Mina reached Seyun before anyone else spoke. She pulled the scorched flap of Elder Hesh’s grey wool coat aside to inspect the linen trousers beneath. A brown heat-mark the width of two fingers stained the outer cloth over his right hip. But the skin underneath was only flushed warm. Satisfied that he hadn’t burned himself or twisted his fifth rib during the bail-out step, she stepped back half a pace and folded her arms. That left him to answer the woman standing across the court.
“Three breaths,” Nara Soth said. Her wooden staff was still aimed at the blackened furrow in the wool. “Your Returning Step changed lanes twice, your Bronze edge slid cleanly off the first lock, and on the third breath the glass burned your coat where you stood. Had that been a dropping blade from the northern ring instead of Vaska’s toy, your hip and your staff would be in two pieces on the frost.”
Seyun brushed the last grey ash from the wool seam, his palm stinging faintly along the old burn scars from Oran. Beneath his chest bone, the third silver curve—sworn with Nara at the Hollow Summit pillar—tightened with a sharp, humming friction. “The lens read the preserved purpose underneath the route change,” he said evenly. “When I pivoted behind the second pillar, my intention stayed fixed on reaching the stone stand. The glass didn’t need to guess my footwork once it knew I refused to abandon the destination.”
