34. Sister’s Blade

The mercenary leader noticed the movement from the stairs a fraction too late.

The newcomer was already on him by the time he turned fully. Karn clicked his tongue in annoyance, shoved Misgiver aside, and struck with his good hand without hesitation. The blow meant more than death. Alistair could feel the same cruel intent through it that Karn had shown in every earlier exchange. He aimed to ruin the body first—rib cage, lung, breath, pain—leaving the target alive just long enough to suffer before dying.

The strike landed.

It should have dropped the clone. Harrowed stayed upright.

Alistair had chosen Harrowed for exactly that reason. The class had seemed useless for a long time because he had never found a situation where functioning through overwhelming pain mattered more than avoiding the hit entirely.

The blow crushed into Harrowed’s chest so hard that the clone should have folded. Pain exploded through him. Breathing went wrong immediately. Something inside had been badly damaged, perhaps cracked ribs, or worse. But Persevere did what Alistair had hoped it would do. It did not reduce the pain or make the wound less serious. It simply let the clone keep acting through it.

Harrowed kept moving. He drove the knife into Karn’s gut and used the rest of his momentum to crash fully into him, forcing the two of them together. The stab would not do serious damage, but that had never been its purpose. Alistair only needed Karn held in place for one or two breaths, keeping his attention fixed on the obvious threat in front of him.

Karn’s face twisted in furious disbelief. He had expected the strike to end the body, as his attacks had ended the others. Instead, the clone was still there, pressing the knife into him.

Then cold metal crossed his throat. He froze for an instant, staring at the blade as it passed before his eyes.

It was his sister’s knife.

He tried to turn.

Shade met his eyes.

Alistair had not provoked Karn into rage without a plan. Shade had been waiting in the dark for exactly this moment, and the knife taken from the woman outside had always been in his possession, waiting for this use.

Shade drove the knife into Karn’s heart.

That ended the fight, though not immediately. Karn still twitched and tried to speak. One hand rose weakly toward his throat, then toward the knife in his gut, but lost strength halfway through. He tried to say his sister’s name and could not form it properly. Harrowed still held him there. Then Karn sagged, and the rest of the effort went out of him.

Only then did Alistair breathe. He had not expected such a strong opponent to be hiding in Bracken Hollow. He had gone into the village confident he could deal with a small gang, even if they had much higher levels than him. But Karn had been beyond that, and likely far more experienced than anyone Alistair had faced on the island.

In a clean fight, he was not sure any of the clones he had used so far could have hurt him. He might have been able to bury the man under a stream of bodies if he had no other choice, throwing clone after clone at him until Karn finally tired or slipped. But that had never been a valid plan. He had no way to know how much STA the man had, or whether other associates might have reached him before Alistair wore him down. Worse, if Karn lived to understand that some of the bodies disappeared instead of remaining dead, then his secret would be at risk.

Alistair could not allow that. So Harrowed had been the answer.

After suffering through Karn’s attacks across several clones, Alistair had finally understood what made the man so effective. Karn expected the first hit to remove a target from the fight, even if it did not kill them. In most cases, that was a fair expectation. The pain alone could force Alistair away from the damaged body. Harrowed was the one class he had that could directly challenge that logic.

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Persevere had bought a few precious moments after a hit that should have ended him outright. Combined with surprise and Shade’s hidden position, it had worked.

The damage done before that also helped. Karn had already taken wounds from multiple clones, bolts from the crossbow, thunderflow from the baton, and blood loss that had dulled his edge.

With Karn finally down, Alistair dismissed the dying and ruined clones first. He let Harrowed remain for the moment, though the body was in terrible condition. Shade remained as well. Misgiver, still bruised but functional, also stayed. Survivor, the second reserve clone who had arrived with Harrowed and had been held back on the stairs because there had been no spare mask for him, was finally used to help with the cleanup. That left him with two healthy bodies and two damaged ones.

Only Shade and Survivor were really in condition to move around and work properly, but Alistair kept Misgiver and Harrowed summoned anyway. The two wounded clones sat against the wall and watched while he gathered everything useful from the house.

He moved quickly. Even if no one had reacted yet, he did not want to be trapped in Bracken Hollow after sunrise. The rooms were checked one by one. The masks and weapons were recovered first, then anything that looked useful.

The haul was significant. There were more shards in the house than any village collector should have held, which made sense if the place had also been used as a local transfer point. Karn had a core in his own belongings. The flow-engraved crossbow was probably the best single item taken from the house, and it had already proven its value. Alistair also gathered every knife and other useful piece of equipment he could carry. Even poor-quality tools had value if the price was right or if he needed spares for clones.

Karn’s armor was especially worth taking. It was a good-quality piece of soft leather, flexible enough for movement but much better than the patchwork protection worn by the dead gang members. So he stripped the body without hesitation.

He also found another token. This was the second time he had come across such a thing, the first being among Roe’s hidden wealth. He chose to keep it even without understanding its use.

Once the valuables were gathered, he loaded them into a rough sack taken from the house and brought them outside to the mounts.

No one had appeared. Either the village had learned not to get involved, or whatever sounds had escaped the house had not been enough to draw anyone to it. He saw no witnesses and no movement beyond the usual silence of a rural settlement before dawn.

Back inside, he decided to leave the two wounded clones behind.