The tip of Vaska Ren’s narrow judge’s sword brushed the outer wool weave of Seyun’s left sleeve.
Up to that exact micro-instant of physical contact, Vaska’s Sky-slit intention had felt Seyun’s right hip loaded and ready to slide into the allowed right-hand chute. Acting on twenty years of spotless trial habit—where every assessed tester moved toward the only leftover opening a quarter-beat before the steel arrived—Vaska’s wrist turned clockwise, releasing ten percent of the pressure holding the left-hand Bronze shutter so the flat of his blade could whip sideways across the right-hand lane at ankle height.
That physical commitment was the signal Seyun’s Dual-Route Flame had been waiting for.
The cold flat of Vaska’s steel committed its driving force rightward against the cloth of his sleeve. Then, Seyun didn’t have to stop, think, or build a new movement. The second route was already live and waiting in his left ankle.
He simply let the right-hip route dissolve back into his lower hearth unused. Then he allowed his left heel to turn on the spot through the one-inch seam where Vaska’s left-hand shutter had just thinned to feed the sweep.
Shhhk.
The flat of Vaska’s early Bronze blade snapped cleanly through the empty right-hand hall where Seyun’s shins should have been, slicing two inches of loose gray hem from the bottom of Seyun’s wool cloak and kicking a fan of granite pebbles across the drainage gutter.
