The tower tries a new joke on me: a mirror that isn't a mirror.

It looks like a foggy sheet of glass stretched across the far wall. When I raise Valeria and breathe in, a pale outline of me appears in that fog—just bones and joints, like a chalk drawing that knows my bad habits. When I breathe out, little red dots blink on wherever my body leaks the secret that I'm about to move.

"That's rude," I tell the wall.

Valeria hums bright along my forearm. "It's honest. Honesty is the knife you carry inside your pride."

Erebus taps once on the pact-line. "Proceed."

Sword Unity means blade, body, intent are one thing. It also means every part of the one thing can betray the other two if I get lazy. Posture tells. Eyes tell. Ankles write love letters to the floor a half-beat early. The tower is here to make sure I don't keep any of that.

I settle my stance, soft knees, hips stacked over ankles, spine not trying to be a flagpole. My right hand finds the hilt like it was born there. My left hand rests on the scabbard mouth. Nothing dramatic. If this gets more boring, the room might fail me out of politeness.

"Baseline," I say.

I look at the fog. The outline looks back. Red dots pulse over my right shoulder, left eyebrow, the ball of my front foot. My own face has called the police on me.

Valeria is very helpful. "Your eyebrow just confessed to the crime in three languages."

"Thank you," I tell my eyebrow. It twitches and adds another red dot for spite.

I draw and cut.

The cut is small, clean, short enough to fit in a broom closet. The mirror keeps its notes. Red dots flared a breath before the blade moved: shoulder hitch, thigh load, heel whisper. I could get away with that outside. Not here. The tower taxes tells.

"Unity is good," I tell the room. "Now we make it quiet."

This isn't about speed. It's about pre-motor silence—the bit before the move starts where your body gives a little speech about what it plans to do. No speeches. Just the thing.

I reset. Four in. Six out.

On the next draw I try to start with relaxation, not contraction. No shoulder prep. No heel stamp. The blade wants to move; the body lets it move. The red dots still blink, but fewer. The eyebrow is trying to behave. The heel is a menace.

Valeria purrs. "Better. Your elbow didn't try to found a small nation."

"Noted," I say.

A line of fresh text writes itself on the wall to my left: PLEASE COMMIT.

"That's what the last door said when it tried to sell me a handle," I answer.

The floor clicks. A thin frame rises around me like a birdcage made of fishing line. Strands cross and intersect at nose, shoulder, hip, knee, ankle. There's a little chime bell at each crossing. They ring when I twitch.

"Excellent," Valeria says. "An instrument. You are the bad music."

Erebus: "Time."

I cut again. A gentle, mean little cut, all bite, no tail.

Three bells ring. Not many. Too many.

I slow down.

Tiamat taught me this by prodding a line down my back and telling me to stop trying to impress air. No pre-load. No "ready." The ready is the cut.

I plant the big toe of my front foot like a thumbtack. I let the heel imagine a floor that is very far away. I let the neck be boring. I tell my eyes not to pick a spot like a hungry cat; they understand and go soft.

"Draw," Valeria whispers.

I draw. The blade moves. I do not.

No bells.

In the fog, the chalk-skeleton does exactly the thing without hosting a press conference first. Two red dots blink late—after the cut is already over. That's the shape I want: the tell arrives and finds the action has gone home.

"Again," I say, because victory is a trap.

"Again," Valeria sings, because repetition is how knives learn.

The tower changes the rules as soon as it thinks I'm comfortable. The mirror shifts from chalk-man to a faint ghost of me at half opacity. It copies my timing, but it cheats. It starts its move on the twitch I haven't twitched yet. A predictive algorithm in fog. If I get lazy, it will beat my blade to the line every time.

"That's just showing off," I tell it.

"Beat the ghost," Valeria says. "Haunt back."

I exhale to the six and let the last air be quiet. In that nothing, something starts—not in muscle, not in the shoulder, not in the foot—the start is in the cut. The blade is moving and only then do I find myself attached to it.

The ghost arrives late. One bell rings; two stay bored. Red dots blink after. I don't grin. Grinning is a tell and the mirror would enjoy that too much.

Erebus: "Again."

We do this until the bells are mostly bored and the red dots brighten more out of habit than conviction. The eyebrow still wants attention. It's an ambitious eyebrow. I forgive it and keep working until even it loses interest.

"Next," I say, because comfort is for beds.

The hall answers by tilting the floor three degrees to the right. It's enough to make every ankle on earth confess its sins. I accept the tilt and cut on the slope. If the room wants to help me understand where I leak weight, I will graciously accept the tutoring I didn't ask for.

Zero-tell step on a slope is harder. The body loves to load the downhill foot a blink early. The bells are eager to tell on me. I cheat by being honest: I put the intent in the cut, then move the part of me that can't help but follow. It looks like magic. It's just physics that isn't opinionated.

"Grip, Arthur," Valeria reminds me. "Neutral. Let the forearm talk. The shoulder does not get a microphone."

I listen. The handle sits where it always sits. The thumb isn't a hero. The index finger isn't in charge. The blade tracks true because nothing else needs to. The bells stay quiet unless I do something foolish.

"Breath," Erebus says.

Four in. Six out. I use the bottom of the out-breath as a small door that doesn't squeak. The start step slips through that door. No one sees it go.

The tower watches. It doesn't clap. That's fine. I didn't clap for it earlier; we're even.

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