It struck halfway through the third beat of Pera’s shift from two-beat pauses to a nonstop round.
One moment, Seyun was kneeling beside Bed Two in the lamp-lit quiet of the lower vault. His left hand watched the warming vessel at Pera’s ankle. Meanwhile, his right fingertips held a delicate Returning Step buffer against the bronze metal ring between her fifth and sixth ribs. Pera’s breath had just looped cleanly past her old Red Ditch flank scar and was climbing toward the narrow inward turn behind her breastbone.
The next moment, Place II beneath Seyun’s right collarbone flared cold and bright as winter iron plunged into a forge trough.
Seven dawns had completed their count since Daro Kesh stood in the mud of his black-roof schoolyard north of Oran. They lowered his practice sword before his injured student Kes. Then they widened his Bronze focus to admit more than one valid route. By the unchanging law of Master Uren’s diagram, the advancement of a freely sworn rival arrived across the bond on the seventh morning—not a quarter-hour early to suit a quiet camp, and not a quarter-hour late to spare a delicate bedside procedure.
Seyun’s spine locked. No stolen sword energy poured into his chest. The Answering Spirit vein never gifted another fighter’s power, memories, or ready-made skill. What surged down his right-side return channels from the silver curve beneath his collarbone was the raw, uncompromising load-bearing question of Daro’s breakthrough:
