He was up before dawn.
The forms first, the way it always was. The Villa 4 training ring in the dark, the six forms from the beginning, the Silver Fang clean from the first repetition. The ring still carried the faint trace of Warlord Authority in the stone, crimson and warm, and he ran the forms in it the way he had been running them since the compound, which was as a single system rather than a sequence of techniques. Iron Root. Water Spine. Heaven Gate. The three states not three things but one thing underneath everything else.
He finished. The sky outside the training ring window was beginning its slow work, black becoming something that was not yet blue but was considering it.
He went inside. He washed. He put on the second-year uniform.
Mara was in the kitchen making something that smelled of the spice blend she had sourced from Old Shen's instruction. She looked at him when he came through.
"You are leaving before breakfast," she said.
"I will eat after first session."
