Doctor Zein’s eyes bore into Eman’s, sharp as a blade unsheathed.
His voice, though measured, carried the weight of something long buried and now clawing its way to the surface.
“Master Eman,” he said, each syllable laced with restrained fire. “I seek only one truth! What do you know of King Aramia? Nothing more. Nothing less.”
Eman’s reply came not as a whisper, but a tempest. His voice cracked through the air like thunder splitting a silent moor.
“And who are you, that you dare speak that name aloud?! King Aramia is not a name to be tossed about by the unworthy!”
Zein’s voice stiffened, as steel drawn from its scabbard, “And if I do not relent? If I press on, regardless?”
Eman’s gaze narrowed. Slowly, deliberately, he rose from the tatami mat. His every motion steeped in quiet menace.
“Then,” he said, his voice as cold and certain as winter frost, “I shall do what must be done. I shall rip the very tongue from your mouth.”
“Oh?” Zein’s lips curled into a sardonic smile, his tone edged with derision. “Do you truly think you still possess the strength?”
Eman inhaled deeply, his chest rising with the breath of a man who has faced the abyss and returned.
His eyes, no longer clouded by time, burned with purpose.
“I concede,” he said, with the calmness of one recounting a truth etched in stone, “two decades ago, you eclipsed me in every way.”
“But I am no longer the man you once knew. I have honed myself with ruthless discipline, year upon year. I will not fall as I once did.”
He stepped forward, his presence filling the room like the tide returning to shore. His voice dropped, grave and resolute.
“You saved my life once. That, I do not forget. But should it come to a choice. I would sooner guard the sacred name of King Aramia with my dying breath than betray it in the name of gratitude.”
Zara faltered, her breath catching in her throat, “Sensei! You mustn’t! Please, don’t!” she cried, her voice trembling with desperation.
Eman turned his head just enough to meet her gaze, his eyes glinting with solemn resolve.
“Go, Zara,” he said, each word laced with finality. “I won’t allow you to be swept into the maelstrom I am about to summon.”
“But...” she began, her voice cracking under the weight of emotion.
“Let your teacher face me,” Doctor Zein interrupted, his tone calm, almost indifferent, but carrying an edge that seemed to chill the very air. “It’s time you understood, who ought to be learning from whom.”
A wry smile crept across Eman’s face, though his stare remained as piercing as a blade unsheathed, “You truly underestimate me, Mr Zein.”
“And the ant,” Zein replied coolly, “is always unaware of its insignificance, even as the elephant’s foot descends before it.”
He walked with quiet intent towards the door, pausing only for a moment, “If you insist on a fight, let us not sully this place. Outside, I passed a football pitch. Spacious enough, I believe, to scuff a little pride.”
Without another word, he stepped beyond the threshold.
“Zein! Wait! Zein!” Zara’s cry rang out as she hurried after him, dread etched deep into every line of her face.
Eman’s lips curved into a slow, self-assured smile.
With the poise of a man who knew precisely what he was doing, and what it would cost, he reached for the ancient wooden box and lifted its lid with the reverence one might afford a holy relic.
Nestled within, swathed in the faint scent of dust and time, rested a small crystal vial.
The liquid inside shimmered a vivid, unearthly blue, pulsating softly, like the steady throb of a living heart.
He did not hesitate. With a single, measured tilt, he drank the contents whole.
At first, nothing. Silence. Stillness. The hush before the storm.
Then it began.
A tremor rippled through his frame. A low, sickening crack echoed from within him, followed by another, and another, until it sounded as though his very bones were snapping, rearranging themselves beneath his skin.
The stoop of age abandoned him. His spine straightened.
Shoulders pulled back, proud and broad once more.
His chest rose like a war drum mid-beat, and the sinews of his body surged to life, sculpting muscle upon muscle beneath skin that no longer sagged, but gleamed tight, burnished, and brimming with purpose.
The thin, withered arms of a man past his twilight years now swelled with Herculean strength, every tendon visible, taut as drawn bowstrings.
The parchment-like creases on his face smoothed, retreating as though time itself bowed before him.
His once-white hair darkened, strand by strand, into a deep, obsidian black that caught the light like wet silk.
And his eyes?!
Yups, his eyes, no longer dulled by years, now flared with a ferocity that bordered on divine.
A storm brewed in them, ancient, unyielding, and unrelenting.
The transformation complete, he stood not as an old man reborn, but as something altogether more formidable, a warrior sculpted by memory, myth, and sheer, inexorable will.
His grin widened, slow and terrible. His breath was calm.
And all around him, the air crackled with the unmistakable charge of destiny approaching.
And then...
BLARE!!!
A thunderous detonation of energy erupted from Eman’s frame, shattering the stillness like a war drum struck at the gates of heaven.
The very air convulsed as a violent shockwave surged outward, cracking the floor beneath his feet and distorting the room in tremors of force.
From his body burst a tempestuous blue aura vivid, volatile, alive.
It spiralled outwards in cyclonic fury, an electrical storm made manifest, its light flickering like lightning trapped in a glass cage.
A savage wind swept forth from the eye of the storm, scattering wooden shelves like driftwood in a tempest, shattering windows with a shriek of anguish, and flinging tatami mats aloft as though they were feathers in a gale.
The chamber descended into anarchy. Chandeliers swung violently, some crashing down in a hail of glass and brass.
The walls trembled as though gripped by the wrath of some ancient deity, and the portraits of long-dead masters fell with an eerie finality.
The students stood frozen in dread. Some were hurled backwards like ragdolls, others remained paralysed, their faces ashen, their eyes wide with disbelief.
Their limbs trembled not from cowardice, but from the sheer, suffocating weight of the power now pressing down upon them.
“What… what is this?” whispered one, his voice threadbare and lost amidst the chaos.
Eman’s aura surged with an unholy majesty not merely a display of resurgence, but a declaration of sovereignty, a rebuke of mortal limitation.
Zein and Zara remained still, momentarily subdued by the immensity of what now stood before them.
The air quivered with raw energy, coiling like smoke from a divine forge.
Zara clutched her sleeve, the knuckles of her hand white, “His strength… it’s beyond what I ever imagined,” she murmured, her breath held captive by awe.
Yet Dr Zein did not flinch. A faint smile tugged at his lips, cool and unbothered, an ocean unmoved by the arrival of a storm.
“Weak,” he said softly, as if reciting a fact rather than offering an opinion. “You are a hundredfold his superior now.”
Zara turned to him, her expression caught between reverence and certainty, “Yes… no power compares to yours. But may Sensei realise this before he is broken.”
Dr Zein met her gaze only for a moment, then looked away. He spoke no further.
Instead, he offered a single, imperceptible nod. A gesture that carried the weight of destiny itself.
It was not bravado, nor malice, only the quiet resolve of a man who knew that the lesson to come would be final, and unforgiving.