The double’s left hand struck the ash staff two inches above Len’s numbed grip.
Its Hookhold perk—governed by the seventh milestone—instantly mirrored its right hand. He clamped around the seasoned wood with four hundred pounds of unbending grip force. The creature intended to snap the ash dowel like a dry willow switch and wrench the cloth back onto the landing before the signal could be seen from the rim.
It pulled with savage, clockwork driving force, putting all the strength of its upper torso into the recoil.
Len didn’t fight to keep the staff.
That was the foundational error the creature’s calculating model couldn’t anticipate. A machine programmed to enforce an office monopoly operates on the premise that a human being will fight to retain whatever property it grasps. When the double wrenched the staff backward, Len simply opened his numb right fingers and let the wood go fully.
The sudden release of pushback was total to the double’s balance.
Even with Burdenless Step compensating for the shift in balance point, forty pounds of explosive pulling force suddenly had no balance weight. The creature’s torso was thrown backward and to the left. Its boots skidded two inches across the grease-coated iron mesh before the perk could re-anchor its soles to the floorboards.
