Eldrin changed her approach.
She had been stationary or minimally mobile through the first phase of the fight, letting Azula do the moving and responding from a fixed position. The knee hit had made staying still a liability—a fighter with a compromised knee who didn't move was a fighter whose positioning could be read and exploited. She started moving properly now, covering ground in controlled lateral steps, keeping her profile shifting and her position unpredictable.
The fight changed when Eldrin started moving.
Azula had been reading a stationary target—building her rhythm against a reference point that didn't change. A moving target meant the angles she had calculated were no longer reliable, meant the three-streak combination that had found the knee required recalibration, meant the entire rhythm she had established in the first two minutes needed to rebuild itself against something that wasn't standing still anymore.
She didn't hesitate.
