Shane was still running drills well into the late afternoon.
The training center had taken on that particular smell it always developed after hours of hard work: sweat, old leather, disinfectant, and the faint metallic tang of bloodless impact. Every strike on the pads, every foot pivoting across the mat, every burst of controlled violence echoed under the high ceiling and came back slightly delayed. The place felt bigger when it was mostly empty, which only made Olaf's voice carry farther.
Shane's shirt was soaked through.
His shoulders ached.
His lungs felt hot.
And still he kept moving.
Part of it was the fight tomorrow.
Part of it was everything after the fight.
He kept cycling through combinations, takedown entries, sprawls, counters, and transitions, but behind every motion the speech kept running in his mind like a second heartbeat. He was mentally rehearsing his Senate announcement while his body was trying to prepare for a cage fight, and the overlap was ugly. More than once he caught himself muttering parts of it aloud without meaning to.
"Common Sense isn't red or blue, it's—"
He pivoted, threw a jab-cross-hook to the pads, and heard his own voice continue under his breath.
"—about building structures that actually function—"
He cut an angle, dropped his level, imagined Zabit's hips, then muttered again.
"—people are tired of being divided by people who profit from chaos—"
"Albright."
Olaf's voice hit him from across the octagon.
Shane stopped, chest heaving, and looked up.
Olaf stood near the opposite side of the cage, arms at his sides, looking annoyingly fresh after what had already been a brutal session. His braid was still tight. His breathing was controlled. His expression held the kind of broad patience only an ancient warrior could manage when watching a mortal overcomplicate something simple.
Shane leaned against the cold steel of the cage, gulped electrolytes from his bottle, and shook his head.
"I know what that look means."
Olaf started walking toward him.
"It means," Olaf said, voice echoing slightly in the huge room, "that you are fighting words instead of fighting your opponent."
Shane wiped his face with his forearm.
"Yeah, well, tomorrow's not exactly just a fight."
Olaf stopped a few feet away.
"That is precisely the problem."
Shane took another drink.
Olaf gestured sharply with one hand, like he was diagramming Shane's mistakes in the air.
"You hit the leg sweep on Zabit in the drill. Clean. Beautifully timed. He stumbles, his balance breaks, his base collapses…"
He stepped in closer.
"And then you hesitate on the finish."
Shane exhaled hard.
"I know."
"No," Olaf said flatly. "You know the words. That is different."
Shane gave him a tired look.
"Thanks. Real motivating."
Olaf ignored that.
"You start thinking about the crowd reaction. The speech after. The headlines. The politics. Whether the cameras are catching the right angle. Whether the story reads cleanly afterward."
He tapped his own temple once.
"And in that half-second, you give him an opening."
Shane looked away, back toward the edge of the cage.
"AN won't wait for your press conference before he strikes," Olaf continued. "You win tomorrow by ending the fight. Not by winning a popularity contest in the octagon."
Shane let out a long breath.
"I know, I know."
He bounced the nearly empty bottle once against his palm.
"It's just…"
He searched for the right phrasing and gave up.
"This announcing part is almost as heavy as fighting a celestial in disguise."
That got the slightest twitch from Olaf's mouth.
Not quite a smile.
Not quite not.
Behind them, a heavy bag thundered again and again as Hugo Fernandez worked through a striking sequence with a kind of aggressive concentration Shane respected.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
El Toro was dead.
Hugo had buried him.
And every hit on that bag sounded like a man making sure the old shell stayed buried.
Nearby, Silas was in borrowed training gear that somehow managed to make him look both athletic and vaguely underdressed for the room. He was talking animatedly to Hugo in rapid Spanish, hands moving almost as much as his mouth. Hugo answered between combinations, grinning now and then despite himself.
Shane caught one familiar word.
"Marie."
He raised an eyebrow and called across the floor during a lull in his own drilling.
"Hey, Hugo."
Hugo turned, gloves still up.
"Yeah?"
"Silas said you invited someone. Marie?"
Hugo's expression changed immediately—just enough embarrassment to be obvious, not enough to deny anything.
Shane grinned.
"Good on you, man. Don't let the crowd scare her off. If she likes you, she'll be there."
Hugo lowered his gloves and let out a breath through his nose. Then he wiped them down with a towel and laughed softly, turning halfway back toward Silas.
"I told her she could come and that I would have a ticket waiting," Hugo said, "but she did not for sure commit."
Silas folded his arms like he already knew the answer.
"What did she say exactly?"
Hugo shrugged.
"She said she does not like crowds and was not sure about coming alone."
Silas straightened up immediately, put his hands on his hips, and threw on an exaggerated swagger so ridiculous it almost made Shane laugh out loud.
"Easy fix."
Hugo looked at him.
"Oh?"
"Yes," Silas said, as if unveiling a master strategy. "Tell her to bring a friend."
Hugo blinked.
"That is your plan?"
"That is phase one," Silas said.
He pointed to himself with both thumbs.
"Phase two: tell her your overly handsome pal is single and looking to mingle."
Shane snorted.
"Overly handsome?"
Silas looked offended.
"You disagree?"
"Yes," Shane and Hugo said together.
Hugo laughed, really laughed, the sound open and easy in a way it never would have been a few chapters ago.
"Okay," Hugo said, still smiling. "Maybe that will work."
Then he looked Silas up and down with theatrical disappointment.
"I just wish that I had an overly attractive friend, but I guess a scrawny little runt who is a nice guy will have to do."
Silas gasped.
"Scrawny?"
He lightly punched Hugo in the shoulder.
"A runt?"
Hugo rolled his shoulders and grinned.
"I am trying to help your confidence by lowering expectations."
Silas shoved him again.
"You are lucky I'm loyal."
"You are lucky I'm desperate," Hugo shot back.
That got a bigger laugh from Shane.
It also did something more important.
It grounded the room.
Shane looked at the two of them for a second longer than he meant to.
A former victim of AN's structures. A former tool of AN's structures.
Now talking about women, tickets, and crowds like normal men in a normal gym.
That mattered.
That healing mattered.
Even if it was still fragile.
Shane turned his attention back to Olaf, but not before filing the whole exchange away.
If Marie came tomorrow—and brought a friend—Silas was going to be unbearable.
He welcomed the possibility.
He needed something tomorrow to feel almost normal.
Even if nothing about tomorrow was going to be normal.
He rolled his neck, shook out his arms, and forced his mind back to Zabit Askorov.
The kid was good.
Hungry.
Dangerous in all the real ways, not the mythic ones.
And more importantly, Zabit came with actual family backing. Legitimate people around him, not random camp followers or bought help. That made direct infiltration by AN's side harder.
Not impossible.
But harder.
Shane needed to be cleaner than clean tomorrow.
No visible system use.
No sloppy bursts of speed.
No accidental miracles.
He wanted that win real. Earned. Human enough to hold up under scrutiny, mythic enough only in outcome.
And he wanted the reward.
His system had already been quietly humming with anticipation around the fight. He could feel it the way a laborer felt a storm in his knees. A level-up, a skill point, something. He had been staring at the Time Travel upgrade path in the back of his mind all day.
The Norns had made one thing very clear:
Six hours was good.
More would be better.
A lot better.
Because if the people around him started dying faster than he could react, six hours might not always be enough.
⸻
Across town, the event itself was beginning to fight back.
Or rather, Apex Negativa was beginning to press on it from every angle he could reach without fully exposing his hand.
Olaf had stepped away from the octagon earlier to deal with the endless logistical irritation piling up around the outdoor venue near the capital. On the surface, none of it looked catastrophic. In isolation, every issue was petty.
Stock shortages.
A pallet of barricades that never arrived.
A vendor suddenly unable to supply ice.
A permit office "accidentally" delaying a final public-use signoff because someone flagged concern over "the glorification of violence."
A referee who, after being locked in for weeks, abruptly got a highly paid offer to go manage a gym circuit and stopped answering his phone.
By themselves, these were annoyances.
Together, they were pressure.
Death by a thousand administrative cuts.
Olaf stood beside one of the venue tunnels with his phone in hand while his manager, red-faced and sweating, ran through the latest problem list.
"If they are not here in two hours," Olaf said into the phone, voice like carved stone, "then replace them."
The manager swallowed.
"We're trying, but every replacement is suddenly booked or delayed."
"Then call someone outside the region."
"We are."
Olaf's jaw tightened.
"If they are still not here in two hours, he will replace them. Do you understand me?"
The manager nodded even though Olaf wasn't looking at him anymore.
"Yes."
Olaf hung up and looked out toward the half-built stage and the seating arrangements beyond it.
His instincts were screaming.
This was too coordinated to be simple anti-event sentiment.
He had expected a direct hit.
A brute-force move.
A show of power.
But the smaller disruptions worried him more.
This was AN playing patiently.
Bleeding them. Irritating them. Forcing them to spend attention and energy before the actual confrontation.
And somewhere underneath all of that, Olaf could feel the pressure building.
AN's presence wasn't standing in front of him yet.
But it was nearby.
Close enough to stain the edges of the event.
⸻
Elsewhere, in a dingy office space with bad fluorescent lights and walls stained by old smoke, Thorne was holding court.
The room smelled of stale cigarettes, sweat, and the kind of desperation that settled into cheap furniture and never really came out.
Around him sat three local gang leaders.
Not small-time punks.
Not corner boys.
These were actual operators—scarred, suspicious men with enough experience to fear cops, rival crews, and informants, but not enough imagination to fear a celestial.
That changed quickly.
Thorne stood near the center of the room, hands behind his back, looking more irritated than theatrical. That somehow made him more dangerous. The men around him didn't know what he was, but they knew he radiated the kind of violence that made instinct scream.
"We will pay you in cash money," Thorne said, voice tight with restrained contempt, "but you won't get paid at all unless you succeed."
The man sitting closest to him—broad-shouldered, tattooed, with a crescent-shaped scar cut across his cheekbone—spat on the floor and leaned back in his chair.
His English was rough, but his meaning was clear.
"We do nothing unless you give us half now and half when done."
The other two didn't object.
That told Thorne all he needed to know.
They thought this was a negotiation.
He stared at the man for a long second.
Then the celestial current rose.
Not all the way.
Not enough to expose more than necessary.
Just enough.
Thorne shot his hand forward, palm half-open.
No theatrics.
No glow.
Just force.
The burst hit the gangster square in the chest.
The sound that followed was awful—wet, brittle, immediate. A sequence of cracks as ribs gave way under pressure they had no right to endure. The man flew backward hard enough to leave the chair spinning in place as his body struck the wall and slid down it with a limp, boneless thud.
He did not move again.
The room froze.
The two remaining gang leaders stared at the body, then at Thorne, and for the first time their expressions held something purer than greed.
Fear.
Thorne lowered his hand.
The air in the room still shimmered slightly with the residue of what he had done.
"Do you agree to the terms?" he asked.
His voice had gone flat now.
Worse than rage.
No performance.
No raised volume.
Just certainty.
Every head nodded immediately.
Fast.
Violently.
One man crossed himself without realizing it.
The other swallowed so hard it looked painful.
The message had landed.
This was not a job they could haggle over.
This was not a high-stakes side gig.
This was obedience under pain of instant death.
Thorne wiped one bead of sweat from his brow—not from strain exactly, but from the effort of constraining what he really was inside a form and a moment this small.
"Good," he said.
He made a dismissive motion with his fingers toward the corpse slumped by the wall, as though an associate could handle that later.
Then he picked up his secure line and called the next piece of the machine.
A contact embedded inside a local protest organization answered on the second ring.
Thorne didn't waste time.
"We need you to protest the MMA event."
There was a pause.
The woman on the other end of the line sounded almost amused.
"On what grounds?"
"Make some up."
Thorne paced slowly as he spoke, already seeing the angles in his head.
"Say they received special treatment from the government. Say the government shouldn't sponsor such a violent sport. Say the venue approval was corrupt. Say the money should have gone elsewhere. Say it encourages male aggression, gambling, toxic fandom, blood sport, public disorder—"
He cut himself off.
"You can twist it however you want. I don't care. Just cause issues for them."
Another pause.
"Goal?"
Thorne smiled thinly.
"Optics. Noise. Delay. Confusion."
The woman on the other end understood immediately.
"So not cancellation."
"Cancellation would be nice," Thorne said. "But not necessary."
He stopped pacing.
"Focus on the spectacle. Focus on moral outrage. Make sure cameras have something ugly to point at."
He ended the call.
A cold smile touched his lips.
He knew exactly how this part worked.
The event organizers would see protests and assume the attack was political or moral. They would scramble to smooth the optics, calm sponsors, reassure security, and answer bureaucratic nonsense.
They would think the point was embarrassment.
They would think the point was cancellation.
They would not understand that the protest was just another layer of distraction.
Street-level chaos.
Bureaucratic entanglement.
Petty moral outrage.
All of it pointed the eye away from where the real strike might come.
And if Olaf was forced to spend more time as a promoter and less time as a god, all the better.
⸻
Back at the training center, Shane finished a visualization sequence and let himself come back fully into the room.
He flexed his hands.
Breathed.
Settled.
Across the floor, Olaf was speaking quietly with Hugo now, the old king in full strategist mode.
"Hugo," Olaf said, attention split between the heavyweight fighter in front of him and the storm he could feel circling tomorrow's event, "Jason Bowen is a master wrestler."
Hugo nodded once.
"I know."
"No," Olaf said, "you know his style. That is not the same."
Hugo straightened.
Olaf stepped closer and pointed to the floor between them like he was placing Bowen physically in the room.
"You stick to your striking. You let him pull guard, you lose."
Hugo's eyes narrowed with concentration.
"You must control the distance," Olaf continued. "Every exchange. Every reset. Every feint."
He tapped two fingers lightly against Hugo's shoulder.
"Remember what Shane taught you about selling the level change without committing to it."
Hugo nodded again.
"And using the reach," Shane added from nearby.
Olaf pointed at him without looking.
"Yes. That."
Then Olaf's eyes came back to Hugo.
"You have the better striking pedigree. Make him feel it. But tomorrow I need you focused, not distracted by that girl."
Hugo's ears reddened slightly.
"I got it."
Olaf stared.
"I mean it."
"I know." Hugo let out a breath. "I got it, Olaf. I'm ready to fight."
Olaf watched him for another second, then finally nodded.
"Good."
His gaze flicked briefly toward the locked case where Gungnir sat.
The spear said nothing, but Olaf felt it.
A deep, resonant hum at the edge of his awareness.
He did not mention that to Shane.
Not yet.
The spear would matter tomorrow.
But so would appearances.
If AN stepped in wearing mortal flesh again, Olaf wanted every advantage he could get.
And still, he knew it might not be enough.
Not without Frigg's fuller return.
Not without more of the old structure restored.
Not without drawing AN into a cleaner confrontation.
He could already feel that the enemy was close to the event.
Not standing in front of him, not yet.
But thick around the edges.
A pressure on the perimeter.
A suffocating, organized possibility of mayhem.
⸻
Shane walked over, towel around his shoulders, political speech now temporarily shelved by necessity.
"Olaf."
Olaf turned.
"I've run through the announcement again."
"You are doing that too much."
"Probably," Shane admitted. "But I need to sell the idea that building common-sense infrastructure matters more than tribal politics."
He grimaced.
"That line still needs work."
Olaf crossed his arms.
"The idea is sound."
Shane nodded.
"If I win tomorrow, I transition directly into the Senate run announcement right after."
He studied Olaf's face.
"You good with that timing?"
Olaf stepped in and clapped Shane hard on the shoulder.
It was half encouragement, half deliberate test.
The force would have staggered most men.
Shane barely wobbled.
Olaf noticed.
So did Shane.
"Perfect," Olaf said.
He left his hand there for half a beat longer, looking directly into Shane's eyes.
"The narrative will resonate with the common man who is tired of the noise."
Shane let that settle.
Olaf continued, voice steady and kingly.
"AN feeds on confusion. You offer clarity, stability, and tangible results."
He started counting them off.
"Better roofs."
"Better jobs."
"Better homes."
"Better habits."
"Better lives."
He dropped his hand.
"That is how you siphon power from chaos."
Then he pointed one thick finger at Shane's chest.
"But winning the fight is step one. Do not forget that, Albright."
Shane nodded.
"I won't."
Together they looked out through the side access toward the ticket booth area.
A surge of protestors had collected there.
Loud.
Messy.
Disorganized on the surface.
Handmade signs.
Paint still fresh.
Some read BLOOD SPORT IS NOT COMMUNITY.
Others read NO SPECIAL TREATMENT FOR VIOLENCE.
A few had migrated immediately into broader anti-government slogans so generic they almost looked copied from a template.
Olaf's security team—some of them old followers just beginning to come back into focus around him—were managing the perimeter with visible frustration.
It looked amateurish.
Which meant it was effective.
Shane watched for a few seconds.
Then Olaf murmured, "See?"
Shane glanced over.
Olaf tapped his temple once.
"Distraction."
He nodded toward the protest line.
"They want us managing the crowd instead of preparing."
Shane activated a low-level environmental scan.
Not a deep sweep.
Just enough to read the immediate field.
He saw exactly what he expected first—scattered emotional signatures, hired desperation, attention seekers, a couple true believers with no idea they were being used, and three or four clear paid agitators doing most of the directional work.
Then something else.
Just past the main staging area, near one of the temporary event coordination points, a faint, lingering anchor clung to an activity organizer they had hired the week before.
Not enough celestial force to be a real operative.
But enough residue to tell Shane that someone touched by Thorne's structure had gotten close enough to plant a witness or coordinator.
He narrowed his eyes.
"I see movement on the perimeter."
Olaf stayed still.
"A few paid agitators, nothing high-level. But they're being directed."
Shane pointed subtly.
"Toward the security staging area. Right where your manager is trying to keep things moving."
Olaf's jaw tightened.
"Let the manager handle it."
Shane looked at him.
"You sure?"
"Yes."
Olaf's answer came with absolute certainty.
"He knows the drill. If they can't control the crowd, we control the event."
He looked back out toward the venue.
"We bought the venue. We set the rules."
His voice dropped.
"No god or petty politician is shutting this down now."
Shane took one more long look, then stepped back.
His role tomorrow had to stay clean.
Performance.
Discipline.
Execution.
Unless a celestial signature appeared in the cage or around it, he was doing this the hard way.
The right way.
He had promised Bjorn a clean win.
And Shane intended to deliver one.
No speed bursts unless absolutely necessary.
No visible system tricks.
No impossible reflexes past what a great fighter might plausibly have on a very good night.
Just clarity, preparation, and violence applied correctly.
He left Olaf at the edge of the venue operations zone and went looking for Gary and Amanda.
He found them at a long folding table under work lights, surrounded by stacks of Albright Roofing outreach materials they planned to distribute at tomorrow afternoon's community mixer nearby.
Pamphlets.
Housing assistance cards.
Job training packets.
Childcare sign-up forms.
Legal aid information.
Community stabilization tools disguised as ordinary paper.
Amanda looked up first.
"There you are."
Gary held up two different flyer versions.
"Pick one. Apparently fonts matter."
Shane glanced down.
"They do."
Gary squinted at him.
"You serious?"
"Yes."
Amanda laughed.
"He's right."
Gary looked betrayed.
"This is how empires are built? Font choices?"
Shane took one stack, flipped through it, and pointed.
"This one."
"Why?"
"It looks more stable."
Gary stared.
Amanda covered her mouth, laughing.
"That is the most Shane answer possible."
He set the pamphlets down and looked around.
Everyone was moving.
Everyone was focused.
Small tasks. Real tasks.
The sort of work that grounded people.
A little pocket of order in a world trying to tip itself into delirium.
That was the real battle.
Even with gods and spears and reincarnations and systems and all the rest—
this still mattered.
Especially this.
As darkness finally settled fully outside and the final security walkthroughs began, Shane stood still for just a moment and looked around the complex.
Hugo.
Silas.
Gary.
Amanda.
The security detail.
The crew members coming to support him tomorrow.
Olaf's people.
His people.
They were all moving toward a line in the sand drawn by entities bigger than most of them fully understood.
And somehow, they were still showing up with clipboards, gloves, gym bags, extra folding chairs, and relationship advice.
Shane felt that old, almost paternal pressure settle into his chest.
Responsibility.
He checked his gear one last time.
Not because he expected a surprise in the cage.
But because men with responsibilities checked things twice.
Then he forced his focus to narrow.
Zabit Askorov.
The man with a real name.
A real skill set.
A real camp.
Not Thorne.
Not the nameless chaos manager outside.
Not the protestors.
Not the non-powered observer with celestial residue on him.
For tonight, Zabit was the only person Shane needed to stop.
Because if he won tomorrow—cleanly, decisively—then the next phase of everything began.
And if he lost?
He didn't let the thought finish.
He picked up his gloves again.
Tomorrow.
He'd deal with tomorrow tomorrow.
For tonight, he would prepare.
And everyone else would try not to get distracted.
********************
"If you enjoyed Shane's journey, please drop a Power Stone! It helps the Common Sense Party grow!"