Looking down at the blunt tip of the ash training staff hovering two inches from his solar nerve web, Daro Kesh didn’t push further. With a crisp, deliberate step backward across the flat stone slabs, the master of the black-roof school withdrew his hardwood sword three full paces, removing every ounce of external contact and opposition from Seyun’s weapon.
By the northern granite wall, Ilyra leaned forward slightly over her grounded spear. On the eastern bench, Mina’s hands stilled over her leather satchel. Both of them—along with Daro himself—were watching the four-foot ash staff and the scarred forearm Seyun held extended in the center of the yard.
Throughout the entire time Seyun had cultivated at the Flame realm—from the afternoon he shielded the village burial-house apprentice from boiling water to the thirty-breath bowl contest against Bel Sar yesterday—his cultivated breath had behaved according to the strict limits of Flame. It could project outward as a protective or moving mantle while active breath flow drove a movement. It could hold two plausible routes open during an exchange. But physical contact ended and the movement stopped. Then, a Flame mantle dissolved back into the skin like steam vanishing into cold air.
Three paces separated Seyun from Daro Kesh now. No hardwood blade pressed against the ash wood. No incoming force demanded an immediate rebound. Yet in the crisp, still sunlight of Ash Reed’s oldest base yard, the dense bronze-edged arc sheathing Seyun’s left forearm, the forward two feet of the ash staff…
