Mark’s knee was on the stone.

The shatterpoint had worked—the joint’s structural support compromised, the leg unable to bear weight in the way it had been bearing it before the strike. He could feel it—not pain exactly, the specific absence of the structural reliability the knee had been providing, the leg functional but unreliable under load.

He was on one knee.

His silver eyes were on Varen’s face.

The simulation was at sixty percent and building—the stationary position helping what the movement-based exchanges had been preventing, the sustained gaze finding its rhythm now that Mark’s deliberate stillness was providing the lock more consistently than the fight’s opening phase had allowed.

Varen read the eyes.

The silver—that specific flat silver that the Dead Eyes produced—was looking directly at his face. He understood what it meant. He had watched Mark’s fight against Gorr from the stands. He had seen what the silver eyes built when they had sustained contact.

He looked away.

Not from the fight—from Mark’s face, his gaze dropping to Mark’s body, the shatterpoint-reading position he had been in for most of the fight. The same thing he had been doing all along.

The simulation stalled at sixty percent.

Mark understood the stall—Varen had broken the gaze before the lock could complete. The same problem as before, the mutual exclusivity of shatterpoint-reading and simulation-lock-receiving.

He pushed up from the one-knee position.

The compromised knee made the push harder than it would have been at full function—the structural support reduced, the joint providing less than it had been providing, the push coming mostly from the left leg.

He found standing.

The knee was carrying him—functional, not locked, not collapsed, the shatterpoint having reduced its reliability rather than eliminating it entirely. He could move. He moved with compensation that wasn’t visible from a distance but that his body registered with every step on the right side.

Varen had been watching him rise.

The rising configuration—the specific weight shift required to move from one knee to standing on a compromised joint—had produced a readable shatterpoint on the left hip, the hip that had been overloaded by compensating for the right knee during the push.

Varen struck the left hip.

Mark’s silver eyes weren’t on Varen’s face—they were tracking the incoming strike, the reflex reading the approach, his body responding.

Too slow.

The compromised knee had slowed the reflex response—not much, a fraction of what the Dead Eyes produced, but a fraction that mattered when the target was a shatterpoint that required only the most precise placement.

The hip strike landed.

The shatterpoint failed—the left hip’s structural configuration collapsing, the joint losing its full range of motion, Mark’s compensation for the right knee now meeting a compromised left hip.

He stumbled.

Both legs partially compromised—the right knee from the first strike, the left hip from the second. His body was managing two reduced joints simultaneously, the compensation chain from the knee now producing unreliable footing on both sides.

He caught himself—hands on the floor, the four-point position, the instinctive response to sudden footing loss.

The simulation had dropped.

The stall at sixty percent and then the stumble’s disruption had reduced it—the lock requiring sustained gaze and sustained calm, the physical emergency of the stumble pulling Mark’s attention away from the building the simulation required.

Back at forty percent.

Varen stood over his position—not close enough to be within the Dead Eyes’ most effective range for the lock, far enough that Mark would need to find standing before sustained gaze could be reestablished.

Mark looked at the floor beneath his hands.

At the two compromised joints.

At the fight.

He had been building the simulation when he was stationary—offering himself as a target to get the sustained gaze the lock needed. The shatterpoint strikes had worked because his stationary position made the shatterpoints readable.

The approach was costing him more than it was gaining.

He needed to build the simulation while moving—the way he had been approaching the lock against Gorr, through sustained attention during dynamic exchange rather than through deliberate stillness.

Against Gorr the lock had built through a Resonance exchange—Gorr’s sustained frequency requiring Gorr to hold still, making Gorr’s face accessible to the silver eyes for the duration of the Resonance.

Varen didn’t hold still.

Varen was always moving, always reading, always looking at something other than Mark’s face.

Mark needed Varen to look at his face.

He pushed up from the four-point position—the compromised knee and hip making the push slower than before, the recovery genuine effort rather than instinctive motion.

Standing.

He looked at Varen.

"You’ve been avoiding my eyes," Mark said.

Varen didn’t respond.

But his eyes moved—the instinctive response to being addressed directly, the gaze traveling toward the face that had spoken before the deliberate decision to maintain body-reading could override the instinct.

One second of direct eye contact.

The simulation gained ground—forty percent to fifty in the single second of contact before Varen’s deliberate attention dropped back to Mark’s body.

Varen struck—the left knee, the shatterpoint he had found during the distraction’s moment, the strike arriving as his gaze returned to the body.

Mark’s reflex read it.

He moved—the compromised joints slowing the reflex response, the movement partial rather than complete. The strike landed on the outer knee rather than the exact shatterpoint.

Real hit. Not a shatterpoint collapse.

Mark’s knee hurt.

He stayed standing.

Fifty percent simulation. Two partially compromised joints. A hit that hadn’t collapsed anything but had added to what the joints were already carrying.

He tried the address again.

"How many shatterpoints have you found on me since we started?"

Varen’s eyes moved again—the same instinct, the gaze traveling toward the face.

Two seconds of contact this time—the instinct holding slightly longer, something in the question creating a longer engagement than the first address had produced.

Fifty to sixty-five percent.

Varen looked away—back to the body, the shatterpoint-reading position reasserted.

He struck Mark’s right shoulder.

The reflex caught it—but slower than the fight’s opening, the accumulated joint compromises affecting the response chain in ways that went beyond the specific joints affected. The shoulder moved—but not fully clear, the strike landing at the edge of the shatterpoint rather than its exact center.

A partial collapse.

Mark’s right shoulder’s range of motion reduced—not locked, not the full structural failure, the partial strike producing a partial effect.

Three compromised joints.

Right knee. Left hip. Right shoulder partial.

Mark stood with three joints carrying something.

He looked at Varen.

At the eyes that were reading his body.

At the fight that was going one direction clearly—shatterpoints accumulating faster than the simulation could build, the lock requiring sustained contact that Varen’s deliberate avoidance was preventing.

He needed one thing.

One moment of Varen’s sustained attention on his face rather than his body.

Not through address—Varen had learned from the first two attempts, his deliberate override of the instinct getting faster.

Through something that required Varen to look at his face specifically rather than his body.

He activated the Nikegami.

Not the simulation—the movement lock, the specific Dead Eyes effect that froze the body rather than trapping the perception. The partial lock—what his partial simulation could produce at sixty-five percent, the same incomplete lock that had been the intermediate state against Gorr before the full simulation arrived.

The partial Nikegami activated on Varen’s legs.

Varen’s feet locked—the fraction-of-a-second hold, the partial lock’s duration, the same mechanism that had been producing the partial effect against Gorr’s lower body.

His body’s instinctive response to the unexpected lock was to look at what was holding him.

His legs.

His eyes dropped to his own feet.

Mark’s silver eyes were waiting at face level.

He drove his gaze—not passively, actively, projecting the simulation’s incomplete structure as forcefully as a sixty-five percent lock allowed.

Varen looked up from his feet at Mark’s face.

The simulation jumped.