Vaska Ren didn’t lunge across the six paces of gray gravel with blinding speed.
True to his word to Mina, he kept the physical speed and impact weight of his movement strictly within the boundary of early Bronze—no faster than Joren’s lunges in Ash Reed’s winter hall or the caravan raiders’ spears in the reed marsh. He took two long, smooth, gliding steps forward across the stones, his narrow gray blade extended at chest height with the point aimed directly at the hollow of Seyun’s throat.
What made the advance terrifying was not how fast the steel moved. But what happened to the courtyard around it.
Vaska’s front boot settled three paces from Seyun. Then, the early Bronze field of the Sky-slit tightened by half. To Seyun’s left, a slanted plane of hardened Bronze focus slid across the gravel like a stone water gate dropping into its groove, cutting off Ash Reed’s third and seventh sidestep shifts. Directly behind Seyun’s heels, a second angled plane banked against the base of the porch steps, ensuring that a straight backward retreat would catch his heel on the stone riser and tip his spine backward.
Only one path remained clear. A smooth, inviting forty-five-degree slanted stepping forward and to Seyun’s right, away from the point of the sword.
