She crossed the thirty paces in a single stepping burst that cracked the new stone, and the relic came down in an arc that carried enough force to split a shield wall, aimed at the spot where her sister stood.
Ayame was no longer in it.
She had read the line of the cut before Kaede's heel finished planting, slid a half step inside its arc, and let the blade fall past her shoulder close enough to part stray hairs, and the floor where she'd stood burst into a crater of stone shards behind her.
Her counter flicked toward Kaede's wrist, and the relic wrenched itself around to catch it, steel meeting steel with a crack that rolled around the bowl.
The impact drove Ayame's heels a full pace across the stone.
The gap was real. Her sister remained a cliff above her even at the exact promised threshold, and every clean meeting of blades said so through her wrists.
So Ayame stopped meeting the blades cleanly.
