“Don’t try to fight the bronze,” Seyun told Halin. He kept the blunt brass handle of his copper needle resting lightly against the boy’s fourth rib gap. “If you brace your chest muscles against a fifth-realm current, it will bruise your ribs the same way a river timber crushes a man who tries to stop it with his chest. In Ash Reed’s third base form, when we shift our weight from the front foot to the rear heel, there’s a shift beat where the breath neither rises nor falls. It simply waits at the bottom of the ribs while the heel takes the ground.”
Halin stared up at the vaulted stone ceiling, his throat bobbing as the four-count clockwork breath in pulled his chest open again. “The militia sergeant showed us the first two Ash Reed postures once,” the boy whispered during the outward slide of the breath. “He never showed the third. He said outer-valley recruits only muddle the turn.”
“The third turn is the easiest one in the set once you stop looking at your hands,” Seyun said. “Listen to the count of the pillar. Four counts down into your lungs. One count held at the top. Four counts drawn back into the socket. Right at the end of that fourth outward count—when I tap the needle handle once—don’t pull air in, and don’t push against the wire. Just drop your attention into the soles of your heels against the straw mattress and withhold your consent for a…
