He was in the outer ring before dawn.
Not because he had planned to be. He woke at two in the way he had been waking at two since week three, the compound's rhythm embedded in him now, and he lay in the low bed for a few minutes and then got up and got dressed and went to the outer ring because there was nothing else to do with the last morning except use it.
He ran the full system.
All six forms, the complete sequence from the Quicksilver Thrust through to the eastern third form, with Iron Root and Water Spine and Heaven Gate running simultaneously as the base condition, the Silver Fang in its natural direction, the Storm Step in the footwork, the Mid Sentinel core carrying everything at its new weight.
He ran it at dawn pace, which was not slow and was not full output. The pace of maintenance rather than development, the way you handled something that was no longer being built and had become simply what it was.
