Get off.
The instruction he directed at the roots was not verbal — it was the specific, physical communication of someone applying the full available output of body refining rank seven against a restraint that received it with complete indifference. The iron surfaces did not shift. Did not compress differently or redistribute their grip in response to the force being applied against them. They simply held, with the absolute, settled quality of something that had not been constructed to respond to the strength of its occupant but to the will of the person who had deployed it.
It was, in the precise and humiliating sense of the word, like pushing against a mountain and expecting the mountain to have an opinion about it.
His wrists did not move a single degree.
He stopped pulling — not from surrender but from the practical recognition that the energy being spent was not producing information proportionate to its cost, and redirected his attention.
Ambrose was free.
