The arm stopped at the shoulder.
Gorrah held the stance, overhead guard, blade angled forty-five degrees from vertical, the position she'd drilled into four decades of students before the current one existed. The warhammer should have reached full extension. Point of the pommel aligned with the crown of the head, elbows locked, weight distributed through the back heel into the stone. She'd performed this stance ten thousand times. Her body knew the geometry the way a river knew its banks.
The arm stopped at the shoulder. The elbow refused the last quarter-turn of rotation, and the warhammer hung at three-quarter height instead of full, and the point of the pommel aligned with the bridge of her nose instead of her crown, and the weight distribution shifted forward because the back heel couldn't compensate for the reduced leverage, and she stood in the southern training circuit at fifth bell of a Sunforge morning holding a position that was wrong.
