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.
