By the eighth week of the unassisted season—the fifty-sixth in a row dawn since Nara Soth walked down the southern highway—deep midwinter snow covered the hills north of Oran in a clean white blanket six inches thick.
Half an hour before sunrise, with the stars still glittering like ice splinters in a black sky, Seyun walked up the snow-packed wagon ruts from the wheelwright’s house, drew the blackened iron key from his sash. Then he unlocked the narrow larch side gate of the Black-Roof School. The well-oiled lock clicked open without a squeak. He stepped carefully between the snow-mounded rows of winter kale so he wouldn’t owe Kes two coppers. He barred the gate behind him, hung his heavy wool cloak on the corner of the garden wall. Then he took his place beside the six-foot white-oak practice post.
The compound was still asleep. Under the repaired black slate roof, no lamp burned yet in Archivist Vel’s study or Daro’s quarters. Seyun used the side of his plain ash staff. He swept a six-pace circle of dry gravel clear of fresh powder around the base of the oak post.
Fifty-six mornings of bitter-root decoctions, dockside teaching, and unrushed dawn repetitions had passed without a single crisis, a single tournament bell, or a single seven-dawn echo from another fighter’s breakthrough.
