Haneul moved first.
He didn't charge. He dropped straight down into his own shadow and vanished, and the only sign he'd ever been standing there was a faint ripple in the grass.
Jin didn't wait to see where he'd come up. He was already moving, sprinting sideways across the clearing, eyes flicking to the ground as he ran. Not to Haneul. To his own shadow, stretched long and thin beside him in the slanting morning light.
He'd seen what Haneul did to Tae-yang. He wasn't about to forget it.
The attack came from behind and low, exactly where he'd guessed. The golden staff shot up out of the shadow of a tree stump, stretching as it came, aiming for the backs of his knees. Jin jumped it, twisted in the air, and came down with the flat of the katana cracking toward the spot where the staff had come from.
Haneul was already gone. The blade hit empty shadow.
"Too slow!" Haneul's voice called from somewhere to the left.
Jin grinned and kept moving.
