Seyun’s knees buckled on the second step between Bed Two and Bed Seven.
He caught himself with his forearm against the corner of the wooden worktable before he could hit the flat stone slabs. He knocked the bone spatula to the floor as cold sweat broke out across his forehead and back. His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. But his training channels from chest bone to fingertips were fully, implacably dark.
Answering a Deeper Bronze seven-dawn echo while holding a Dual-Route Flame buffer against a Crown-fed pipe hub for three full rounds had exacted its full body price. There was no hidden reserve of miraculous energy waiting in his bones. No heroic willpower could conjure Flame out of empty vessels. For the next several hours, he was as mortal and uncultivated as the day he first swept pine needles outside Ash Reed’s gate.
“Stay on the stool, Seyun!” Mina ordered sharply from beside Bed Seven. It caught a single glimpse of his gray face and shivered shoulders before turning her full attention back to Kori’s convulsing chest. “Don’t try to force your hearth—if you pull on dry channels now, you’ll give yourself the same chest inflammation you had under the Oran ferry dock! Mother Renn, push the stool under his knees!”
