Returning to the lamp-lit ward after supper on the eighth night, Seyun sat at the corner of the medicine table. Then he opened his worn Account Book to the early pages written in the damp storeroom of the abbey nineteen months ago.
There, in the cramped, anxious hand of a twenty-two-year-old Coal exile who had just survived three spear passes at dawn, stood the original entry for Place I: Ilyra of White Heron Hall. Sworn beneath left collarbone over the truth of the Ash Reed winter check and the legitimacy of the Answering Spirit vein.
Dipping his reed pen into the inkstone with his right hand, Seyun drew a single clean level rule beneath the history of the three echoes that bond had given him—Flame in the burial-house storeroom, Bronze in Ash Reed’s yard, and Early Jade before the northern assault. Below the rule, he wrote the date of the eighth post-battle dawn, the witness signed names of Mina and Mother Renn, the approved reference to the Ash Reed fire logs. The single word: Reconciled.
In the next-door column, he logged the exact body state needed by Master Uren’s rules. Place I and Place III closed by honest reconciliation. Return endurance reduced. Both places locked against replacement until one full season of unassisted foundation practice is completed. Place II (Daro Kesh) sole active bond.
