Seyun had four breaths left of the eight-breath flow cap Mina had set in the nook. No illusion whatsoever about what would happen if he placed an Early Bronze ash staff in front of the body of a Measure blade. Even at the northern chamber, it had taken Ilyra’s Deeper Bronze spear shaft snapping in two just to turn Reth Mal’s stroke aside. He didn’t aim at the six-foot white edge itself.
Instead, as his boots hit the rubble-strewn dirt below the snapped eastern stone support prop, Seyun looked two feet ahead of the curling white tip. At the thin, shimmering seam of tightly packed air where the Measure was drawing a returning track back toward Daro’s kneeling stance. The returning route was the cord by which the blade pulled itself into its second cut, anchored to the expectation that Daro would repeat his rightward Jade bending.
Seyun exhaled sharply through his teeth so his chest wouldn’t lock. He stepped into the Dual-Route Returning Step and poured his entire Early Bronze Answering Edge into the upper two feet of his plain ash staff. He held one narrow, clear purpose in his spirit veins: not to protect the shrine roof, not to shield Daro’s body, and not to break the blade, but solely to spoil the timing of the return seam by a single heartbeat.
