Chapter 56 (Patreon)

Sarah moved through the pass alone, and the pull in her chest wouldn't shut up.

Her boots found the stone without sound—Garrick's training turned to instinct, each step placed where the gravel wouldn't shift. The wind had died and the mountains held their breath around her, but she kept walking toward something she knew she shouldn't be walking toward.

This is stupid, she thought, and she agreed with it completely. A stone troll, alone, at night, with a sword that couldn't cut its hide and a perk she'd owned for less than six hours, but her feet didn't listen.

The bond hummed in her chest, distant now but still there. She could feel the others sleeping—Mira's calm, Theo's steady presence, Jace's coiled alertness even in rest. Robert was harder to read, something strange happening in his thread, but he was alive. They'd wake up and she'd be gone, and Mira would feel her moving away and know exactly what direction she'd taken.

It wasn't fear driving her, and it wasn't excitement exactly—it was hunger, a need to move toward the troll instead of away from it, to test herself against it and take what it had.

Harold had talked about this once. Late at night, after the hall had gone quiet, when he got that distant look that meant he was remembering things he wouldn't explain. She'd asked him why adventurers were so different from everyone else.

"The perks change them," he'd said. "Not just what they can do—who they are."

"That sounds like an excuse for bad decisions."

"Sometimes." He'd stared into his cup. "The epic perks are the worst. They give you wants, and the wants feel like yours. Your quirks were... more noticeable than most, last time."

She hadn't thought much about it then, but she was thinking about it now. The Rite of Taking was Epic, the strongest perk she had, and ever since she'd gained it, powerful creatures felt less like threats and more like opportunities. The troll wasn't something to avoid—it was a prize waiting to be claimed.

Is this me, or is this the perk?

She didn't know anymore, and maybe that was the point.

Her hand found the explosive potion at her belt—one of ten Harold had given them before they'd left.

The troll had moved.

Sarah crouched at the edge of the hollow where they'd passed it hours before, and the space lay empty. Dust and debris marked where it had slept, a shallow depression in the stone, but the creature itself was gone.

She closed her eyes and let her sensing perk unfold, filtering through the slow settling of stone and the whisper of wind through cracks until she found it—a quarter mile ahead, around a bend where the pass widened into another hollow. The rhythm was slow and deep, the kind of breathing that moved a massive chest.

She followed.

The second hollow was wider than the first, its walls sloping back to form a rough stone bowl, and the troll lay against the far wall with that massive club clutched against its chest. Sarah pressed herself against the rock at the entrance and studied it.

Fifteen feet of muscle and stone-bark hide, arms thick as tree trunks, fingers that could wrap around her entire torso. The hide layered across its body in ridged patterns, gray and rough, and she knew her sword would bounce off it like steel on granite.

But the face had softer skin around the mouth, and the eyes weren't covered, and when it breathed—that deep, slow rhythm—its jaw fell open to reveal a throat that looked almost human. These weren't the same as the hill and forest trolls she'd fought before, but they had the same weakness.

She pulled the explosive potion from her belt and weighed it in her hand. One shot. If she missed, if the troll woke before she threw, this was over.

She threaded a small amount of mana into her sensing perk and tracked its breathing. In. Out. In. Out. Each inhale lasting four seconds, the jaw dropping open, the throat exposed.

In—

She threw.

The potion arced through the darkness and vanished into the troll's open mouth, and for a heartbeat nothing happened. Then the world turned to noise and light.

The detonation blew outward through the troll's face—flesh and stone-hide and something wet sprayed across the hollow. One eye vanished in the blast, the jaw cracked and hung wrong, and the throat became a ruin of torn meat and scorched tissue. The troll's scream wasn't a roar but a sound of agony, high and horrible, and it lurched upright with its one remaining eye rolling wild while blood poured down its chest.

Sarah drew her sword.

She stepped into the hollow with her blade up, and the troll's eye found her. The scream became rage, and it grabbed its club with both hands and swung.

She was already moving—diving left, rolling across stone, coming up with her sword ready. The club hit where she'd been standing and shattered rock, fragments spraying across her back like thrown knives, and she circled looking for an opening while the troll turned with her, slower now, blood still pouring from its ruined face.

Then she saw the meat moving.

The torn edges of its throat were pulling together, slowly, visibly, new tissue crawling across the wound like pink worms while the jaw straightened with bone grinding against bone. She'd known trolls regenerated—everyone knew that—but knowing it and watching it happen were different things, and she realized exactly how badly she'd miscalculated.

The explosive had hurt it badly, but it wasn't dying, and she was running out of time.

Through the bond, she felt the others—awake now, alarmed, their attention snapping toward her like compass needles finding north. Questions pressed against her awareness, fear and confusion and Mira's sharp spike of anger.

The troll swung again.

The fight became a nightmare.

Sarah used everything Garrick had taught her—reading the troll's weight shifts through her sensing perk, predicting the swings before they came, staying low and fast and never in one place long enough to hit. The Duelist perk helped with her footwork and balance, but this wasn't a sword fight.

The troll's legs were tree trunks wrapped in stone-hide, and when she darted in for a slash across the back of its ankle or a thrust toward the knee joint, her blade skidded off the hide like steel on granite. The cuts that landed barely drew blood, shallow scratches that closed almost as fast as she made them, and the wounds on its face were healing—she could see the flesh knitting together fifteen feet above her, completely out of reach.

Stone shrapnel cut into her with every missed swing as the club hit the ground, the walls, the rocks around her, each impact sending fragments screaming through the air. Her arms bled from a dozen small cuts and her face stung where a chip had opened her cheek.

Then the troll grabbed a loose stone from the ground and threw it.

Sarah saw it coming—her sensing perk screaming warning—but she was mid-dodge, committed to a direction, and the stone caught her in the ribs. The impact lifted her off her feet and she hit the ground rolling, something grinding in her chest that shouldn't grind, and the world went gray at the edges. Her sword was still in her hand, though she didn't remember holding onto it.

She got up, but the troll was advancing with its face a horror of half-healed wounds, and she could see it now—the moment where this stopped being a fight and became an execution. She was slowing down while it was speeding up, and the math no longer worked.

Through the bond, she felt the team running. They'd felt the stone hit, and they were coming, but they wouldn't make it in time.

She looked at the troll, then at the walls of the hollow—close, narrow, rough stone rising on either side.

She ran at the wall, struggling to pick up speed with her broken frame.

The troll swung at where she'd been, club sweeping through empty air, and Sarah was already three steps up the stone face. She'd done this in training—wall runs, vertical movement, using momentum to cheat gravity for a few precious seconds. Garrick had made them practice until their legs burned and their lungs screamed, his way of helping them understand that their bodies could do things in Gravensend that they couldn't do on Earth.

Two steps, three, her boots scraping stone as friction fought physics, and she felt the moment where gravity started winning.

She kicked off.

The troll's face was right there—ruined eye socket, half-healed jaw, that one remaining eye going wide—and she hit it shoulder-first. Her free hand found the empty eye socket and her fingers sank in up to the second knuckle, wet and hot, her grip finding purchase on something solid, the edge of the skull maybe, and she didn't think about what she was holding.

She brought the sword up and drove it down into the top of the troll's skull, and the blade skidded off bone.

The troll screamed and thrashed with its hands coming up to grab at her, and she was already swinging again. The pommel came down, the blade came down, she hammered at the same spot over and over with her shoulder tearing from the strain of holding on with one hand buried in the thing's eye socket. Her vision was going red and she didn't know if it was blood or something else.

The sword tip skidded off bone again and again until it caught—found a crack, a seam, something—and she put her whole body into the next strike.

The blade punched through and the troll's scream cut off as it staggered, hands going slack. But it wasn't dead; she could feel it through her sensing perk, the fading pulse of something still clinging to life, and the Rite wouldn't take from a sword kill.

Her belt knife was in her hand before she finished the thought—the blade Garrick had issued her. The troll's remaining eye rolled toward her, dimming, and she drove the knife into it.

The body went still and they hit the ground together.

The impact bounced her off the troll's skull and slammed her into stone, and something else broke in her chest with a wet snap that sent fire through her whole torso. Her vision went white, then gray, then came back in patches. She was lying on the troll's head with her hand still wrapped around the knife, buried to the hilt.

She couldn't feel her legs.

Then the perk hit her like warm water flooding through her veins.

Rite of Taking Activated Perk gained from: Stone Troll (Mature)

Perk Acquired — Uncommon Troll's Regeneration 

Wounds heal at an accelerated rate. Minor injuries close within minutes. Major injuries heal over days instead of weeks.

The warmth spread through her chest, her arms, her legs, and she felt bones grinding—not breaking, but setting. The cuts on her arms stopped bleeding, and the fire in her ribs became a dull ache, then less than that.

Then the bond flared.

She felt the others—close now, so close—and she felt the perk reach through the connection. The Communion activated, and something passed from her into them.

Thresher King's Communion Activated Condition met. Perk propagation triggered.

Perk Upgraded — Rare Troll's Regeneration 

Wounds heal at a greatly accelerated rate. Minor injuries close within seconds. Major injuries heal over hours instead of days. Fatal wounds may become survivable if treatment is administered quickly.

The warmth became heat.

Sarah felt her ribs move—bones shifting under her skin, finding their proper places, knitting together with a grinding sensation that should have hurt but didn't. The cuts on her face closed and the deep bruise where the stone had hit her faded from agony to ache to nothing.

She lay on the dead troll's head, covered in its blood and hers, and started laughing.

She couldn't stop, even though it hurt—her body was still healing, still putting itself back together—but she was alive and the troll was dead and she could feel the perk settling into her team like a gift she'd almost died to give them.

Worth it.

The thought came through the bond without her meaning to send it, and she felt Mira's furious response like a slap.

We are going to TALK about this.

Sarah kept laughing.

They found her sitting against the troll's skull with the ritual knife still in her hand and her sword buried in its head. Blood covered her from hair to boots—most of it not hers, but enough of it hers to matter.

She was grinning.

Mira reached her first, sliding to her knees, hands moving over Sarah's body checking for wounds that were still healing. "You absolute—what were you—I felt you break, Sarah, I felt your ribs—"

"They got better." Sarah's voice came out rough, scraped raw. "Check your notifications."

Mira's hands stopped and her eyes went distant for a moment, feeling inward. Then her breath caught. "The perk. It spread."

"It’s rare! Upgraded on propagation." Sarah leaned her head back against the troll's skull. "You're welcome."

Mira slapped her.

It wasn't hard—more shock than force—but Sarah's head rocked sideways and the grin finally died.

"You don't get to 'you're welcome' me." Mira's voice shook. "You snuck out. You left us sleeping. I woke up feeling you die, Sarah. For a second, through the bond, you were just—gone. Do you understand that?"

Sarah didn't answer.

Jace reached them next, and his face had settled on cold. "You've been off for a while. The staring, the way you kept looking into the distance. I thought you were just being careful." He looked at the corpse, at the violence written across it. "You were planning this."

"Jace—"

"Were you?"

She met his eyes. "Not exactly. I just—"

"Yes or no."

The bond carried everything she couldn't say—the pull, the hunger, the way the Rite of Taking pointed her at powerful things and wouldn't let her rest. She felt them feel it, and their anger sharpened into something worse.

"I didn't plan the details," she said quietly. "But I knew I was going to do something."

Theo arrived last, breathing hard, shield still up. He took in the scene—the troll, the blood, Sarah sitting in the middle of it—and lowered the shield slowly.

"A month. We're a month from the Landing with no support, no more potions, no backup. If you'd died out here—" His voice cracked and he stopped, jaw tight, before starting again. "If you'd died out here, we'd have had to carry your body for a week before we could even bury you properly. Or leave you. In a pass full of things like that."

He pointed at the troll without looking at it.

"I almost died a couple of weeks ago, remember? You remember what it felt like, thinking one of us might not make it? I'm always the one who gets hurt—that's my job, to protect all of you." He stepped closer, and Sarah saw something in his face she'd never seen from Theo before. "That's what you just did to us. On purpose."

Sarah opened her mouth and closed it.

Through the bond, she felt Jace's agreement, Mira's hurt, Theo's fear dressed up as fury.

She'd thought about the perk, the tactical advantage of rare regeneration for the whole team, but she hadn't thought about this.

"I'm sorry," she said.

It wasn't enough, and she knew it.

Jace turned away and walked to the troll's head, looking down at the damage with his shoulders tight. "We should move. That fight was loud."

Robert woke when they got back to the cave.

His eyes opened slowly, unfocused at first, and Sarah watched from where she sat against the wall while Mira checked him over. Something had changed in him—she could see it in the way he moved, the way the air around him felt different. The mana body stone had done something, and none of them knew what yet.

"What happened?" His voice was rough with sleep. "I felt—something. Through the bond. Pain, and then—"

"Sarah killed a troll," Jace said. "By herself. Like an idiot."

Robert's eyes found her. She looked like hell, she knew—the blood was still drying on her armor, her face, her hands. The wounds had closed and the bones had set, but they weren't healed yet.

"You left," he said. "While I was unconscious."

"I didn't—" She stopped, because she had to. There was no way to finish that sentence without lying. "I couldn't sleep. The pull was—"

"While I was unconscious."

"Robert, I didn't plan to—I wasn't thinking about—" The words tangled in her throat. She hadn't been thinking about him, and that was the problem. She'd been thinking about the troll and the perk and the hunger that wouldn't shut up. "I'm sorry."

It sounded hollow even to her.

He held her gaze for a long moment before looking at the others. "Did it work? The perk thing she was trying for?"

Mira's expression flickered. "You knew?"

"I could feel her planning something before I went under. The way the Rite of Taking pulls at her—I've felt it through the bond." He sat up slowly, Mira's hands hovering near his shoulders to steady him. "That's part of why her brother added me to the team. He told me about perk drift. He knew you'd all be getting more powerful perks, and he wanted me to stabilize things. Something about external reflections of power balancing out internal ones."

Sarah's chest tightened.

He'd known, or suspected at least, and he hadn't tried to stop her because he couldn't—he'd been unconscious, changing, beyond reach.

"It worked," she said. "It was rare regeneration. Everyone got it."

Robert nodded slowly and looked down at his own hands, flexing the fingers like he was seeing them for the first time.

"The mana body," Mira said quietly. "Something happened while you were out. Do you feel different?"

He was quiet for a moment. "Yes. But I don't know how to explain it yet."

Jace shifted where he stood. "We should move. That fight was loud, and there might be more of them."

"He's right." Theo was already packing his gear. "We can talk about all of this somewhere safer."

Sarah pushed herself up from the wall, her body still hurting, but with the regeneration still working and using a lot of her mana.

Robert's eyes followed her as she gathered her pack. "Sarah."

She stopped.

"Next time, wake me up first."

She didn't know what to say to that. The pull had been too strong, the need too immediate. She hadn't been thinking about him, or any of them. She'd been thinking about the troll and the perk and the hunger that wouldn't let her rest.

"I'll try," she said.

It was the most honest answer she had.

They moved deeper into the pass as dawn broke over the mountains.

Sarah walked at the front with her sword cleaned and sheathed, the dried blood still flaking from her armor with every step. Behind her, the others moved in silence—processing, she knew, adjusting to what she'd done and what it meant.

Mira's anger simmered through the bond, banked but not gone. They would have the conversation she'd promised, and Sarah would sit through it because Mira deserved that much, even if nothing she said would change what had already happened.

Jace's feelings were more complicated—respect and resentment tangled together, the same mix she'd felt from him since the beginning. He didn't like that she'd pulled ahead, but he couldn't deny that it had worked.

Theo was the steadiest, the way he always was. He'd check his own healing later, test the perk, confirm that it did what the notification said.

Robert's thread in the bond felt strange—deeper somehow, more present. Whatever the mana body stone had done, it had changed his connection to them, and Sarah didn't understand it yet.

She didn't understand many things yet.

The hunger was quiet now, satisfied by the kill, but she knew it would come back. The Rite of Taking wanted more—would always want more—and she didn't know where that ended.

The stronger the perk, the deeper its pull.