. As potential targets. As walking libraries of Champion-level understanding that Jake could consume if the opportunity presented itself.

  The Verrin was the key. The drunk one. The one making eye contact. The one who would come to him if he played this right.

  Jake sat back on his haunches. Let his borrowed body language suggest relaxation. Interest. Availability. All the social signals that would encourage her approach while his mind remained completely focused on the hunt.

  "Come on. Come over here. Make this easy."

  - - -

  Broadhorn arrived twenty minutes later.

  Jake spotted him before he entered. Enhanced senses picking up the bull's physiological signatures through the crowd noise. Elevated heart rate. Stress hormones. The kind of chemical cocktail that suggested Broadhorn was not happy about waking up in the dust.

  But he was quieter than before.

  The aggressive confidence that had defined him since memory was muted. Not gone. Just... tempered. Like getting knocked unconscious in front of everyone had recalibrated his sense of where he stood in the social hierarchy.

  Swiftmane saw him enter and waved. "Broadhorn! Glad you decided not to nap the night away! Come drink with us!"

  The bull approached slowly. His eyes found Jake immediately. Held the gaze for a moment. Something passed between them. Not understanding exactly. But recognition. Broadhorn had learned something from the punch. Had realized that the quiet blessed Priest was something more dangerous than appearance suggested.

  He sat at the table's far end. As far from Jake as the space allowed. Accepted a tankard from one of the Bovari Champions. Drank without the enthusiasm he'd shown before.

  His eyes tracked Jake's attention. Saw where the gaze kept drifting. Across the room. To the Verrin female. The obvious interest.

  Broadhorn's expression curdled. "You're disgusting."

  The word hung in the air for a second. Not loud. Just stated with the kind of absolute certainty that came from genuine belief.

  Swiftmane and the Bovari Champion who'd joined them both burst into laughter. Not mocking Broadhorn. Just genuinely amused by the sentiment.

  "Don't discourage the Priest from his desires!" The Bovari Champion's voice carried the roughness of someone who'd been drinking for hours. "We all might die tomorrow. Some of us WILL die tomorrow. There's no need to hold back on whatever you want. This fortress is outside the grid's laws. Our only duty is to the cavern!"

  "To the cavern!" Swiftmane raised her tankard. The Bovari Champion raised his. Others at nearby tables heard the toast and raised theirs too.

  "To the Blessed Bitch!"

  The entire alehouse erupted. Tankards raised. The words repeated. "To the Blessed Bitch!"

  But Jake's enhanced senses caught what the words themselves didn't convey. The way voices shifted when they said it. The physiological changes. Heart rates that spiked slightly. The mixture of reverence and fear and something that looked almost like love.

  They said it like a joke. Like irreverent soldiers mocking their commander. But underneath the bravado was genuine worship. The kind that came from encountering something so far beyond human comprehension that mockery was the only way to process it.

  The cave was a she. They called her the Blessed Bitch. And despite the crude language, they meant every word of reverence.

  Jake raised his own tankard. Played along. Let the toast wash over him while his mind cataloged the contradiction. The Champions were addicts. Were worshippers. Were prisoners of something they couldn't stop returning to even knowing it would probably kill them eventually.

  And they celebrated that imprisonment like it was freedom.

  Broadhorn drank reluctantly. His expression said everything about what he thought of interspecies relationships and crude jokes about holy caves. But he drank. Because not drinking would mark him as separate. Would make him a target in a culture that valued conformity to chaos over individual purity.

  The toast ended. The noise resumed. And across the room, the Verrin female stood.

  Her team noticed immediately. One of them, a Cervini male with elaborate antlers, grinned and said something even Jake's enhanced hearing couldn't quite catch over the crowd noise. But the tone was clear. Encouragement. Support. The kind of good-natured ribbing that came from genuine affection.

  The Verrin laughed. Said something back. Her team cheered. Raised their tankards. Celebrated her decision to approach the new recruit like it was a victory rather than a hunt.

  They had no idea. Couldn't know. Their teammate was walking toward something that looked like a drunk Bovari Priest playing at confidence. They saw a young bull. Fresh. Untested. Someone their friend could have fun with before her next run.

  Jake saw prey approaching. Saw opportunity walking toward him on four legs. Saw a Champion carrying affinities and understanding and structures he wanted to copy. Saw the hunt reaching its inevitable conclusion.

  The Verrin female crossed the alehouse with the careful balance of someone drunk enough to be uninhibited but not so drunk she couldn't walk. Her team watched. Cheered. Raised tankards in support.

  And Jake sat very still. Let her come. Let the predator instincts that had defined him since Earth guide the performance. Relaxed. Interested. Available. All the signals that said yes without saying anything at all.

  Krove watched from a table near the room's edge. The Warmaster's scarred form partially hidden by the crowd. But Jake felt his attention. Felt the weight of assessment from someone who recognized exactly what was happening.

  The old Centaur's expression didn't change. But something in his posture suggested approval. The same recognition that had passed between them after the punch. Predator acknowledging predator. Hunter respecting hunter.

  Jake filed it away. Krove saw him clearly. Not his parasite form, of course, but his parasitic nature to be sure. He saw past the Priest performance. He saw the thing underneath that calculated and hunted and took without hesitation.

  And approved.

  The Verrin female reached Jake's table. Stood there for a moment. Swaying slightly. Her tusks caught the firelight from the alehouse's central hearth.

  "You're the new one. The Priest." Her voice was thick with alcohol but coherent. Interested. "I'm Mudtusk. Five runs. My team and I have second descent tomorrow morning. We're celebrating."

  Jake met her gaze. Let his expression suggest reciprocal interest. "Congratulations. Five runs is impressive."

  "Impressive is surviving them all together." Mudtusk gestured back toward her team. They were watching. Grinning. Clearly enjoying this. "We don't lose people. Stick together. Watch each other's backs. It's the only way to make it past three."

  "Smart strategy." Jake kept his tone even. Genuine. Let her believe he was interested in her as a person rather than a target. "Your team looks close."

  "They're family." The way she said it carried weight. Truth. The kind of bond that only formed through shared trauma. "We've bled together. Nearly died together. Survived together. That's what makes us strong."

  Jake nodded. Let the sentiment sit. Didn't contradict or dismiss. Just accepted it as her truth while his own truth remained completely separate.

  Mudtusk swayed closer. Her expression shifted from conversational to direct. "You want to get out of here? Find somewhere quieter?"

  Behind her, her team cheered. Raised tankards. Celebrated their friend's successful approach. The Cervini male shouted something encouraging that made the others laugh.

  Jake let the fake drunkenness color his response. Let his posture suggest he'd been drinking more than he had. "Quieter? I think if we leave here together, quiet is not something that we will find."

  As if the entire room had been listening and watching, the audience roared their approval. Jake stood and offered his arm to the large Verrin. Gave the crowed a smile and walked with his new lady right out the door.

  Swiftmane watched them leave with an approving grin. Raised her tankard in salute. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do, Priest!"

  The alehouse roared with laughter. More toasts. More celebration. Champions living like tomorrow didn't exist because for many of them it wouldn't.

  And Jake followed Mudtusk out the alehouse's exit. Followed prey that had no idea it was being hunted. Followed opportunity that would let him steal everything he needed without anyone knowing it had happened.

  The cold precision of it should have bothered him. Should have triggered guilt or hesitation or some recognition that what he was about to do was violation at its most fundamental level.

  But it didn't.

  Because that feeling. That questioning. That was Fallen. And Fallen was contamination Jake didn't need anymore. And it seemed that whatever was left of Fallen wanted no chance to glimpse the deeds that Jake would do tonight.

  He was Jake. The predator. The parasite. The thing that took what it wanted and walked away without looking back.

  And tonight he was going to take everything a five-run Champion's mind had to offer.

  - - -

  END CHAPTER 63