Page 7 of Property of Scar

… and that’s when I feel it.

A sharp drag across my ribs. Claws catch skin, not deep, but fast, hot, a bright line of pain that snaps my focus tighter instead of breaking it. Heat follows immediately, spreading under the surface, the sting already dulling as my body begins to close the damage, skin pulling itself back together even as I move.

No time to think about it.

No time to care.

I pivot on the knee still braced against the ground, pushing up through it, letting the rotation carry me back to standing as the world snaps into alignment around me again.

He’s already turning.

Too fast.

Too smooth for something that just took a hit like that.

For a fraction of a second, we’re both resetting, both recalculating, the space between us tightening like a wire pulled too hard.

Then it breaks.

The rogue comes at me again, not with the blunt force of the first attack, but sharper now, more deliberate, its body angling mid-stride, correcting, learning. Its speed isn’t just fast, but the kind that makes your eyes second-guess what they’re seeing, that makes distance unreliable.

I don’t wait for it to close.

My hand drops to my belt on instinct, fingers closing around the worn handle of the stake before my brain even catches up. The wood slides into my palm, easy and familiar, as if it were made for my hand, with no hesitation or second thoughts. Just muscle memory built from too many bodies and too many years putting rogues in the ground.

Training doesn’t ask permission.

It takes over.

I step into him instead of away.

That’s always the part that catches them.

The moment when the prey doesn’t run.

The moment when the distance they’re counting on disappears.

My shoulder clips his as he lunges, throwing off his line just enough, and in that split second where his body has to adjust, where instinct has to catch up with reality, I drive the stake forward.

I feel it meet resistance.

Bone.

Solid.

Unforgiving.

For a heartbeat, everything holds there, the force of it reverberating back through my arm, the world narrowing to pressure, angle, and the exact point of contact.

Then it gives.

The wood punches through with a sickening, splintering crack, sliding past the sternum, angling up the way it was drilled into me over and over again until it became reflex, until there was no version of me that could miss.

The rogue jerks hard against it.

A full-body convulsion snaps through him, his mouth opening on a sound that never quite makes it out as the momentum dies in an instant.

Just… stops.