The first pulse beat after the collarbone pin came free hit the inner crease of Halin’s left wrist like rainwater surging down a narrow gutter after a roof tile slips.
Through the three slender copper needles he had seated around the outward gate ten minutes earlier, Seyun felt the boy’s unguided spirit vein current wobble wildly. Halin’s left forearm had been pinned to the Court’s five-count wire for weeks. Because of that, the walls of his heart-sac and lung channels were bruised and slack. They had forgotten how to hold their own shape without an external iron rail pressing them flat.
Worse, because Seyun’s own Early Bronze qi was already touching the copper needles to keep the gate from collapsing, Halin’s frightened body instinctively tried to latch onto Seyun’s rhythm the way a drowning swimmer grabs a rescuer’s throat.
Seyun felt the boy’s pulse reach toward his own two-step Answering Spirit vein rhythm, seeking another stronger pattern to lean on now that the bronze collar was gone.
For an instant, the temptation was obvious. Seyun’s Early Bronze foundation was solid, hardened by his vows with Nara Soth, Daro Kesh, and Ilyra. With a single firm push through the copper needles, he could have flooded Halin’s forearm with his own stable two-step breath flow. He carried the sixteen-year-old’s breath across the wrist gate by main force until Mina pulled the final silver pin.
