For five heartbeats, Seyun stood over the pine medicine table with his sleeve rolled up and his hand suspended two inches above Mina’s knuckles. His mind raced through Master Uren’s tablet stone carvings, searching for a clause that guaranteed a backup recipient would be padded from a bearer’s internal echo shifts.
There was none—because Master Uren and the Counterpoise Sect had designed the Answering Spirit vein for a single inward fighter answering his rivals, never as a multi-bed hospital pipe hub.
“I could keep my left hand on the needle bases and pull the copper out the instant I felt Place I or Place III tighten,” Seyun said, though the defensive edge in his voice betrayed how far he had just pulled back from certainty to improvisation. “My Dual-Route Flame reacted fast enough to cut Pera loose at the summit before Daro’s echo broke her nerve.”
“At the summit, you were cutting Pera away from an external pillar while she already had an independent leg route ready to take her breath,” Mina replied without lifting her hand from the needles. “Here, you’re talking about inviting three people whose channels are half-collapsed to lean their weight onto your chest—and hoping your split-burned fingers can pull three needles out faster than a Crown burst travels through copper.”
