The instant Seyun divided his breath across three incompatible tasks—blocking Daro’s hardwood sword in front. That kept his braced left toe unloaded beneath him, and reached blindly behind his right hip to steady the baked-clay water bowl. Daro Kesh felt the load-bearing hollowness in the block line through the grain of his wooden blade.
Daro didn’t need to increase his realm pressure by a single dram to punish a divided mind. Halfway through the rising slanted cut, the veteran swordsman simply rotated his right thumb a quarter-turn inward. Then he slid the flat of his heavy hardwood edge three inches lower along the shaft of Seyun’s ash training staff, shifting the vector of the pressure from a simple knock into a nonstop, levering wedge aimed right over Seyun’s unloaded left heel.
“Your hand is behind your back while my blade is on your stick!” Daro barked mid-stroke, driving his shoulder forward half a step.
Caught with his right arm reaching backward toward the three-legged stool and his Dual-Route Flame stretched thin between front and rear, Seyun felt the levering weight of Daro’s early-Bronze plane press his ash staff inward toward his knee. His body screamed at him to drop his left forefoot flat onto the flat stone slab—just for one tenth of a breath—to brace the triangle and push Daro’s blade back.
