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The mountain took the first breath of blood like a church opening its doors on warm bread. It was not hunger. It was acknowledgment that men had done the thing men do when they run out of other ways to disagree.
Kai pressed the Crown's weight into the shallowest wedge of the enemy roof and took one pace forward. His point did not hunt faces. It hunted elbows — the hinge where a shield stops being a wall and becomes a lid. He tapped one, two, three, each a nudge that stole strength from a neighbor.
Shadeclaw's cohort met the push without stepping back and without the noise men make when they are proud of not stepping back. Pride uses breath better saved for other things.
