Daro Kesh’s short sword struck the middle of Seyun’s ash staff at the western drainage curb for the second exchange. Then, the warm, solid bronze rim that had surrounded Seyun’s weapons since Ash Reed’s practice yard was gone.
Along the six feet of plain mountain ash—stained dark crimson around the front grip where blood from Seyun’s cut right forearm soaked into the wood—his cultivated breath emerged as a clear, semi-clear Jade plane.
Up on the western low roof wall, Ilyra leaned forward half an inch. Her gray eyes took in the exact texture of the light refracting along Seyun’s staff.
No two practitioners in the valleys expressed the fourth realm in the same shape. That was because Jade was the adaptation of a fighter’s own lived intention under uncontrolled pressure. When Hall Mistress Soran used Jade, her iron spear split incoming force into multi-aimed currents like a boulder dividing a clouded eye. Vaska Ren used The Sky-slit. Then, he narrowed a whole room’s motion toward a single assessed opening. When Daro Kesh used Adaptable Depth, his short sword held two or three viable spatial routes open in dark, layered weight until he saw which one served the person behind him. And Ilyra herself had crossed into Early Jade on the hillside five days ago. Then, her spear had formed a wide, branching wake that held yards of protected space open at long reach.
