Joren stared at the three copper needles resting on the coarse linen cloth for three full breaths before lifting his chin. In the inner hall of Ash Reed Sect, foundation order was always framed in grand, raised metaphors—rivers returning to the sea, pine roots splitting granite, or rising flames crowning a bronze tripod. What Seyun had just offered him sounded less like an immortal inheritance than a bone-setter’s splint after a bad fall.
“Show me the count,” Joren said. He pulled the hem of his wool sleeve up past his elbow so Mina could keep her fingers on the upper-arm vessel above his bend. “If the junior students in the outer yard are already copying Hesh’s corrected test sheets, I’ll not sit in this shed pretending my channels are still whole.”
Seyun didn’t touch the copper needles yet. Instead, he shifted his stool half a pace closer to the plank table. That kept his braced left foot flat on the sacking to obey Mina’s strict weight limit. “Don’t begin with the first Ash Reed base form,” Seyun instructed. He watched the familiar practice tension gather automatically in Joren’s upper back muscle muscles. “Your shoulders already know how to fake the first form. If you enter a stance you have repeated ten thousand times, your body will slide straight into the sixth-beat groove where the fire spirit used to catch you.”
