Neither Ilyra of White Heron Hall nor Daro Kesh of the Black-Roof School answered Seyun’s declaration with a dramatic oath to die clearing his path to the hub. Across the valleys, traditional sects and the Aperture Court itself had always relied on vows that made pullback or refusal shameful. Binding junior students and commanders to hold an assigned post until they were killed or crippled. Having tested one another’s convictions across marsh, lodge, summit, and chamber, Seyun’s two living rivals chose their own contributions strictly within the truth of their wounded bodies and damaged weapons. They owed him honesty, not self-destruction.
Ilyra lifted the eighteen-inch leftover piece of her marsh-iron spearhead and set the splintered butt of its short wooden grip against the dark rock lip between them. The outer section of that spear had been snapped away intercepting Reth Mal’s amplified blade in the northern chamber months ago, its shaft had cracked during her Early Jade breakthrough on the hillside with Kes. The leftover wood had snapped through moments ago saving Mer’s family and winter-food mule on the escape track. Across at the eastern corner, Daro Kesh rested the flat of his short Jade sword—forged from three salvaged Ash Reed fire-vessel ribs with its single chip near the point—against his braced right thigh. Both weapons bore the physical record of every person they had chosen to defend rather than abandon.
