Amanda was waiting for Gary in the hallway like she had too much energy for one body.
She bounced on the balls of her feet, arms folded, then unfolded, then folded again, smiling in a way that made Gary suspicious before she even opened her mouth.
"So…" she said, drawing the word out. "Shane is definitely going out to eat with us tomorrow night, right? I already set it up with Erin and she is good to go."
Gary leaned one shoulder against the kitchen doorway and crossed his arms, trying to look like the calm one in the conversation. Since getting clean, he had started carrying himself differently. Straighter. Less apologetic. Less like a man always bracing for the next collapse. He still had the instinct to look over his shoulder for disaster, but now it came paired with actual steadiness.
"Yes," he said. "I asked him twice. Then I asked again in a way that made it sound casual." He nodded once, proud of the tactic. "He's going."
Amanda clasped her hands together.
"Yes!"
Gary laughed.
"Easy. He almost didn't commit. He looked wiped out after practice with Olaf."
Amanda lowered her voice dramatically.
"And?"
"And I made him promise."
Amanda pointed at him like he had just completed a heroic task.
"See? This is why we work well together."
Gary grinned.
"We work well together because you have ideas and I'm the one dumb enough to help execute them."
Amanda narrowed her eyes.
"You are not dumb."
Gary shrugged.
"No, but I am apparently willing to help trick my boss into a social event."
Amanda stepped closer and whispered conspiratorially, "A necessary social event."
The housing near the new HQ office was quiet at the moment, at least for a building packed with people tied together by work, recovery, logistics, campaign planning, and celestial warfare. Down the hall, Shane's office space was still occupied. Ben, Silas, and Oscar were on a video call with Saul, discussing cross-state material sourcing and trying to figure out how to scale training without also creating bottlenecks in transport, labor quality, and supervision.
Normal problems.
Relatively speaking.
Amanda leaned in a little more.
"He still doesn't know it's a double date, right?"
Gary shook his head immediately.
"Nope."
"Not even a little?"
"No way," Gary said. "As far as he knows, Erin is just some friend of yours that happens to be joining us."
Amanda pressed a hand dramatically against her chest.
"Good."
She glanced toward Shane's office and lowered her voice further.
"We cannot tell him too early. If he knows it's a setup, he'll find a reason to reschedule."
Gary snorted.
"Or get hit with some emergency roofing crisis. Or political thing. Or system thing. Or Odin thing."
Amanda pointed at him again.
"Exactly."
The two of them had been carefully managing this for several days. It was ridiculous how much planning it took to get Shane Albright to sit down and eat dinner like a normal person.
Part of the difficulty was purely practical.
Shane's schedule was a nightmare.
One part construction expansion, one part campaign development, one part high-level training with an awakened god, and one part whatever fresh impossible thing his system decided to throw at him next.
The other part was more personal.
He simply did not prioritize himself.
At all.
Amanda sighed and leaned against the wall.
"He needs one normal night," she said. "Just one."
Gary softened a little at that.
"I know."
Amanda looked down the hall again.
"And we still can't mention the Senate run to Erin. Not yet. It's too early. Too much all at once."
Gary nodded.
"Yeah. Let him just be… a guy."
Amanda smiled faintly.
"A really tall, weirdly intense guy."
Gary laughed.
"Yeah."
"Who fights Vikings."
"Also yeah."
"Who might or might not be becoming some kind of cosmic thing."
Gary rubbed the back of his neck.
"When you say it out loud it sounds bad."
Amanda laughed.
"It sounds insane."
They stood in comfortable silence for a second.
Then Amanda tilted her head.
"You know what worries me?"
Gary braced himself.
"What?"
"That Erin might actually like him."
Gary stared at her.
"That worries you?"
Amanda nodded seriously.
"Yes."
Gary barked out a laugh.
"I thought that was the goal."
"It is," Amanda said, swatting his arm, "but then he might actually have to date someone. And Shane handles celestial violence better than he handles regular attention."
That made Gary pause.
Then he nodded slowly.
"Okay. Fair."
Amanda smiled triumphantly.
"I know."
⸻
Across town, Olaf's training facility was almost silent.
That was how Shane preferred it when they worked seriously.
No staff.
No managers hovering.
No random gym members filming on their phones.
No crowd.
Just the cage, the mat, the ring lights above, and the dull smell of sweat, canvas, and work.
Inside the octagon, there was nothing soft about the atmosphere.
Olaf slammed a colossal forearm into Shane's ribs.
The impact echoed.
Shane absorbed it on instinct and training, but he still felt the shock of it all the way through his torso. Olaf was bigger than him by around fifty pounds and every ounce of that weight was dangerous. The blond giant moved like an old war had put on gloves and learned modern cage work out of spite.
Shane circled away, breathing through the ache.
Olaf came after him immediately.
Not angry.
Not wild.
Just relentless.
Shane could feel the old god's returning power in the way he moved now. Not the unstable surge from the earliest days after awakening. This was cleaner. More integrated. A steady current feeding back into something ancient and disciplined.
Shane dipped, changed angle, and triggered a short burst of Super Speed to get outside Olaf's reach.
He almost overshot and clipped the fence.
"Careful," Olaf said, with entirely too much amusement.
"Helpful," Shane shot back.
Olaf grinned.
"Always."
They collided again.
Shane parried, ducked under a hook, and tried to pivot out.
Olaf cut him off.
The size difference mattered more inside the cage than Shane liked. So did the limited space. Teleportation had worked well in previous practice because it let him break angles without having to cover the distance physically. Super Speed was powerful, but in tight quarters it could become its own problem.
Olaf reached, Shane ducked, then flashed around behind him with a short burst of speed and tried to lock in a choke.
Olaf's response was immediate and violent.
He grabbed at the grip, planted his weight, and tore free with raw, ugly force.
The two men separated.
Both breathing harder now.
After another brutal exchange Olaf finally held up a hand.
"Water."
Shane nodded and stepped back.
They moved to opposite sides of the cage, both slick with sweat.
Olaf wiped his face with a towel and watched Shane over the top of it.
"That last move," he said, "was that super speed this time?"
Shane took a long pull from his bottle before answering.
"Yeah."
He wiped his mouth and gestured around the cage.
"I figured I needed to test it here instead of defaulting to teleportation every time."
Olaf nodded.
"And?"
Shane laughed once without humor.
"And I almost put myself into the fence."
Olaf's grin widened.
"Good lesson."
Shane leaned against the padded post.
"Teleportation is better in here for quick repositioning. Less room for error. Super Speed is still useful, but only if I can trust the angle and distance."
He tapped the side of his head.
"Since the last level jump, the system started tracking strain thresholds more aggressively. Super Speed burns hard. One full real burst a day before it starts threatening to lock out or punish overuse."
He lifted three fingers.
"Teleportation, I get three."
Olaf considered that.
"Good."
Shane raised an eyebrow.
"Good?"
"You are finally thinking in terms of resource management."
Shane snorted.
"I've always thought in resource management."
Olaf let out a low, booming laugh that echoed eerily through the empty training space. "Logistics. You still think like a mortal contractor, Shane. Yet you move like a god."
Then his expression shifted. He leaned in slightly, blue eyes narrowing with real curiosity despite the sweat and exhaustion. "But there is something else. I didn't sense the energy trail."
Shane frowned, still catching his breath. "What do you mean?"
"Against ElToro, when you interfered, I felt it," Olaf said. "Not clearly enough to know it was you at the time, but I felt the residue of celestial movement. A trail. A disturbance. This time…" He gestured toward the space Shane had just crossed. "Nothing. You shifted cleanly."
Shane blinked, surprised. That had not occurred to him. Before, every borrowed or proxy-like action had seemed to scrape against reality just enough for beings like Olaf to notice. Now there had been no scrape. No residue. No signature left behind.
Olaf studied him for another second, thoughtful now instead of amused. "That is new."
The break should have relaxed things.
It didn't.
Something in Olaf's posture changed.
Not suddenly.
Just enough.
He stepped back toward center cage and the entire energy of the room seemed to settle into something heavier.
Shane recognized it immediately.
This wasn't sparring anymore.
This was instruction.
The dangerous kind.
Olaf rolled one shoulder and looked at him in a way that made Shane's pulse kick once harder.
"In a real fight," Olaf said, voice lower now, "I will do whatever is required."
Shane didn't answer.
Olaf kept walking, slow circle, eyes fixed on him.
"Every trick. Every weakness. Every opportunity. Even if I lose something of myself in the process."
He stopped.
"You hesitate."
Shane's jaw tightened.
Olaf did not soften it.
"You always pull back before the final blow."
"That's not true."
"It is," Olaf said calmly. "Even when you are right to strike. Even when the enemy deserves worse. Even when the cost of hesitation is obvious."
Shane felt something cold settle in his stomach.
He hated that Olaf was right.
He hated more that he already knew it.
Olaf continued.
"Unless you are angry."
That one hit.
Because anger was the one state where Shane stopped checking himself.
And that was exactly why he distrusted it.
He saw Arya.
David.
Every irreversible thing that lived in the back of his mind whenever violence became final.
Then Saul's wife.
The image he had seen and then unmade.
The image no one else knew.
The image he would carry alone.
Shane's breathing changed.
Olaf noticed.
"That hesitation," Olaf said, and now his voice had gone nearly flat, "will get you killed. Or worse—someone close to you."
Shane looked up slowly.
Something in him hardened.
Not rage.
Not exactly.
Something more focused.
More frightening.
"I won't make that mistake again," he said.
The moment the words left him, the air in the octagon changed.
A low thrumming vibration seemed to settle through the mat, the cage, even the lights overhead. Shane felt it all at once—like a pressure line shifting under load.
His posture changed without his permission.
Not visually in some dramatic transformation.
More in the way his body settled into itself.
Predatory.
Certain.
Ready.
And then—
DING.
His system blew across his vision in a bright, overwhelming overlay.
New Quest Received - Protect Your People
Duration: 30 Days
Reward: +1 Skill Upgrade for each person whose life you save
Penalty: -3 Skill Points for every person who dies while fighting on your side
Shane froze.
His breath caught.
Not because the reward was good.
Because the penalty was brutal.
This wasn't a growth quest.
It was a commandment.
A contract.
Olaf stepped in immediately, his expression shifting from hard-edged teacher to concern.
"What is it?"
Shane blinked hard, dragged his attention back to the room, then told him.
All of it.
The quest. The duration. The reward. The penalty.
Olaf listened in silence.
When Shane finished, the old god's eyes sharpened.
"And the other changes?" Olaf asked.
Shane swallowed.
He explained the upgrade. The transition from Proxy to Celestial System. The new tabs. The Celestial Power bar. The locked Master entries.
Olaf paced once.
Then again.
Thinking.
"I wonder," he murmured.
Shane looked at him.
"What?"
Olaf turned back toward him.
"I wonder if you are triggering these quests."
Shane frowned.
"That doesn't make sense."
"Doesn't it?"
Olaf came closer, studying him as though the answer might be physically visible.
"Think carefully. When did the Frigg quest appear? What was happening? What emotional state were you in? Who was present?"
Shane opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Then actually thought.
Fight. Stress. Olaf. System surge. Frigg discussion.
Olaf saw the realization and nodded.
"Yes."
Shane rubbed his face.
"You think it's tied to emotion?"
"Emotion. Pressure. Proximity to other celestials. Threshold events. Possibly all of it."
Olaf folded his arms.
"Veritas Alpha gave you a system designed to guide, stabilize, and improve mortal conditions. That much I understand."
He glanced toward Shane's chest, not literally seeing through him but clearly feeling something there.
"But this…"
He gestured vaguely toward the air between them.
"This is no longer merely a borrowed operating framework."
Shane gave him a tired look.
"Please don't say something weird."
Olaf ignored that.
"You now have Celestial Magic tabs," he said. "A power bar independent of ordinary mana. Time manipulation categorized under a higher structure."
He paused.
Then said it directly.
"I do not think you are fully mortal."
Shane stared at him.
For one second.
Then two.
Then laughed once in disbelief.
"Absolutely not."
Olaf didn't move.
"Olaf, I install roofs."
"Yes."
"I own a construction company."
"Yes."
"I am not having the 'you might secretly be some impossible thing' conversation tonight."
Olaf tilted his head slightly.
"A mortal may be granted a system."
Shane pointed at him.
"Exactly."
"A mortal," Olaf continued, undisturbed, "does not develop intrinsic Celestial Magic infrastructure."
Shane opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Olaf stepped closer.
"If those locked slots fill, Shane… if what I suspect is true… you may end with more inherent magical capacity than most of us."
That was too much.
Way too much.
Shane stepped back and threw both hands up.
"Nope. No."
Olaf almost smiled.
"We should consider—"
"No."
"Shane—"
"We ask Veritas Alpha next time we see him," Shane said firmly. "End of conversation."
He turned and headed for the cage door, muttering as he went.
"Man, Olaf, why do you always have to make me think so hard?"
Olaf laughed behind him.
"Because you avoid it when it concerns yourself."
That was annoyingly true.
Which only made Shane walk faster.
⸻
The drive back to the house near HQ felt longer than it should have.
For once, Shane didn't want to think.
Didn't want to process quests, politics, destiny, Norns, systems, hidden parentage, or celestial architecture.
He wanted noise.
Familiar noise.
The kind he could disappear into.
He went straight to his chair, tablet in hand, the old reflex already carrying him toward the audiobook app. Werewolves. Dragons. Systems. Stupidly overpowered fantasy protagonists who never had to deal with zoning or real payroll.
He tapped the library.
The interface loaded.
Then paused.
There was a file in the center of the screen he had never seen before.
Not alphabetized.
Not part of his downloads.
Just sitting there as if it had always belonged.
The Three Sisters
Shane stared at it.
Then leaned back slowly.
"Nope."
He should not press it.
Everything in his body told him this was not a normal file.
Which of course meant he pressed it immediately.
The screen didn't load like an audiobook.
No cover art. No progress bar. No chapter listing.
Instead the room itself seemed to quiet.
Then the words appeared as if being written directly into his mind and the air at once.
The voice that followed was calm.
Ancient.
Patient in a way that felt almost impossible.
Not soft.
Not kind.
Just patient the way rivers were patient.
Verdandi speaks now, mortal puppet of time.
Shane sat up straight so fast the chair creaked.
He didn't know whether to laugh, panic, or apologize.
Instead he did what he always did when the world got insane.
He asked a practical question.
"Time travel," he said aloud. "What are the limits? If I change something, does it stay changed?"
Verdandi answered without offense, as if she had expected nothing less.
Time, she explained, was not fragile in the way mortals imagined. Changes made through his skill would hold—would cement—unless a higher authority with true dominion over the flow intervened. Two days after alteration, an event became effectively fixed. That would eventually be the furthest window of practical stabilization for his ability once it matured fully.
Shane absorbed that with contractor logic first.
Two days. Cure time.
After that, the concrete set.
Verdandi spoke further of her role. Of present flow. Of watching a week backward and a week forward across key junctions. Of anomalies. Of convergence points that mattered more than most wars because they bent everything downstream.
Shane asked question after question.
Not grand ones.
Practical ones.
How much interference drew attention? How much strain mattered? What counted as a junction point? Could one corrected event cause another collapse elsewhere?
Verdandi answered what she chose to answer.
Not all of it.
Enough of it.
Then her part of the file faded.
The voice changed.
Heavier.
Older.
Urðr takes the floor.
Shane felt his anger rise before he even thought to stop it.
Past.
Of course the past.
Arya. David. Every failure that formed him. Every wrong turn. Every loss that still sat somewhere in his chest like rusted metal.
He wanted to ask why.
Why those.
Why him.
Why that shape of pain.
Urðr did not recoil from the question.
Your past forged you.
There was no apology in the voice. No sentimentality either.
Without the losses, she said, without the military service, the addiction, the collapse, the rebuilding, the failures, the humiliations, the grief—he would not be what the present required. He would not be the structure these people leaned on. He would not be the one Veritas Alpha selected. He would not be the hinge.
Shane hated how much sense it made.
He asked harder questions after that.
Not all of them got answers.
But enough did that by the time Urðr receded, the anger had cooled into something stranger.
Not acceptance.
Not forgiveness.
Understanding.
Which was, annoyingly, harder to carry.
Then the final voice came.
Sharper. Cleaner. Inevitable.
Skuld speaks last.
Future.
Shane sat very still.
She told him plainly that his foresight was primitive compared to the true structure of future-sight. A crude reflection. A low-resolution distortion of what greater beings once touched more cleanly.
Odin. Freya. Frigg.
They had all, in different ways, drawn from her flow.
Now the major gods were diminished or cycling, and only the Norns retained true dominion over the interwoven threads of temporal structure.
Then came the warning.
You must be prepared, Shane Albright.
The conflict ahead would not be solved by strength and speed alone.
It would require navigation of inevitability itself.
He was needed at the nexus point.
That phrase lodged in him.
Nexus point.
Like a beam load. Like a transfer joint. Like the place where everything failed if it was not reinforced correctly.
Then the file ended.
No fade-out.
No lingering menu.
It was simply gone.
The app returned to normal as though nothing had happened.
Shane sat in stunned silence.
Then the system dinged again.
He almost laughed from sheer exhaustion.
Quest Reward Received: Gain Information from a Celestial Familiar with Time Travel on Ramifications
Reward Effect: Time Travel Skill Upgraded 2 Levels. Max level on Time Travel is now Level 20.
Current Level on Time Travel is now Level 4. User can travel Forward OR Backward in time - up to 6 hours. Limited to 1 use every day
Shane blinked.
Then opened the Master tab immediately.
Celestial Power - Time Travel
Level 4 - Manipulate time forward or backward 6 hours max. Limited to 1 use every day.
He sat back.
Six hours.
Every day.
That was terrifying.
That was useful.
That was way too much.
He rubbed both temples slowly and pulled up the Quests tab again.
There it was.
Still waiting.
Quest Received - Become More Influential - something beyond a business owner
Reward - New Skill Unlocked - Transformation: Take on the appearance and mannerisms of any person that you have seen
Shane let out a long breath.
He had just received a direct lesson from the Norns through a fake audiobook.
Learned hard rules of time manipulation.
Increased one of the most dangerous powers in his arsenal.
Confirmed that his future was somehow tied to inevitability itself.
And the system still wanted him to become more influential.
Run for office.
Become more public.
Step further into the world's line of sight.
Tomorrow he had dinner with Gary and Amanda and some "friend" of Amanda's. A normal night, supposedly.
Shane closed his eyes and leaned his head back.
"I need one night," he muttered aloud.
"One night where nobody explains cosmic architecture to me."
He opened his eyes and looked around the quiet room.
"Maybe nobody even asks me about infrastructure reform."
He paused.
Then snorted softly.
"Who am I kidding?"
⸻
Mist coiled around the roots of the World Tree.
The Well did not ripple.
It listened.
Verdandi stood with her hands folded behind her back, gaze fixed on a single thread burning brighter than the rest.
Urðr spoke first, her voice calm and ancient.
"He reaches too quickly."
Skuld tilted her head, eyes narrowing slightly as she studied the same line.
"He touches threads he does not yet understand."
Verdandi did not look away.
"I know."
A pause followed.
The faint hum of woven fate moved through the roots like a distant chorus.
Urðr spoke again.
"Then take them from him."
"No," Verdandi said softly.
Skuld's eyes sharpened.
"You would let him believe they are his?"
"For a time."
The thread flickered—bright, unstable, dangerous.
Urðr's voice remained steady.
"He will grow attached."
"Yes," Verdandi replied.
"And when you call him to the Well?"
Only then did Verdandi turn.
Something almost human crossed her expression.
"He will hate me for it."
Silence settled beneath the branches.
Skuld studied the trembling strand.
"He sees too far ahead."
Verdandi looked back toward the thread.
"That," she said quietly, "is the danger."
The Well remained still.
The thread continued to burn.
"For now," Verdandi said, voice low and certain, "let him believe the power belongs to him."
********************
"If you enjoyed Shane's journey, please drop a Power Stone! It helps the Common Sense Party grow!"