Nara Soth’s boots clicked evenly down the frost-heaved granite steps of the seal court’s southern threshold, her white hair catching the early morning sun. She turned onto the high dark rock goat path leading out toward the ridge above Miller’s Ford. Neither Seyun, nor Daro Kesh, nor Mina took a single step to block her way. Up on the high rock spur overlooking the hospice gorge, Hall Mistress Soran saw the one-armed Crown fighter pass along the lower trail with the twelve-pound grey stone tucked beneath her elbow. Reading the calm, unrushed stance of Seyun and Daro back at the seal court gate, Soran didn’t shift her plain iron spear or send a lookout to trail her down the slope.
Standing beside the empty hemp slip-loop that still swayed gently between the eleventh and twelfth eight-sided pillars in the center of the terrace, Seyun placed his scarred right palm over the front of his scorched grey wool coat just below his chest bone.
Beneath his skin and the two-slat willow-and-linen rib band, the third silver curve—Place III of the Answering Spirit vein—remained warm, distinct, and unbroken.
The mark had not vanished. Just then, he stepped backward out of the ring and declared the contest lost, nor had it cooled into a closed scar. By the strict body law of Master Uren’s art, a living rival mark closed only. Just then, the disputed question itself was genuinely resolved by mutual reconciliation or when a final contest settled the blocked path permanently…
