Malrec's next strike found the torn shoulder along its exact line, and the guard Nox raised gave back two full steps of tier. The rector had fought clean off both feet, and every gap the borrowed stack once papered stood open now under his own hands.
He stopped trying to read the strike.
A body that had trained forty graduates would always show the read a beat late. So Nox shifted the fight off reaction and onto timing instead. He watched the seam where each clean form had to reset before the next one began.
"You are reading my recovery instead of my lead, so you finally quit dueling the part of me that wins," Malrec said, driving a combination down the open side. "That is the first honest choice you have made on this tier, and it still leaves you a step behind my form."
Nox took the combination on his working forearm and gave ground on purpose. He folded back toward the tier's raised inner rail.
