Chapter 22 - Stripped of Humanity

  Hmph!

  Elrin grunted as he hauled the heavy rock tight against his chest, then used the little momentum he could steal to roll it up his torso, jerking it higher with every remaining shred of strength. He fought to drive it above his head, wriggling beneath the weight and forcing his arms to straighten, but the stone would not rise, and his vision began to thin at the edges as his shoulders screamed and the world turned faintly, sickly light.

  His elbows buckled.

  He let go.

  The rock dropped with all its brutal heaviness, only for Tova to catch it as if it was weightless, guiding it down with careful control and setting it on the ground without a thud, mindful of the silence they could not afford to break.

  Dravan let out a low whistle, impressed despite himself.

  “You seem to have gotten a good grip on your borrowed strength,” Tova said.

  Elrin didn’t answer. He stared at his calloused fingers instead, at the way every muscle in his arms and torso spasmed in ugly little waves.

  A good grip, sure, but at what cost?

  His fingers drifted to his throat out of habit, brushing bare skin. The necklace was gone. He'd known that. Yet, it still caught him off guard. I have forsaken my brother, and become the very monster Johanne sought to destroy.

  Elrin could see the slow pulse of black veins beneath his skin.

  The Black Veins didn't exactly increase his strength. Instead, they granted him a temporary surge of force that pushed him beyond his natural limits. It wasn't power he owned or could keep, but in training it proved useful; he could drive his body past what it was capable of, then let it heal and grow stronger from the strain.

  Yet, he could not stop the thought: if Johanne had foreseen this, he would have never allowed Elrin to take Mardukai in, never allowed that ancient hunger to nest behind the boy’s ribs. The old king of Jotun had been right. Mardukai is taking over him, stripping his humanity piece by piece.

  The images from only hours ago still swam before his eyes, refusing to fade, that old man with his shaking lantern and his dawning terror. He did not need to die, not truly, not if the world were fair, but if he lived he would have run straight to Erhart, and then there would have been hundreds of guards pouring into the tunnels, bloodshed would’ve been unavoidable, Elrin told himself.

  I am sorry, Eadward. I keep begging forgiveness from a man who cannot give it, you are gone now, stripped to bone and silence, your will scattered into the soil with all the other dead. I used your death to wake this power.

  I used your sacrifice to bring more death into the world.

  “Elrin!”

  The shout snapped him out of the spiral. He blinked and found Tova standing close, a steady hand resting on his shoulder. “You have done enough today. We can continue tomorrow—”

  Elrin knocked the hand away, sharper than he intended. “No. The sooner I am ready, the quicker we get out of here.”

  “But you are badly hurt.”

  Elrin looked down at himself, at muscles trembling beneath darkening skin. And then he did something that made Tova’s breath hitch. The wound in his thigh healing quickly had been one thing. This was something else entirely.

  Elrin drew in a slow breath and closed his eyes.

  The change was immediate and undeniable. Muscle fibers knit themselves back together beneath the skin, the bruising fading as if erased, the tremors stilled one by one until the damage simply…ceased to exist.

  He opened his eyes, and it was as though nothing had ever touched him.

  “Impressive, lad,” said Dravan as he approached the boy. “I’ve never heard of anyone healing that well.”

  Elrin turned his hand over, watching the calluses vanish beneath fresh skin, though a new texture remained, faintly tougher, as if his body had decided to trade wear for resilience.

  Impressive, yes. But it did not feel like victory.

  He could still feel the difference from when he had taken the many flames. The earlier ones had only dulled the gnawing curse in his chest, filling the hollow and quieting the hunger for a time.

  He hadn’t a need to take more, but he did so anyway, and when he took that last one, something shifted, something stretched, like a boundary pushed just past what it had once allowed.

  It was not discomfort. It was the opposite.

  A tingling, intoxicating bliss had washed through him, spreading into every corner of his body, and with it came a strange, instinctive control, as though the sensation itself could be guided. When his thoughts drifted to the throbbing in his thigh, the feeling followed, pooling there, easing the pain until the wound simply vanished beneath it.

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  He had learned then what it meant. Elrin learned that he could heal at will, so long as he fed the hunger that made it possible. And to him, that realization meant only one thing.

  More training.

  “Looks like you can train without end,” Dravan muttered.

  Tova stepped closer, and though there was a flicker of awe in his expression, it was tempered by something cautious. “It is impressive, yes,” he said quietly, “but the cost is still there, isn’t it, Elrin?”

  Elrin lifted his gaze to meet Tova’s. The cost. He had begun to hate that word, to resent the way it clung to everything. Tova was right, of course, everything demanded something in return, but what Elrin paid was never equal in value.

  No one paid a fortune for a loaf of bread, no one traded a single coin for a house, yet the price of his healing, of his strength, was death, and nothing about that felt balanced, nothing about it felt just.

  He gave Tova a small nod.

  “I see,” Tova murmured, his voice thoughtful. “Then you are not so different from a Bloodkind after all. Sit with me a moment.” Tova folded himself down effortlessly. Elrin lowered himself beside him, less graceful, the stiffness of his body betraying the effort it took simply to be still.

  “Close your eyes,” Tova went on.

  Elrin did.

  “Now,” Tova continued, “search for a pressure inside yourself, as though something were pressing outward from within your chest. Don’t force it. Just find it.”

  He waited, giving the silence room to stretch.

  “Stay there,” he added after a moment, voice barely above a breath. “Memorize it. Learn the shape of it. That is your reserve.”

  Elrin did as he was told, sinking into the stillness until the noise of the chamber seemed to fall away, and after a few quiet moments he opened his eyes again, the faintest crease of concentration still lingering on his brow.

  “This will take practice,” Tova said, watching him closely, “but once you grow familiar with your reserves, you’ll begin to sense when they are full and when they are running dry, simply by comparing it to how you usually feel.”

  “But Bloodkind don’t have to consume anything to refill theirs,” Elrin said.

  “No, not the way you do,” Tova replied, tapping lightly at his chest. “But we still have reserves. Food. If you are anything like us, then your reserve should feel like a kind of hunger, something deep in here. We turn food into strength, but yours is different, in a strange sense.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you trained your legs all day and then had to run for hours after, you could still do it—cursing and aching, but moving. That is how Bloodkind operate when our reserves are low. But you,” his gaze sharpened, “your abilities simply shut down when you are empty.”

  “On the bright side, you get everything back the moment you consumed,” Dravan added from where he lay, voice casual.

  Tova nodded. “For us it takes time. Hours of digestion before it becomes useful.”

  “If there are enough bodies around, I could keep going forever,” Elrin said quietly.

  “Only if,” Tova replied. “But if you face a single opponent, you are in a dangerous position. If you run out, you lose everything. That’s where it ends.”

  “I will just have to kill them before that happens,” Elrin said, and though a small part of him noticed how easily the words came, the unease they once brought was already fading, dulled by repetition.

  “Perhaps,” Tova said, “unless they figure it out first. A seasoned fighter could. There are countless ways to exploit it, keep you bleeding, drag the fight out until your reserve empties, then finish you when you have nothing left.”

  “Only because you know,” Elrin countered.

  “Any Bloodkind with experience would see it eventually,” Tova said, his tone firm now. “So the rule is simple. Never reveal it.”

  “That doesn’t include us, of course,” Dravan muttered with a faint grin.

  Elrin rose slowly. The rock waited where it always did, its rough edges worn smoother by days of failed attempts. He stepped toward it.

  Tova did not interrupt. Dravan shifted slightly where he sat but said nothing, he was clearly enjoying the moment.

  Elrin crouched and slid his hands beneath the stone, fingers finding the same familiar grooves. The weight pressed down immediately. He drew in a slow breath.

  He focused on something else this time. Not desperation or anger. But awareness. He searched for the pressure inside his chest the way Tova had described, that subtle outward push, the quiet fullness that had become as familiar as his own pulse. It was neither brimming nor empty.

  Then his veins pulsed and turned black.

  Elrin pulled.

  The rock rose easily from the ground, scraping softly against the stone floor before clearing it entirely. His back tightened, legs bracing as the weight settled into him. He shifted it higher, rolling it against his torso, muscles bunching and adjusting in a careful rhythm.

  Halfway.

  This was where it had always failed. Where his arms had trembled and his strength had bled away into nothing.

  He exhaled slowly and adjusted his grip.

  Elrin pushed.

  The rock climbed past his chest, past his chin, his arms shaking—

  It fell, and Tova caught it.

  Elrin failed, again. But the difference was too great to ignore. He had made progress, it wasn’t much, but in the span of a few attempts, he had come a very long way. I’m close…I can do it!

  He looked for that pressure again inside his chest, and found it had dipped significantly. The emptiness quite noticeable. It seemed that his Black Veins consumed much more than anything else. Measuring his reserves, he knew he might have about two more tries before…before I’d need to consume again….

  He healed his injuries, and went again. This time, it arrived easier to his chest, and then with one final, grinding effort, he drove it upward until his elbows locked.

  The stone hovered above his head.

  For a moment the world narrowed to the weight pressing down through his bones, through his spine, into the ground beneath his feet. His breath came steady.

  He held it there.

  Then he let it drop as Tova stood there, ready to catch it.

  Silence filled the chamber.

  Dravan let out a soft whistle. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  Tova stepped closer, eyes moving over Elrin’s posture, his breathing, the steadiness in his hands. He gave a small nod, approval without ceremony. “Good,” he said simply.

  Elrin straightened, his chest heaving in and out. He should have felt victorious. Instead he felt… aware. Dreading the next moment, where he’ll need to consume again.

  “Good. Now you’re finally ready to begin combat training,” said Tova as he summoned his spear.