Daro Kesh didn’t raise the flat dark plane.
As Reth Mal’s twin prongs shot forward on the opening beat of Nara’s two-beat venting pause—guided by the floor runes toward the exact chest-high level line where Daro had set his guard nineteen times before—Daro dropped his right shoulder two inches, let his wounded left arm fall back against the outer curve of the chalk circle. Then he angled his fourteen-inch broken blade not against Reth’s incoming point. But along the specific slanted hall between Reth’s left prong and the back of Mina’s bowed neck.
Daro had abandoned his habitual square stance to match the exact. Because of that, shifting tilt of Mina’s shoulders as she leaned over Halin’s left wrist, the pre-calculated counter-pulse in the silver floor rune beneath his boots fired half a thumb-breadth behind his heel.
Reth’s thrust missed Daro’s chest bone by the thickness of a coin, his left prong screeching off the oblique edge of Daro’s broken steel and showering hot white sparks across the back of Mina’s linen collar without touching her skin.
Reth’s gaze sharpened in surprise at the missed prediction. Instantly, he whipped his wrists over to bring his right prong slicing down toward the lower gap where Halin’s bandaged shoulders knelt on the mat.
