Ilyra’s boots cleared the lee of the starting cairn and hit the open stairs of the first rise. Then, the full forty-knot gale coming off the western deep pit slammed against her left side. Even above the roar of the wind, Seyun could see the white plumes of frost-powder ripping sideways off the limestone steps and striking the mica panels of the bronze lamp she carried in her left hand. An ordinary Flame student trying to shield that lamp would have hunched their torso around the cage or burned half their internal breath erecting a rigid wall of heat against the gale. And exhausted their lungs before reaching the middle bridge.
Ilyra did neither. She held the bronze ring with a loose, supple wrist that acted like a ship’s gimbal. That let her forearm absorb the upright shock of each two-foot stone step while angling the edge of her own left collarbone just enough to split the crosswind ahead of the lamp’s two leeward air-slits. Inside the mica cage, the blue-white thread of spirit flame bent fifteen degrees toward the rock wall, flickered once. Then it settled into a steady, slantwise burn.
Seyun watched her climb from the iron rail of the platform. He appreciated the sheer physical discipline needed to maintain that stance. Every time her right boot drove her weight up a limestone riser, the widened four-finger posture of her rear heel pulled directly across the stitched gash under her right collarbone. Yet her rhythm didn’t shorten by…
