The training yard sat empty when Jin crossed into it the next morning, the recruits already off on their run somewhere past the wall, Seul's voice carrying faint in the distance as she called out pace corrections nobody wanted to hear. He'd left before breakfast finished, the plain katana already summoned into his hand before he'd even fully decided what he was about to do with it.
He found a stretch of cracked stone near the far edge of the yard, far enough from the usual sparring circle that nobody would wander into it by accident, and settled into the stance he'd read about the day before.
Feet shoulder width. Weight forward but not locked. Blade held low, the point angled just enough that an opponent's eye would slide past it without quite registering the threat.
He breathed in slow, held it, let it go.
Then he stepped, and cut.
