The ground shifted beneath both men before Senraki's blade could finish what the collapse had already started, and his father used the sudden tilt to drop beneath the edge.
Senraki felt the sword pass through empty air where a throat should have been, and the older man rolled clear with a speed that belonged to someone half his stated age.
'He planned for this,' Senraki thought, chest tight with the realization, 'he let the ground do what his own legs couldn't.'
His father came up already moving, sword recovered from where it had fallen beside the fractured anchor, and drove a cut toward Senraki's wounded side before he could reset his stance.
Senraki caught it on the flat of his blade, letting the impact travel through his wrist into the broken ground instead of fighting it directly.
His father pressed through the contact with a second strike, reading the same weakness he had taught into that stance years before either of them stood on this ground.
