He never has to threaten her. He only has to be right, and the city her own knowledge swears is safe turns out to be the one place it lied to her.

Jess Carter came into this world with a soldier's discipline and a set of facts pressed into her memory the day she arrived, no story behind them, no memory attached, just a map she has trusted every day since. She calls it the fragments. It has never been wrong. Then a village that should be full of people is empty, and a city with no warning label on it turns out to need one.

Dolf Surenn is the most reasonable man Jess has ever refused. He does not threaten her. He tells her the truth about herself instead, close enough to correct that it does not feel like a compliment.

He keeps a seat open for her anyway. No deadline attached. No cost attached.

Her answer is to burn it.

By then he has already stood in front of five hundred people and asked for the authority to decide what their lives are worth, alone, admitting under public challenge that he does not fully trust his own answer either. He is not entirely wrong about the problem. That is what makes him dangerous.

Under the city, something has been sealed longer than anyone can account for, and somebody has been digging toward it for a season already.

Champions do not win fights. Champions are still there when the fight gets bored.

The bill for all of it does not come due on Jess. It comes due on Rook, fifteen years old, sharp enough to read wards nobody trusts her to touch, who follows Jess into the dark anyway.

Book 2 of the JAKE ASHBURN SERIES, an OP MC regression LitRPG with a philosophical antagonist you will catch yourself agreeing with, a paladin sent to judge her who ends up judging himself instead, and a crew that gets safer to love and more expensive to keep with every chapter.

She doesn't do forever. Turns out she can do a while.