A passive sight reading, however clear, could still leave room for an obstinate elder on the Aperture Court’s inner council to claim that the northern rig was merely sleeping between breaths—waiting for a living fighter to kindle active qi inside its outer edge before dropping a classifying blade.
Master Bren of West Scree stepped directly onto the cracked flat stone slabs six feet from the split hub. He stood on the exact spot where sixteen-year-old Halin had been forced to kneel during the first northern fight. Beside the tripod, Ilyra rested her right fingers lightly on the canvas wrap of her short spearhead. Meanwhile, Hall Mistress Soran held her bent iron spear grounded by her boot.
“First test: open Flame breath flow,” Master Bren announced for Yul’s ledger.
He drew a steady breath into his chest and raised his right palm at shoulder height. A clean, ruddy mantle of cultivated Flame kindled across his knuckles and forearm, casting warm orange light across the gray fragments of the blade ring and sending a wave of dry heat toward the cracked ceiling vault.
Ilyra watched the roof shadow and listened with every nerve of her Early Jade awareness. Six days ago, kindling even half that much external heat inside this chamber had caused the air to stiffen like freezing animal fat and brought a pale edge screaming down the upright plane within two heartbeats.
