The Glimmerglider's wings beat steadily as Jake climbed from the hillside warren into morning light. The healing had worked better than expected. Not perfect. The creature's body still carried damage that would take days to fully repair, cellular structure reinforced but not completely restored. It was functional and strong enough for sustained flight. That’s all he needed for now.

  Below, the golden grasslands stretched endlessly in every direction. Jake gained altitude, letting thermals do most of the work as he spiraled upward into clean air that tasted nothing like the swamp's perpetual rot. The ocean lay behind him now, a distant blue line on the horizon that represented three days of hell he had no intention of ever repeating. Ahead, the Plains Kingdom, his new home.

  As long as I don’t burn the place to the ground.

  His Life sense painted the landscape in pulses. Vegetation everywhere. Dense and thriving in ways the swamp's corruption had never allowed. Clean growth without the inverted wrongness that had marked everything in that festering hell. This continent felt healthier. A crystal clear lake compared to the poisoned catastrophe he had left behind.

  Jake flew for perhaps twenty minutes before something caught his attention. A dark smudge interrupting the grass maybe ten miles inland. Not a natural formation. Too regular. Too geometric even from this distance. His Glimmerglider vision focused, enhanced optics that put human eyesight to shame resolving details that would have been invisible to his original body.

  Civilization. Finally.

  The thought arrived with relief Jake hadn't realized he'd been carrying. Three days over empty ocean followed by a near-death experience with a winged snake had left him feeling more isolated than any point since Hope's curse had thrown him into this nightmare world. Even the underground rabbit city, beautiful as it was, had been alien in ways that emphasized how far from Kentucky he had come.

  But this looked organized. Deliberate. Human-scale at least, even if the inhabitants weren't human.

  I could dig being a rabbit dude. But I would definitely have to invest in a pocket watch.

  As Jake drew closer, the dark smudge resolved into rows. Thousands of them stretching across the landscape in orderly lines that suggested cultivation rather than wild growth. Trees. Orchards arranged with geometric precision that made Earth's commercial farming look casual by comparison.

  And hanging from those branches were shapes that made the Glimmerglider's hunger instincts flare with sudden intensity.

  Fruit.

  Not scattered wild growth. Not the random distribution nature preferred. Organized cultivation with trees spaced at exact intervals, branches heavy with produce that caught sunlight in shades of red and yellow and purple.

  Food. Real food.

  The rabbit city's mushrooms had restored him, given the Glimmerglider's body enough energy to heal the worst damage. But mushrooms were survival fuel. Functional. What hung from those branches below looked like actual proper fruit, the kind of sugar-rich nutrition the Glimmerglider's biology was designed to process with maximum efficiency.

  Jake's trajectory shifted immediately. The town could wait. Whatever lay at the center of these orchards could wait. Right now he needed to taste whatever was growing in such impossible abundance.

  He descended toward the nearest section, where trees bore fruit the size of apples with skin so perfectly red it looked almost artificial. Too flawless. Too uniform. Like someone had grown them to exact specifications rather than letting nature handle the details.

  The orchards stretched for miles. Literally miles of organized fruit production radiating outward from what Jake assumed was a settlement center he couldn't quite see yet. This wasn't a few trees someone had planted for personal use. This was industrial-scale agriculture. The kind of operation that required serious planning and coordination.

  Jake landed on a branch near the heaviest cluster of red fruit, the Glimmerglider's weight barely registering against wood that felt solid and well-maintained. Up close, the fruit's perfection was almost unsettling. No blemishes. No insect damage. No natural variation in size or color. Just dozens of identical red spheres hanging in neat arrangements like they'd been placed by hand rather than grown.

  When in Rome.

  Jake bit into the nearest fruit. The skin broke easily, releasing juice that flooded the Glimmerglider's taste receptors with overwhelming sweetness. Not quite apple. Richer. Almost tropical, like pineapple mixed with something he couldn't identify from Earth's limited fruit catalog. The sugar hit his system immediately, pure energy that the small body processed with efficient hunger that bordered on desperation.

  Holy shit that's incredible.

  Jake devoured three more in quick succession, juice dripping from the Glimmerglider's mouth as he tore through fruit with single-minded focus. The energy coursed through him in waves, cellular batteries that had been running on fumes suddenly topped off with premium fuel. His Life affinity registered the boost, metabolism accelerating to convert sugar into usable reserves.

  He was reaching for a fifth fruit when movement below caught his attention.

  Something was working among the trees. Jake's vision focused, tracking the figure moving through the orchard rows with practiced efficiency.

  The creature was unlike anything Jake had encountered so far. Quadruped, but not horse-based like the centaurs he'd read about in Earth mythology. The lower body was distinctly porcine. Thick haunches covered in coarse bristled hide that looked more like wire than fur. Cloven hooves designed for muddy ground rather than running. A body built for strength and endurance rather than speed or grace.

  The upper torso rose from this pig-base in what should have been human proportions. Should have been. But the face made Jake's stomach turn with visceral revulsion that had nothing to do with rational assessment and everything to do with the uncanny valley screaming that something was profoundly wrong.

  Hanging jowls that sagged below a weak chin. Small eyes set too close together beneath a sloped forehead that suggested limited intelligence whether that was fair or not. Tusks jutting from a mouth that seemed permanently twisted into what might have been a scowl or might have just been the creature's natural resting expression. Coarse hair sprouted from skin that was neither quite pig nor quite human but some unsettling mixture that emphasized the worst features of both.

  Pig dude. Definitely calling this species pig dude.

  The creature was harvesting fruit with the same mechanical precision Jake had been devouring it. Reaching up with surprisingly dexterous hands to pluck the red spheres one at a time. Each one got examined briefly, probably checking for the kind of perfection Jake had noticed earlier, then placed in a woven basket with care that suggested quality control was enforced and deviation had consequences.

  The creature worked without looking up, movements so automatic they'd probably become unconscious. Reach. Pluck. Examine. Place. Reach. Pluck. Examine. Place. Over and over with the kind of efficiency that came from repetition ingrained so deeply it had become reflex.

  How long has this one been doing this exact job? Years? Decades? Its entire life?

  Jake was still processing that disturbing thought when it looked up and spotted him.

  The pig dude's small eyes widened. It made a sound that combined surprise and outrage in equal measure. Then it shouted something in a language Jake had no reference for. Harsh syllables that sounded like grunts mixed with actual words. The tone was clear enough though. Get out of the trees. Stop eating the fruit. This is not for you.

  Which, to be fair, Jake absolutely had been stealing.

  The Porcinian bent down, grabbed a rock from between the tree roots, and hurled it with surprising accuracy.

  The stone whistled past Jake's position, missing the Glimmerglider by inches. Close enough that he felt the air displacement. The pig dude shouted again, grabbing another rock, making it very clear that glowing flying things were not welcome in the fruit trees.

  Jake's temper, which had been simmering on low boil since the ocean crossing and had nearly reached breaking point during the winged snake chase, suddenly flared white hot.

  He'd been through hell. Three days flying a corpse over empty water on nothing but spite and Life affinity. Nearly killed by a predator that had chased him into a rabbit warren. Forced to abandon the first peaceful place he'd found in this entire cursed world because of a mission based on fragmented memories from a dead man who might have been wrong about everything.

  And now some pig-faced centaur was throwing rocks at him for eating fruit that literally grew on trees in such overwhelming abundance they probably had more than they could possibly use.

  Not Today Porky! Absolutely not!

  Jake activated the Fear Aura.

  He'd absorbed the ability from a gremlin chief months ago, back when the swamp had been trying to kill him in new and creative ways every single day. He had made SO Many mistakes back then. He had no control. No direction.

  Now, the aura could be subtle when Jake wanted it to be. A low-level wrongness that made prey animals nervous without understanding why. Useful for herding targets or creating openings in a fight.

  But Jake didn't want subtle right now.

  He cranked it to maximum intensity, pushing his connection to the concept of primal fear as hard as his Life affinity would allow. The magic responded instantly, flooding outward from the Glimmerglider's small form in waves of pure predatory menace.

  The effect on the hideously obese porkster was immediate and deeply satisfying.

  The pig dude's aggressive posture collapsed like someone had cut its strings. Small eyes went wide with terror so primal it bypassed rational thought entirely. The basket of carefully harvested fruit tumbled from suddenly nerveless hands, red spheres scattering across the ground in a way that would probably result in punishment later but didn't matter at all in this moment of pure survival panic.

  The creature made a sound Jake had never heard before. Part squeal, part wail, utterly inhuman in its terror. The kind of noise prey makes when it knows the predator has it cornered and death is coming.

  Then it ran.

  Not a dignified retreat. Not a tactical withdrawal. Full panic flight with all four legs churning dirt as it bolted away from the thing its hindbrain had just identified as the most dangerous predator it had ever encountered. The pig dude's body crashed through orchard rows without caring about the fruit it was knocking loose or the branches it was breaking. Pure animal terror overriding any concern for consequences.

  Jake watched it disappear into the distance, satisfaction warming his chest in ways that probably weren't healthy but felt absolutely justified after the week he'd had.

  That's what I thought.

  He settled back onto the branch, helping himself to two more of the red spheres just to make a point nobody was present to appreciate. The juice tasted even better now. Sweeter with petty vindication.

  But as the satisfaction faded and rational thought returned, the encounter raised questions Jake couldn't ignore.

  The Swineman? No… It had been terrified. Not just scared. Existentially terrified by the Fear Aura in ways that suggested it had never encountered a real predator before. Had never needed to develop any psychological defenses against things that might hunt it.

  That implied safety. Security. A life so controlled and predictable that the concept of danger had become theoretical rather than immediate.

  What kind of system creates that? What kind of control makes prey animals forget they're prey?

  Jake finished the fruit, licked juice from the Glimmerglider's mouth, and decided it was time to actually see what lay at the center of these orchards. He'd gotten sidetracked by food and territorial pig dudes, but his original goal had been investigating that dark smudge that turned out to be civilization.

  Time to see what passed for civilization on this continent.

  He launched from the branch, wings carrying him above the orchard canopy. From altitude, the scope of the fruit production became even more apparent. Miles of organized trees stretching in every direction. Thousands of them arranged in sections by variety. Red fruit here. Yellow-orange there. Purple further out. Each type segregated into its own area with the same geometric precision.

  And in the distance, maybe three miles inward from where Jake had been eating, the orchards gave way to something else.

  Buildings.

  Jake flew toward them, curiosity overriding the lingering satisfaction of terrorizing a pig dude. As he closed the distance, details emerged that made his enhanced senses sharpen with sudden alertness.

  The settlement sat in perfect geometric organization. Not approximately organized. Not roughly planned. Perfect. Buildings arranged in precise squares with sides that met at exact ninety-degree angles. Roads intersecting in a grid pattern that looked like it had been laid out with surveying equipment rather than organic growth over generations.

  Jake circled the town's perimeter, taking in the layout from above. Dwellings of identical size arranged in concentric squares radiating outward from a central structure. Storage buildings. Workshops. Communal barns with dimensions that suggested they'd been built from a single template rather than custom-designed for specific needs.

  Everything the same. Not similar. Identical.

  Fuck me. This looks like someone sat down with SimCity, then copy-pasted the same template through the whole place! Because why bother with variety? Do I love it? I think I do!

  At the very center of the settlement, larger than everything else and positioned with geometric precision that put it equidistant from all edges, sat a building that made Jake's skin crawl despite the Glimmerglider's inability to actually experience goosebumps.

  A temple.

  He recognized the architecture immediately even though he'd never seen this specific structure before. Serpentine motifs carved into stone that looked like it had been shaped rather than cut. Coiled forms wrapping around pillars in ways that suggested the stone had been liquid once and hardened into permanent worship. The unmistakable aesthetic of Pantathian ideology translated into construction.

  Of course. Can't have a town without reminding everyone who owns them. I changed my mind, I hate it.

  Jake descended slowly, circling the temple while maintaining enough altitude to avoid drawing attention. The building dominated everything around it. Every road led directly to its entrance. The dwelling squares arranged in patterns that put the temple at the exact geometric center. Like the entire settlement existed to support this single structure and everything else was just infrastructure to maintain the worship.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The stone was carved with scenes Jake didn’t recognize, but was one hundred percent sure it was pictured in ‘Propaganda Monthly’. Pantathian figures in positions of authority. Subjugated species kneeling in submission. The familiar marketing of divine right and natural hierarchy that every tyrant in history had used to justify their control.

  But seeing it here, in permanent stone, made it worse somehow. This wasn't a town living under Pantathian threat. This was a town built FOR Pantathian worship. Designed from the ground up to enforce their ideology through architecture itself.

  Jake's gaze swept the settlement again, seeing it with new understanding. The identical buildings weren't just efficiency. They were uniformity enforcement. The precise angles weren't just organization. They were control made visible. The central temple placement wasn't just symbolic. It was a constant reminder that everything, every single thing in this settlement, oriented around Pantathian dominance.

  And the Pigtaurs? No. The residents moved through it all like it was normal. Like streets that only allowed right-angle turns were how streets were supposed to be. Like buildings that looked exactly identical were just how architecture worked. Like having a massive snake temple at the center of their lives was unremarkable background noise.

  Do they even see it anymore? Or has it been ingrained in them? It’s probably been this way for so long they can't imagine anything else.

  The comparison to Hawth arrived unbidden. Messy, scared, fucked-up Hawth where buildings had been added over generations wherever people felt like putting them. Streets that curved because that's where people naturally walked, following paths worn by foot traffic rather than imposed by planning. Structures rebuilt and modified as families grew or shrank, added onto when someone needed more space or torn down when they didn't.

  The tavern on the corner because Old Man Rothus had liked that spot fifty years ago and nobody had bothered to tell him he couldn't build there. Houses with personality. With history. With the kind of organic chaos that came from humans making individual choices over decades.

  Hawth had been under Pantathian threat. Lived in constant fear of the snake fuckers coming back to collect tribute or punish resistance. But they'd lived. Actually lived. Made choices. Built things their own way. Created a community that reflected human stubbornness and creativity and refusal to be completely controlled even under occupation.

  These people didn't have that. Couldn't have that. Because there was no corner to put a tavern on. Every corner was already assigned. Every building already built. Every role already filled. The system was complete and they just inhabited it, cogs in a machine they'd never been given the option to help design.

  They can't even move a building six feet to the left without breaking the pattern. Can't decide to make their dwelling a little larger or their workshop a different shape. Everything's already decided. Forever.

  Jake continued circling, processing the implications. This level of control required planning. Serious planning across timescales that made individual lifetimes irrelevant. Someone had sat down and designed this template, then enforced it so completely that deviation became impossible.

  How many generations had lived and died in these identical buildings? How many pig dudes had harvested fruit from those orchards without ever questioning why their entire town specialized in it?

  Do they remember there could be another way? Or has the system been in place so long they think this is natural?

  That possibility was worse than active oppression. At least slaves who remembered freedom could dream of getting it back. But slaves who'd never known freedom couldn't even imagine what they'd lost.

  Jake banked away from the settlement, heading east. He'd seen enough here. Understood the pattern well enough to recognize it if repeated. Time to see something that wasn’t perfectly placed.

  I don’t think someone in the conclave could thrive in a place like this.

  He climbed to cruising altitude. From up here, a massive earthen road connecting this fruit town to whatever lay east was impossible to miss. A highway cutting through golden grass in a line so straight it looked like someone had used a ruler the size of a continent. No curves. No accommodation for hills or streams or natural terrain. Just relentless geometric precision extending toward the horizon like an arrow aimed at something in the distance.

  Even the road itself was impressive in a deeply unsettling way. Easily wide enough for two carts to pass each other with room to spare. Packed earth maintained so well it looked almost paved. No ruts. No erosion. No weeds growing through cracks because there were no cracks. Just smooth, level surface that suggested constant upkeep and engineering on a scale that made Roman roads look like dirt paths.

  How many workers does it take to maintain this?

  The flight took time. Real time. Jake estimated he was covering maybe sixty miles per hour at sustainable speed, which meant the journey ate through two hours of daylight while the grasslands scrolled past below in endless golden sameness. The road never wavered. Never deviated. Just cut through the plains like a surgical incision.

  But eventually, another dark smudge appeared in the distance.

  Another settlement.

  And as Jake approached, the familiarity was immediate and deeply disturbing.

  Same layout. Same geometric precision. Same concentric squares radiating from a central temple. Same roads intersecting at perfect right angles. Same identical buildings arranged with the same exact spacing.

  120 miles between settlements. Two hours of flight. Close enough to connect, far enough to isolate.

  But the agricultural zone was different.

  Where the first settlement had dedicated miles of space to fruit orchards, this one had fields of tall reeds. Dense rows of fibrous plants reaching ten feet high in some sections, their stalks swaying in wind that carried across the plains. The reeds stretched for miles in organized sections, probably covering as much space as the fruit trees had.

  And working among them were different creatures.

  Not pig-based. Horse-based. Classic centaur proportions with flowing manes and elegant features that made the pig men look even more unfortunate by comparison. These were beautiful in ways that approached art. Graceful movements as they cut stalks with curved blades. Noble bearing even while performing agricultural labor. Everything the romantic mythology of Earth centaurs had promised.

  And they were harvesting reeds with the same mechanical efficiency the Swinetaurs? had harvested fruit. No, still not right.

  Jake circled lower, curiosity overwhelming caution. The cut reeds were being bundled and transported inward toward the settlement center. He followed the flow, watching as carts pulled by more centaurs delivered the harvest to workshops on the town's edge.

  Processing. The centaurs were processing the reeds with practiced efficiency. Stripping them. Treating them with something that made the fibers flexible. Weaving them together in complex patterns that created large sheets of material.

  Building material.

  Jake's gaze swept the town's structures, seeing them properly for the first time. These weren't stone buildings like the temple. They were woven. Constructed from processed reeds that had been hardened somehow into permanent walls. They look the same as the walls in pig town as well. The same fibrous pattern visible on every surface, testament to thousands of hours of labor turning plants into shelter.

  Textiles. This entire settlement produces textiles.

  And just like the fruit town, everything else was identical. Same template. Same geometric precision. Same central temple with the same serpentine carvings. Same roads. Same dwelling squares. Same everything except the single agricultural specialty that defined the town's contribution to whatever larger system this was part of.

  Jake's mind started making connections he didn't like. One settlement grew fruit. Another produced textiles. Specialized production with perfect uniformity everywhere else.

  This isn't coincidence. This is design. Intentional specialization.

  He needed a third data point to confirm the pattern.

  Jake flew north, following one of the four roads that extended from the textile town. Another two-hour journey. Another 120 miles of relentless straight line cutting through golden grasslands. And sure enough, at the expected distance, another settlement appeared.

  Same layout. Same temple placement. Same geometric perfection. Same four roads extending in cardinal directions like the town was the center of its own personal compass.

  Except where fruit and reeds had been, this settlement had sheep.

  Hundreds of them grazing in organized paddocks that covered miles of agricultural space. And tending them were yet another quadruped race that made Jake's brain hurt trying to process the implications.

  Not pig-based. Not horse-based. Sheep-based centaurs with curling horns rising from humanoid heads. Thick wool covering their lower quadruped bodies in fluffy layers that probably made summer miserable but kept them warm through plains winters. They moved among their flocks with the kind of calm efficiency that suggested generations of practice.

  Wool. This settlement produces wool.

  Another specialty. Another single product. Another role assigned and enforced through the same template organization.

  Jake climbed higher, pushing the Glimmerglider toward maximum altitude despite the strain on still-healing wings. He needed perspective. Needed to see the full scope of what he'd stumbled into.

  The grasslands spread below like a golden ocean. And scattered across it in geometric perfection were more settlements. Jake counted them carefully. Twelve visible from this height. Probably more beyond the horizon's curve. Each one positioned at regular intervals that more than suggested deliberate spacing rather than organic placement.

  And connecting them all were roads. Massive earthen highways running straight as ruler lines across the plains. North-south. East-west. Intersecting at the settlements in perfect right angles. A lattice of infrastructure linking the specialized production centers in a network that covered this entire continent.

  A grid. The whole fucking continent is organized like a grid.

  The pattern was unmistakable now. A crystalline matrix stretched across the plains in perfect two-dimensional organization. Settlements spaced at regular intervals. Roads connecting them in geometric precision. Every single town identical except for the agricultural specialty that defined its economic function.

  And as understanding crystallized, horror followed.

  This wasn't a few towns that happened to trade with each other. This was continental engineering. Deliberate planning executed across distances that would take months to travel on foot. Generations of effort to create this perfect, terrible system where every settlement produced exactly one thing and depended on the network for everything else.

  Jake estimated the spacing between settlements, using the Glimmerglider's enhanced vision to gauge distances. Roughly 120 miles if he was judging scale correctly. Far enough that traveling between them would take serious time. A centaur pulling a cart might make twenty miles in a day if the roads were good and the weather cooperated. Six days of travel to reach the next settlement. A week or more for a round trip.

  Close enough to enable trade. Far enough to prevent easy communication or organized resistance.

  Mobility possible. Alliance impossible.

  The genius of it made him sick. Isolate the populations just enough that they can't coordinate. Make the travel time long enough that organizing rebellion across multiple settlements would be a logistical nightmare. But keep them close enough that the road network can function, that carts can move goods, that the system can extract tribute efficiently.

  And specialize them so completely that rebellion means starvation. Even if one settlement somehow developed resistance sentiment, they'd be facing the choice between fighting back and watching their children starve because they couldn't produce their own textiles or wool or fruit or whatever their neighbors' specialty happened to be.

  Every settlement dependent on the network for basic survival. Every population locked into their assigned role. The whole system functioning like a massive machine where individual choice had been engineered out of existence.

  And enforcing it all, visible in every single settlement, was that central temple. The constant architectural reminder of who designed this system. Who decided that pig dudes would harvest fruit, Centaurs would weave reeds, and sheep folk would tend flocks. Who owned everything and everyone.

  These mother fuckers have perfected Communism!

  The thought arrived with dark amusement Jake couldn't quite suppress despite the horror. He'd known guys back on Earth who would have loved this setup. True believers in collective efficiency who thought capitalism's competition was wasteful redundancy. Everyone contributing according to ability. Everyone receiving according to need. Pure optimization with no profit motive corrupting the purity of resource distribution.

  From each according to their ability. To each according to their need. The old Marxist dream made manifest across an entire continent.

  Jake had also known guys who would have burned it all down on principle.

  He'd always been the latter type. Personal freedom mattered more than efficiency. Individual choice mattered more than collective optimization. The government had no business telling people how to live as long as they weren't actively hurting anyone else.

  If a dude wanted to smoke crack in his basement, that was his business. Jake didn't care what anyone did in their basement, and he sure as hell didn't want anyone poking around in his.

  But the Pantathians hadn't just poked around in basements here. They'd moved in permanently. Brought their own cot. Set up surveillance. Made it very clear that there were no private basements anymore because every basement belonged to the system and would be inspected regularly for compliance.

  Government overreach taken to its logical extreme. Individual rights erased in favor of collective efficiency. Freedom sacrificed completely on the altar of perfect organization.

  And the truly disturbing part was how beautiful it looked from up here. The grid was gorgeous in its symmetry. Perfect spacing creating a pattern that approached art. Golden fields and orderly settlements arranged like gems on a vast geometric necklace. Efficient. Optimized. Everything in its place and a place for everything.

  Pure tyranny wrapped in aesthetic perfection.

  Jake thought about Earth politics. About the endless debates between freedom and security. Liberty versus order. Individual rights versus collective good. Every society in human history had struggled with that balance, trying to find the sweet spot where people had enough freedom to thrive but enough structure to cooperate.

  Democracies arguing about regulation. Libertarians screaming about government intrusion. Socialists demanding collective ownership. Conservatives defending traditional hierarchies. The same arguments playing out in different forms across centuries.

  The Pantathians had solved that problem by eliminating freedom entirely. By engineering a system so complete, so totalizing, that individual choice became literally impossible. You couldn't choose your career because your species determined your role. You couldn't choose where to live because the template determined your housing. You couldn't even choose how to arrange your dwelling's interior because everything was standardized.

  Perfect control masquerading as perfect organization.

  And somewhere in this nightmare, humans are supposed to exist? Fallen's father is supposed to have established resistance operations. The Shadow Conclave is supposed to be fighting back.

  Jake's gaze swept the grid again, searching for any deviation from the pattern. Any sign that resistance was possible in a system this controlled.

  But where? How? In a network this tight, how would you even begin to organize?

  Movement below caught his attention. Or rather, lack of it.

  One of the grid settlements to the northeast, wasn't moving the way the others had been. Jake's enhanced vision focused, resolving details that made his Life sense sharpen with sudden alertness.

  He could barely see anything from this distance. It was the same layout. Same geometric precision. Same central temple and identical buildings.

  But it was the lack of movement that struck him as odd.

  The agricultural zone showed wheat. Golden stalks ready for harvest, heads heavy and bending under their own weight. Perfect for cutting. Perfectly wasted because nobody was cutting it.

  Unlike all the other towns, these fields sat empty. No carts hauling grain. No workers with scythes. No movement at all except wheat swaying in wind that carried across abandoned farmland.

  Jake angled toward it, curiosity piqued by the deviation. In a system this controlled, any break in the pattern mattered. Any disruption could mean something significant.

  As altitude dropped, the wrongness became more apparent. The settlement itself was silent. No smoke from hearths. No sounds of daily life. No quadrupedal creatures moving through the streets or working in the workshops. Just empty roads and closed doors and wheat rotting unharvested in fields that should have been sites of coordinated labor.

  What happened here?

  As he got closer, Jake activated his Life sense, pushing it to maximum range. The pulses painted a different picture than his eyes suggested. There were people here. Dozens of them, maybe hundreds. But they weren't in the fields or streets or workshops.

  They were inside the buildings. Huddled. Stationary. Hiding or unable to move.

  And some of the pulses were fading.

  Jake's enhanced senses picked up more details as he circled lower. The life signatures varied drastically. Some strong and steady like the workers he'd seen in other settlements. Others weak. Flickering like candles in wind about to gutter out completely.

  The fading ones had a quality he recognized from the swamp's corruption. Life being drained. Siphoned away by something that fed on vitality. Not disease in the natural sense. Magic. Void covered magic that inverted the normal flow of energy.

  They're dying. Something's killing them while they hide inside.

  The wheat still standing unharvested suggested this was recent. Within days, maybe a week at most. The workers had been pulled from the fields suddenly. Production had stopped completely. The perfect machine had broken down in this one location while the rest of the grid continued functioning around it.

  Punishment? Disease? Sabotage?

  Any of them could explain an abandoned settlement. But the fading life signatures suggested the process was ongoing. Not an event that had passed. Something still actively draining these people while they huddled in their identical homes waiting for either rescue or death.

  And in a system as controlled as this grid, any deviation from the pattern could mean something. Could mean resistance. Could mean the Shadow Conclave had made a move against Pantathian control. Could mean Fallen's father was actually here, actually fighting back against this continental tyranny.

  Or it could mean nothing. Could mean the Pantathians were punishing this settlement for failing to meet production quotas. Could mean a disease outbreak the grid system wasn't designed to handle. Could mean a thousand things that had nothing to do with Jake's mission.

  But people were dying down there. Right now. While he circled overhead debating whether they were worth the risk.

  Kandis would investigate. Forge would help.

  The thought arrived with edges sharp enough to cut. They were dead. Both of them. Dead because Jake hadn't been fast enough, strong enough, smart enough to save Hawth from the Pantathian massacre. Because Hope's curse turned everything he touched into tragedy eventually.

  But they would have investigated anyway. Would have landed in this settlement and tried to help even knowing it might fail. Because that's what decent people did when they saw others suffering.

  But Jake wasn't decent. Had never been decent. He was a brain-eating parasite who'd spent his entire Earth life running cons and his cursed life literally consuming everything he touched.

  But Fallen's memories were in his head now. Merged deeper than any other host. And Fallen would have investigated too. Would have tried to help because that's what his mother had taught him, what Hawth's messy community had reinforced, what being human meant even under occupation.

  Damn it.

  Jake descended toward the settlement's edge, looking for a concealed approach. The buildings all had windows. The architectural uniformity that made everything else about the grid so disturbing at least meant he could predict interior layouts with perfect accuracy.

  Find a vantage point. Use Life sense to map what was happening inside. Understand the situation before committing to anything stupid.

  The Glimmerglider landed on a dwelling's roof, bioluminescence dimming as Jake activated Shadowed Step. The stolen panther affinity merged him with shadows, making the glowing creature nearly invisible against the structure's woven surface.

  Below, through a window, Jake's Life sense detected signatures inside. Strong ones near the edges. Fading ones deeper in the building. And something else pulsing through the interior like a heartbeat made of wrongness.

  Just a look. Just enough to understand what's happening. Then decide whether this is worth dying for.

  The Glimmerglider crept toward the window's edge, Jake's consciousness threading through the creature's simple neurons with practiced control.

  ---

  END CHAPTER 52