First light crept over the eastern rim of the abandoned seal court, silvering the frost on the two central granite pillars where the hemp cord had hung twenty-four hours earlier. Today, no prize swung between the stones, and neither Seyun nor Nara Soth carried a staff. Master Uren’s grey stone tablet lay unwrapped on the low stone base beside Mina’s medical satchel. Meanwhile, Daro Kesh stood with his arms folded across his chest and his broad short sword sheathed at his hip.
In the crushed-star final decades of the Counterpoise Sect, elders had treated a sworn rival mark as a life sentence that ended only when one party died—inflicting ninety days of channel turning to stone on the survivor—or when a defeated rival was forced to kneel and sign a writ of submission. Yet the older law chiseled by Uren at the bottom of the tablet described a third, cleaner ending.
Two living rivals honestly dropped the actual obstructive ambition that had formed their vow. Then, the Answering Spirit vein needed them to state that truth before witnesses and release the place.
Nara Soth stepped to the center line first. With her empty left sleeve pinned neatly against her wool coat and her white hair braided back from her scarred face, she looked directly at Mina and Daro. She stated without flourish or pause that she had abandoned her ambition to shatter the Balance tablet and erase Seyun’s inherited art from the mountain.
