The alpha hound's jaws were inches from Elara's throat when Kael moved.
The acrid stench of shadow venom burned his nostrils, the grit of dust grinding between his teeth as he slammed his weight into her side, his twisted right ankle screaming in protest. They hit the packed dirt hard, the hound's fangs snapping shut on empty air half a foot above their heads. Elara gasped, the faint golden glow of her healing magic fizzling out entirely, the black veins creeping up her forearm turning darker, more swollen. The air smelled like rot and burnt stone, the cold of the wastes seeping through Kael's thin hoodie to settle in his bones.
"Go," she coughed, spitting a glob of black-tinged saliva onto the dust. "The rest of the pack is 30 seconds out. My Regen can't keep up with the venom. I'll hold them off, you run for the inn."
Kael pushed himself up on one elbow, his left arm's shallow cut throbbing where the first hound's claw had nicked him earlier. He'd died less than an hour ago under a delivery truck in Brooklyn, shoving a seven-year-old out of the way before the impact, and woken up in this hellscape with nothing but a rusted dagger and a Millennium Falcon hoodie with a hole burned through the elbow. He wasn't going to let the only person who'd been nice to him here die for him. Pragmatism won out over the urge to be self-sacrificing: two people stood a better chance of making it to the inn than one, even if one of them was dying of venom.
"Not a chance," he said, grabbing the rusted dagger from where it had skittered across the ground. The metal was pitted, dull enough that he'd struggled to cut through the first hound's matted shadow-fur earlier. The alpha hound circled them, low to the ground, its glowing red eyes locked on Elara's throat. Behind it, six more shadow hounds loped over the rocky ridge, their snarls echoing off the stone so loud the pebbles at Kael's feet vibrated.
The warm tingling in Kael's chest, the one that had been building right as the alpha lunged, grew stronger, spreading down his arm to his fingertips. He blinked, and a floating, semi-transparent screen popped up directly in front of Elara's face, glowing faint blue, bright enough that he flinched back like he'd been burned.
Kael froze. He'd spent enough late nights playing gacha games and grinding MMO stats to recognize a stat screen when he saw one. Great, he thought, dry as kindling. I died and woke up in a live service game. Fitting, I blew half my last paycheck on limited banner pulls for a character I never even got. He'd wasted countless weekends grinding for stat boosts that vanished when the servers shut down two years prior, his max level paladin wiped from existence before he could even beat the final raid boss. This felt nothing like that, though— the text was crisp, no lag, no pop-up ads for premium currency blocking half the display, the + sign thrumming with a quiet, tangible energy he could feel even inches away from his skin.
He squinted, reading the text through the faint glow:[Elara VossClass: Wanderer HealerRegeneration: 3/3 (BIRTH CAP ENFORCED)Venom Load: 89% (Regeneration insufficient to purge)Remaining Vitality: 12%]
Next to the Regeneration line, a small, glowing green + sign pulsed softly, like a call to action. Kael thought he was hallucinating from the adrenaline, reached up to swat the screen away like a gnat that had flown in his face. His finger brushed the + sign.
The screen flickered.[Regeneration: 4/4 (CAP INCREASED)][Venom Load: 79%]
Elara gasped, her back arching off the ground. The black veins on her arm faded just a little, the golden glow of her magic flaring back to life, brighter than before, the scent of mint (sharp, fresh, nothing like the rot of the wastes) filling the air around them. "What the hell?" she whispered, staring at her hands like they belonged to a stranger. "My cap's been 3 since I was a kid. The Covenant says caps are immutable. That's impossible."
Kael's heart hammered in his chest. He wasn't hallucinating. That screen was real. That + sign had worked. The Covenant's birth cap, the one Elara said Theron and his goons enforced with violence and hoarded Blessing Shards, had just bent to a single tap of his finger. He'd gotten a second chance at life for a reason, apparently, and it wasn't to die in the dirt to a pack of shadow dogs.
The alpha hound snarled, lunging again. Kael didn't hesitate. He reached out, tapping the + sign next to Regeneration eight more times, as fast as he could. Each press made the breath catch in his throat, the ache in his twisted ankle flaring sharper for half a second before fading, like the power was siphoning a little bit of his own vitality to fuel the boost. He didn't care, not when the venom load percentage dropped faster with every tap, the red warning text flashing then dimming until it vanished entirely, as if it had never been written in the first place. Each tap sent a jolt of exhaustion through him, his head throbbing, his muscles burning like he'd run a full marathon in the middle of summer. The screen updated with every press, the red warning note about the birth cap fading a little more each time:5/4 → 6/5 → 7/6 → 8/7 → 9/8 → 10/9 → 11/10 → 12/11[BIRTH CAP REMOVED][Venom Load: 0%][Remaining Vitality: 100%]
The black veins on Elara's arm vanished entirely. She shot up to her feet, her hands glowing so bright they cast golden streaks across the dust, so bright Kael had to squint to look at them. The first of the pack hounds lunged at her, and she slammed a palm out, a wave of golden light slamming into its chest hard enough to send it flying ten feet back. The hound howled, its shadowy fur burning away like smoke, leaving nothing but a pile of fine black dust on the ground.
A second hound darted around her blind side, low to the ground, its claws scraping the rock as it aimed for the soft flesh behind her knee. Kael yelled a warning, hefting a loose chunk of granite at its head, and she spun just in time, her light catching it mid-leap to disintegrate it before it could make contact. She shot him a quick, grateful glance over her shoulder before turning to face the next oncoming hound, her stance solid, no trace of the wobbly, venom-addled weakness she'd had minutes before.
"I don't understand," she said, her voice shocked, as she ducked a second hound's snap, blasting it mid-air before its claws could reach her. "I've never been able to channel that much life energy. Not ever. I couldn't even heal a broken arm last month without passing out."
Kael didn't answer. The alpha hound was coming for him now, its jaws wide, reeking of rot and venom, its front paws outstretched to tear his throat out. He looked down at the rusted dagger in his hand, and another screen popped up, this one hovering directly over the pitted blade:[Rusted Iron DaggerSharpness: 2/10Durability: 4/10Augmentable: Yes]
Another glowing green + sign, next to the Sharpness stat. Kael grinned, sharp and wild, the split lip on his mouth stinging at the movement. He remembered sitting on his grandma's fire escape in Queens when he was 10, her calloused hand wrapped around his as she showed him how to run a whetstone along the edge of her old pocket knife, the scratch of metal on stone echoing over the hum of passing subway trains. She'd told him a dull blade was more dangerous than a sharp one, more likely to slip and cut the person holding it. He'd never thought that lesson would apply to fighting shadow hounds in a fantasy wasteland, but it held up just as well here. He tapped it seven times, each tap making his vision swim a little, his ankle screaming louder, the exhaustion pooling heavy in his bones. Fifteen points spent total, he calculated vaguely. The cost was his stamina, his own energy. Fair trade for not getting torn to pieces.
The screen updated as he tapped the last time:[Sharpness: 9/10][Durability: 7/10 (passive increase from Sharpness augmentation)]
The rust flaked off the dagger's blade in tiny, powdery clouds, the edge sharpening to a silver gleam so fine Kael could see his own wide, grinning reflection in it. No visible aura, no glow, no sign to anyone but him that anything had changed. Perfect, exactly what he needed to keep his power hidden for now.
The alpha hound hit him, slamming him back against the rock face hard enough to knock the wind out of him. Kael brought the dagger up, slashing it across the hound's front leg before it could bite down. The blade cut through shadowy fur, muscle, and bone like it was warm butter, severing the leg entirely. The alpha howled, a high, unearthly sound that made Kael's teeth ache, and reared back, dripping black blood onto the dust at his feet.
A second pack hound lunged at his unprotected back, its claws raking across his hoodie, cutting through the fabric to leave a shallow gash across his shoulder. Before Kael could even react, Elara's hand flashed out, a burst of golden light slamming into the hound's side, and the wound on his shoulder closed up instantly, the pain vanishing before it could register. She blinked, staring at her hand like it belonged to a stranger. She'd never been able to heal from that far away, that fast, before.
Kael pushed off the rock, ignoring the lingering throbbing in his ankle, and drove the dagger into the alpha's chest, right where its glowing red heart pulsed under its fur. The hound went rigid, its red eyes widening, then dissolved into black dust, leaving nothing but a tiny, glowing black orb floating in the air for half a second before it zipped toward Kael, sinking into his chest. He felt a tiny jolt of energy, like a shot of espresso, and the exhaustion in his bones faded just a little.
Elara was handling the remaining four hounds easily, her golden light blasting through them one by one, no sign of fatigue, no sign of the venom that had almost killed her five minutes earlier. She ducked a slash from the last hound, grabbed it by the scruff, and slammed a palm into its chest, burning it to dust before it could snarl again.
Silence fell over the outcrop, except for the distant whistle of wind through rock and Kael's heavy, gasping breaths. He collapsed to his knees, the dagger slipping from his hand, clattering onto the ground. His head was pounding, his ankle felt like it was on fire even after Elara's quick heal, his muscles ached so bad he could barely move. He'd spent every spare bit of stamina he had on those augments, and it showed. There was no free power here, no cheat codes without a cost. He could work with that.
Elara ran over to him, dropping to her knees next to him, her hands glowing golden as she pressed them to his twisted ankle. The magic felt not just like mint, but like the cold cherry lemonade he'd buy from the bodega on the corner of his block every July, the fizz bubbling up his sinuses, the cold seeping deep into his sore muscles to chase away the ache. He'd almost forgotten what that tasted like, after spending what felt like an eternity trudging through the dusty, hot wastes, and the memory made his chest feel light for the first time since he'd woken up here. The pain faded almost instantly, the swelling going down, the bones knitting back together, the mint scent of her magic filling his nose again. She moved her hands to his left arm, then to his split lip, healing the cuts in seconds, the faint stinging vanishing entirely.
"Thank you," she said, her voice soft, as she finished healing him, wiping a smudge of black dust off his cheek. "I should be dead. The venom was already in my lungs. I don't know what happened. My Regen cap was 3. It's always been 3. The Covenant says caps are written into your soul at birth, only changeable with a Blessing Shard." She paused, her jaw tightening, and Kael recognized the cold anger in her voice, the same anger she'd had when she talked about the Covenant earlier. "High Priest Theron hoards every Blessing Shard the Covenant finds. He's 400 years old, uses them to extend his own lifespan, lets commoners die of treatable wounds because our caps are too low. He'd kill every last one of us before he let a commoner get a shard to raise their Regen enough to fight shadow hound venom."
Kael nodded, picking the dagger up off the ground. The edge was still razor sharp, no sign of rust, no sign that it had been a useless hunk of metal ten minutes earlier. He tucked it into the waistband of his jeans, not answering her unasked question. He'd just found out he had this power, he didn't know how it worked, didn't know if it had a catch, didn't know if the Covenant had ways to track people with powers that broke their rules. He trusted Elara, enough to not leave her to die, but not enough to reveal the one thing that could get both of them killed before they even made it to the inn.
"Maybe you had a hidden reserve," he said, shrugging, pushing himself to his feet. He was still a little wobbly, but the healing had helped most of the fatigue fade. "Adrenaline does weird things, right? I once lifted a 200 pound air conditioner off my cousin when we were teens after a storm knocked it off the fire escape. Didn't even know I could do that."
Elara stared at him, her eyebrows raised, like she didn't believe him for a second, but she didn't push. She nodded, glancing back at the piles of black dust where the hounds had been, her gaze lingering on the spot where the alpha had died. "We need to get moving. Covenant patrols frequent this area at dusk. If they find us here with seven dead shadow hounds, they'll ask questions we don't want to answer. The Rusty Tankard is two miles west, we can make it in 20 minutes if we hurry. The innkeeper owes me a favor, he'll let us stay for free, no questions asked."
Kael nodded, following her as she started walking down the ridge toward the tree line, the dead grass crunching under their boots. He glanced at his hand, and a new screen popped up, hovering in front of his face, so faint he almost missed it against the orange glow of the setting sun. He stopped short, staring at it, his heart skipping a beat.[Kael RainerClass: UnassignedAugment Points Spent: 15Augment Points Remaining: 12Essence Absorbed: 7/100 (next Augment unlock at 100 essence)]
He looked back at the outcrop, and saw tiny, glowing orbs floating up from the piles of hound dust, drifting through the air toward him, sinking into his chest one by one. Each orb felt like a tiny pop of seltzer against his skin when it sank in, a faint, sweet tang lingering at the back of his throat with every tick of the essence counter. He watched the numbers climb slowly, 14, 15, 16, until the last of the orbs had vanished into his chest, the essence count settling at 17/100. That was enough for a couple more small augments, if he needed them, a small safety net to carry with them on the way to the inn. He'd gotten seven essence from the seven hounds he'd helped kill, plus whatever the alpha had given him. So that was how he earned more points. Kill monsters, absorb their essence, get more augments. It made sense.
"Kael?" Elara called, looking back at him from the edge of the tree line, her hair glowing golden in the sunset. "You coming? The patrols will be here any minute."
He blinked, the screen vanishing when he shook his head. He grinned, shoving his hands in his hoodie pockets, and started walking toward her.
"Yeah," he said. "I'm coming."
Somewhere far to the east, a Covenant patrol horn blew, low and long, echoing across the wastes, so loud the birds in the trees took off flying. Kael's hand tightened around the dagger at his waist, the sharp edge pressing into his palm through the fabric. Theron and his Covenant had spent centuries hoarding power, enforcing their unfair stat caps, letting people die for no reason other than their own greed.
Now Kael had the power to break every single one of those caps. He could raise the Regen of every healer in the wastes, make every farmer's Strength high enough to feed their families, give every fighter the Speed to outrun Covenant patrols. He could burn Theron's unfair system to the ground, if he played his cards right.
And he wasn't going to waste that chance.
The horn blew again, closer this time. Kael picked up his pace, catching up to Elara as she stepped into the shadow of the trees, the inn only a few miles ahead. The first step to dismantling the Covenant was surviving long enough to learn how his power worked. And he intended to do exactly that.