Ilyra stepped onto the ten-pace crescent of dry, frost-dusted granite between the eastern curve of the beehive wall and the outer ring of outward floor grooves.
Even with her winter cloak unpinned and laid neatly over Seyun’s satchel by the stair door so the heavy wool wouldn’t snag on the thirty-two black needles, the space was narrower than any practice court at White Bough. To her left, the slotted star-fallen iron shafts hummed with five joined realms of downward mountain weight. To her right, the rough granite blocks of the dome curved inward overhead, rimed with white ice that sparkled in the starlight.
She settled her feet into the first-form opening stance of the Cloud-Splitting Spear, her left foot forward toward the eastern wall, her right heel planted flat at forty-five degrees. The marsh-iron spear held level across her hip.
“Begin,” Nara Soth said from inside the needle ring, her single hand resting motionless on her patched knee.
Ilyra exhaled a white plume of breath and drove the spear point forward in the classic first-form thrust—Parting the Morning Mist—sending her Bronze force surging from her waist up through her right shoulder to make the iron spearhead ring like a struck bell.
