Zara’s gaze bore into Eman, sharp as a blade drawn in silence.
Her eyes blazed crimson, not merely with rage, but with an ancient fire, the kind that once lit thrones and razed empires.
Around her, the air cracked and twisted. The dojo grounds trembled beneath a cyclone of invisible force, stirred not by nature, but by will. Her will.
Atop her hijab, the crown shimmered like a bleeding star, casting a royal gleam that demanded reverence.
It was not just an ornament, but a symbol of lineage, of legacy, of dominion.
She stepped forward, the earth itself seeming to flinch beneath her footfall.
Each pace struck like a ceremonial drum, marking not time, but fate.
“Eman Suhendar,” she declared, her voice reverberating with the authority of forgotten dynasties.
It rang through the air like a sentence passed, echoing in the bones, unshakable.
“Kneel!”
His body jolted. Not by choice, but by instinct older than fear.
His knees buckled beneath him, the strength fleeing his limbs as if commanded by forces beyond the flesh.
His breath caught. His eyes clouded, not from terror, but recognition.
That voice, that command, had once stirred legions.
It was the voice of sovereignty. The call of a Queen whose blood remembered kingdoms long buried by time.
And no warrior, however proud, could remain standing in its presence.
Eman collapsed to his knees, not from defeat by strength alone, but by the inexorable tide of blood and forgotten truths that surged forth to reclaim their dominion.
His head bowed low, as though the very air had grown heavy with ancient judgement.
Cold sweat trickled along his temples, and within his chest, his heart pounded, not with fear, but with the rhythm of a memory he had tried too long to bury.
He remembered now as vividly as one remembers the silence before a storm.
The lore of King Aramia, seven sovereign queens, each a pillar not of companionship, but of divine authority.
They were not consorts. They were celestial arbiters, enshrined in the soul of the old empire.
And the voice that now resounded before him.
It was no longer Zara’s voice, no longer the familiar cadence of a beloved pupil.
It was deeper, older, a summons from time’s own marrow.
“Queen Vexia…” Eman whispered, reverence and dread braided into every syllable.
He lifted his gaze. His face had turned pale, his eyes wide and trembling, not from terror, but from the awe of revelation.
“I, Eman,” he declared, his voice rising with the solemnity of an oath long overdue, “with all the blood and vow I once bore, I kneel before you!”
His knees pressed into the earth with purpose, and his hands reached downward, as if the soil itself held the remnants of an old covenant, waiting to be remembered.
The woman before him, no longer Zara, now bore the mantle of Queen Vexia.
She smiled. But it was not the smile of fond memory or affection.
It was the sovereign’s smile, the kind that once silenced royal courts and steeled the hearts of armies.
Raising a single hand, she stirred the very air. The wind obeyed, coiling around her like silk drawn to flame.
“Rise,” she commanded, not to the body, but to the spirit within.
And Eman rose, not by effort, but as if lifted by the will of something greater.
His knees left the earth, and his soul, too, seemed to rise from the weight of denial.
He saw her clearly now. Not Zara. Not the student. But a sovereign reborn.
A queen who had once ruled through myth, and had now stepped once more into history.
Dadan gazed on, transfixed. His eyes wide, yet unseeing, as if the scene before him defied the boundaries of belief.
His limbs were locked in place, every breath lodged in the hollow of his throat.
Around him, the dojo had fallen under a solemn enchantment.
The disciples, karateka, both men and women, stood as statues, lips parted, frozen in reverent disbelief.
“What… is this?” murmured one of the young men, his voice barely more than a thought. “Why would Sensei… kneel to Senior Zara?”
The question hung in the air like incense. Heavy, sacred, and unanswered.
“I don’t know,” another replied, his words slow and dreamlike, as if spoken in sleep. “It’s as though we’re watching a drama written in the stars. No one told us existed.”
A ripple of silent recognition passed among the female disciples.
Their eyes flicked between one another, their hearts beating in strange rhythm.
“If even Sensei bows… then Zara isn’t who we thought she was…”
“No longer just a senior,” one whispered. “She’s become something… else. Something far older than titles.”
And still, Dadan did not move.
His mind, usually so sharp, now echoed with a single, haunting refrain.
One he dared not voice aloud, “Zara… what are you?”
Zara or Queen Vexia, turned her head with slow, sovereign grace toward the murmuring disciples.
Her gaze cut through the air like tempered steel, sharp and serene, commanding yet measured.
She raised one hand with the poise of ancient royalty, a gesture not born of theatre, but of inheritance of bloodline and destiny.
From her open palm, swathed in the deep crimson glow of her aura, a tendril of red light unfurled.
It was neither violent nor abrupt. It drifted, delicate as breath, deliberate as judgement.
The spectral mist whispered forward, weaving between the drifting particles of dust like a memory reborn.
It touched the gathered disciples, each one, save for Dadan. And in that instant, time itself recoiled.
Eyes widened and remained so. Limbs halted mid-motion. Voices caught on the cusp of sound.
A young man stood with his mouth parted, a question forever unasked.
Another's finger pointed toward the Queen, yet would never complete its journey.
All around, silence took form, not absence, but stasis.
The dojo became a gallery of the bewitched, the living rendered still by the command of a presence far beyond the realm of their comprehension.
In that breathless hush, where even the wind seemed to hold its tongue, only Dadan's trembling breath broke the silence. Shallow, uneven, threaded with disbelief.
Zara’s gaze fell upon him, unflinching, regal.
No longer the look of a disciple or peer, but of a monarch whose word was law and whose presence reshaped the air itself. She did not raise her voice. She didn’t need to.
“Dadan. Approach!,” she said, not loudly, not cruelly, but with the weight of centuries behind the syllables.
Dadan flinched as if struck. His throat seized, no words came.
He tried to take a step back, but it was as though his legs had been disinherited.
His will was no longer his own. It belonged to her now, to that quiet, terrible majesty.
Zara lifted her hand. Slow, deliberate, graceful, and from her palm, a crimson light unfurled like mist on a still lake.
It coiled around Dadan in an instant, and gently, as if the very earth no longer acknowledged his weight, his body rose.
He drifted forward through the unmoving dojo, feet no longer touching solid ground, but not falling either suspended between command and destiny.
Moments later, he found himself beside Eman.
Though he had not bent his knees yet, they trembled under him, eager to surrender.
Zara’s eyes bore into his, not cruelly, but with something deeper, something ancient, as if she saw not only him but every ancestor that had ever stood behind his spine.
“Kneel!,” she whispered.
And the word was not suggestion, nor threat. It was law, older than stone.
His body obeyed before his thoughts could protest.
His knees sank to the earth with a grace he did not possess, his head bowing low not out of fear, but out of reverence born from a place he did not know existed.
In that moment, Dadan understood. He was not kneeling before Zara the disciple, nor even Zara the warrior.
He was kneeling before Ratu Vexia, a name woven into the lost pages of history.And history had just returned to reclaim her throne.