“Stand ready!” Eman’s voice rang out, slicing through the air like a blade as he stepped onto the threshold of the dojo courtyard.
WHOOSH!!!
In the span of a heartbeat, his broad frame vanished, leaving naught but a sharp gust and a swirl of dust in his wake.
Time seemed to falter.
In a blink, he reappeared there, before Doctor Zein and Zara, his presence sudden and overwhelming.
He stood tall, his frame honed and commanding, muscles coiled with latent force, and in his eyes burned a gaze as sharp as tempered steel.
His steps made no sound, yet the very air quivered with the weight of his aura.
Strands of midnight-black hair lifted slightly, stirred not by breeze, but by the raw, crackling energy he exuded like a storm wrapped in flesh.
Zara recoiled instinctively, her body drawing back half a step.
But Doctor Zein remained poised. Serene, untouched.
He had not even drawn a breath before the crack of compressed air thundered behind Eman’s sudden appearance.
BOOM!!!
The dojo’s wide courtyard felt at once confined, as though the very air had contracted under the weight of tension.
Eman now stood mere inches from Zein, their gazes locked in feral intensity, two beasts poised on the brink of violence, neither willing to yield.
With a slow, deliberate turn of the head, Eman’s eyes flicked towards Zara.
His expression was impassive, yet in his gaze smouldered a quiet fury, sharp as a blade sheathed in calm.
“Zara… You were ever the pupil I held dearest,” he said, his voice a low rumble, soft but heavy, as though drawn from the depths of the earth itself. “Now tell me… where do your loyalties lie?”
Zara did not speak. She needed no words.
With steady resolve, she stepped forward. Her feet planting beside Zein’s with a grace that brooked no doubt.
There she stood, shoulders squared, chin lifted.
Undaunted, unashamed, and entirely unafraid. Her silence was thunderous. Her choice, irrevocable.
Eman exhaled slowly, the breath of a man who had seen too much, then allowed a wry, mirthless smile to creep across his lips.
It was not the smile of a master guiding his disciple.
It was the grim, knowing curve of a warrior who had been betrayed by his own blood.
“Faithless student…” he whispered, each syllable laced with venom and a sorrow so deep it throbbed in the air like a wound torn open.
The words did not shout. They resonated, chilling and low, as if spoken by the very earth beneath their feet.
“I’m sorry, Sensei… but you’ve seen nothing yet,” Zara replied, her voice resolute and steady, every word a blade drawn in defence of the truth.
Her gaze met his. No longer that of a wide-eyed apprentice, but of a lone sentinel standing against the tide, prepared to fight not just for survival, but for justice itself.
Eman’s smile lingered, thin and cold.
No longer the expression of a teacher, this was the mask of a warrior who had already decided, mercy would not be granted.
Then...
“Haaahhh!!!” he cried, a roar that cracked the silence like thunder born from a clear sky.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Three violent detonations struck the earth in swift succession.
The dojo’s training ground groaned beneath the force.
Its surface splitting, warping, then collapsing inward, carving out a great crater as if a celestial body had fallen from the stars.
Dust rose in a furious plume, swirling in every direction, a tempest of stone and grit stirred by unearthly power.
Dadan, positioned several yards behind Eman, instinctively crossed his arms before his face, shielding himself from the shards of earth that flew like daggers through the air.
“This is dire… If this continues unchecked, Sensei’s old wounds may resurface,” he thought, his jaw clenched, his eyes fixed on the churning arena.
At the edge of the shattered field, the newly arrived karate disciples stood motionless struck dumb by the sheer magnitude of the spectacle.
The weight of Eman’s presence pressed upon them like a tide they could neither resist nor comprehend.
The young women among them, once brimming with curiosity, now gazed wide-eyed at their transformed teacher.
No longer merely a man, but a force of nature incarnate.
And when their eyes fell upon his opponent, the revelation struck like lightning.
“Wait! That’s the handsome lad from before!” one of them exclaimed, pointing towards Zein, her voice barely above a whisper.
“He’s the one fighting Sensei now?!”
“What a waste... he’s bound to lose,” another muttered with a sigh, though her gaze remained transfixed on the scene before her, like a mortal bearing witness to a divine clash between heaven’s wrath and earth’s defiance.
Suddenly...
“Feel this!!” bellowed Eman, his voice tearing through the air as his body ignited with blazing energy.
Like a thunderbolt loosed from the heavens, he launched forward.
His right foot struck the ground with a devastating thud.
The training field’s surface cracked and splintered beneath the weight of the force he unleashed, as though the earth itself recoiled in fear.
In a heartbeat, he was airborne, spinning with lethal precision, a whirlwind of motion.
His leg swept through the air in a vicious arc, a roundhouse kick honed through decades of brutal discipline, aimed squarely at Doctor Zein’s head.
The sheer momentum of the strike sliced the air like a blade, and somewhere in the distance, branches shuddered and snapped under the invisible shockwave.
This was no mere display of martial prowess.
It was the culmination of twenty years of inner cultivation, a final-dan technique fuelled by a warrior’s soul and the burning furnace of his chi.
The muscles of his leg surged like coils of tempered steel, and a dull glow pulsed along the bone, alive with raw, elemental power.
But...
Doctor Zein remained utterly still.
Calm. Grounded. His eyes did not flinch, his breath did not hitch.
With the grace of a man brushing aside the breeze, he raised his left arm in one fluid motion.
THRAKK!!
The impact rang out like a thunderclap.
Eman’s shin struck Zein’s forearm with seismic intensity, but Zein did not budge.
Not a twitch. Not a shuffle. He stood as though he were carved from the very stone beneath them.
The ground beneath his feet did not fracture. Not a pebble stirred. As though the earth had acknowledged his presence and refused to let him fall.
The force rebounded violently. Eman was hurled back a pace and a half, his heels dragging in the dirt, eyes wide with disbelief.
“What in God’s name... Was that a man or a wall?”
Eman ground his teeth and lunged once more, a roar tearing from his lungs like a storm breaking across the mountains.
This time, he did not rely solely on his legs. His assault came in a tempest of strikes fists hurtling forward in a blur of lethal precision, each one honed to destroy, each imbued with the power to reduce stone to rubble.
He moved like a shadow come alive, his form scarcely distinguishable from the air itself.
And yet...
Doctor Zein stood as though carved from the earth itself. His hands drifted with an eerie stillness, each movement subtle, graceful, no more than the brushing aside of silk.
Every strike found only emptiness. Every blow was dismissed, turned aside, or rendered harmless by a touch that seemed to command the very laws of force and motion.
Not one attack landed.
CRACK!
The final punch struck Zein’s upraised palm and in that instant, a brutal reverberation surged up Eman’s arm, the jolt snapping through bone and sinew with merciless clarity.
He reeled back three steps, breath catching in his throat, his rhythm broken.
"This is madness... I’ve summoned every shred of power I possess... I drank the ancestral blue draught, the forbidden strength of my bloodline!," he thought, the colour draining from his face.
"It should have been more than enough…"
His eyes, once gleaming with certainty, now flickered with disbelief.
"Can it be… this man…"
"...Has grown stronger than he was all those years ago?"
A terrible realisation settled in his chest like winter’s chill.
And for the first time in two decades, the spectre of fear began to whisper in the back of his mind.