Following the line of Nara Soth’s walking staff down to the lower terrace below the seal court, Seyun rested his hands on the cold dark rock low roof wall and watched Ilyra work by lantern light. Down on the flat practice stones, Chief Examiner Vaska Ren’s palm-sized disk of ground quartz and dark bronze sat mounted on an iron tripod, fed by a steady, low-pressure coal-stone burner that simulated the targeting logic of Heaven’s Measure.
Ilyra stood twelve paces in front of the gimbaled lens, wielding the shortened White Heron spear whose outer section had been snapped off intercepting Reth Mal’s blade for Seyun in the northern chamber. Despite the late hour, her stance had all the clean, uncompromising care that had defeated Seyun in three exchanges at Mother Renn’s funerary shrine months ago.
She stepped forward and thrust, splitting her Deeper Bronze focus into her signed name branching white wake. Three distinct protective spear lines fanning outward to cover the stone markers placed behind her heels.
For two breaths, the pale refracted beam from the quartz lens wavered across the three white branches. On the third breath, the gimbal ring clicked into posture. Ignoring the outer fan of her spear wake entirely, the pale beam slid down the center shape and scored a bright white line across the flat stone slab directly between Ilyra’s boots—the exact point she couldn’t vacate without exposing the markers behind her.
