Silence followed Pera’s outburst. It was broken only by the steady four-beat hum of the black bronze pillar and the crackle of pine charcoal under Mother Renn’s broth pot.
Halfway up the spiral stair, Chief Examiner Vaska Ren didn’t gloat or offer commentary. He simply shifted his weight slightly on the seventh step, his narrow face composed in the dim light. Yet that quiet patience pressed against Seyun’s shoulders harder than a drawn blade. Six hours of their twenty-four-hour window were already gone. By dawn, Daro Kesh’s seventh-day advancement echo would arrive in Place II beneath Seyun’s right collarbone, demanding its own answer from his spirit veins. If Pera had not found her independent return path before that echo struck, Seyun would be caught between two incompatible pressures with less than half a day leftover before Vaska closed the trial.
Eleven years of surviving Ash Reed’s outer-student checks tightened in Seyun’s chest. The old, reflexive certainty that when a form fails on the fourth pass, the only answer is to wipe the sweat from your eyes and force a fifth pass before the teacher marks the slate against you.
Seyun leaned forward on his knees. He reached his bandaged right hand back toward the iron rail of Bed Two.
