Ilyra caught Seyun’s uninjured right elbow before his knee touched the gravel, guiding him down onto the limestone bench. Meanwhile, Mina knelt in front of him and pressed three fingers right away to his wrist blood vessel.
A deep, hollow pulling ache spread outward from beneath his left collarbone through the chest muscle wall, joining the older soreness beneath his chest bone where Nara Soth’s mark had closed prior to the seventh dawn. For ten breaths, every ordinary inhale felt as though it had to travel twice as far to fill his lungs. With two of his three inward return channels now sealed behind pale scar tissue—and both locked against replacement until he completed a full season of unassisted practice—the total volume of breath his chest could cycle during sustained hard effort had dropped by nearly half.
Mina watched her brass sand-glass empty once, then twice. That kept her thumb lightly against the side of his wrist until the first blood-vessel burst eased and the rhythm settled into a narrower, steady beat.
“The channel closed cleanly,” Mina reported, lifting her fingers only after his color returned. “No back-flow and no inflammation around the collar bone scar. You may draw one gentle internal breath inside your ribs—not into the slung shoulder—just enough to feel where your balance sits.”
