Beside the eastern granite stone base where she had once debated Balance founder Sel Oran three hundred years ago, Nara Soth held the original stone tablet of the Answering Spirit vein out in her single right hand. In the fading amber light of dusk, Seyun could see every chiseled stroke of Master Uren’s script across the grey slate. Not a corner had been chipped. Not a hairline fracture crossed the spirit vein diagrams she had sworn at the Hollow Summit pillar to wipe from the earth.
Seyun wiped his palm-scarred hands on his trousers. Then he stood up from the fire bowl, though he didn’t right away reach for the stone. Before sunrise in this very ring, he had stepped back from the forcing self-injury lane, declared the contest lost. Then he placed the tablet unconditionally into her keeping. He reminded her quietly that a won stake didn’t need to be returned out of courtesy.
Nara set the lower edge of the tablet into his scarred palms and released her grip. That forced him to take its weight.
Leaning her hip against the scored granite pillar, the ancient Crown fighter spoke with the dry, unsentimental directness of someone who had finally set down a three-hundred-year pack. She had walked up the hillside that morning. Then, she had fully intended to shatter the slate before noon. For decades inside the Listening Crown, she had believed that any art which linked one fighter’s growth to another’s advancement inevitably turned people into captive…
