Felzein and Cherlyn had scarcely crossed the threshold when, as if summoned by the very shadows themselves, four guards emerged from the gloom, their presence sudden and formidable.
Without hesitation, they raised their weapons, movements sharp, eyes cold and unyielding.
“Remain where you are!” barked one of them, his voice clipped and commanding, his expression carved from stone.
Cherlyn, ever composed in the face of uncertainty, reached into her coat and retrieved her identification card with unhurried grace.
“Agent Lyn, presenting credentials,” she declared, her voice calm yet clear, ringing out in the tense stillness.
One of the guards stepped forward, plucking the card from her hand and holding it to a slender scanning device strapped to his wrist.
A succinct electronic chime followed, crisp, conclusive.
“My apologies, Agent Lyn,” the guard said at last, his tone shifting from confrontation to deference, the hard lines of his face softening with recognition.
With that, the tension began to melt, like ice beneath a rising sun.
His gaze, however, now turned to Felzein. Sharp, appraising, and laced with quiet suspicion.
“And you are...?” he asked, his voice like the edge of a whetted blade, cutting into the silence with a demand that brooked no evasion.
“He’s with me,” Cherlyn interjected, her tone steady, each word deliberate, a shield raised against the rising tension that hung heavy in the air.
Still, the guard did not waver. His eyes remained fixed upon Felzein, unmoved and impenetrable as stone.
“My apologies, Agent Lyn,” he said at last, though the words carried no warmth. “Regulations are clear, no entry without valid clearance.”
A slow breath escaped Cherlyn’s lips, part weariness, part restrained ire. The guard’s inflexibility was fast becoming intolerable.
“I said... he’s with me!!!,” she repeated, this time with a firmer edge, her voice resonating with the authority of someone unaccustomed to being questioned.
She advanced a pace, not threateningly, but with the resolute bearing of someone unwilling to be denied.
Even so, the guard held firm, his reply clipped and cold, “Still not permitted.”
There was no malice in his expression, only the blank, unyielding face of a man who served the rule, not the reason.
The air grew denser, charged with an unease that pressed down on every breath.
Cherlyn could feel it. This was no mere dispute over credentials.
The guard’s obstinacy came from something far deeper, something unspoken that rooted him to his stance like a sentinel carved in stone.
"Fetch that wretched Jonas. Now," Cherlyn commanded, her voice a whipcrack of ire, eyes aflame with the kind of fury that brooked no delay.
The guard's jaw tightened as he shook his head, "No," he replied, flatly, the word sharp and unyielding, as if cast in iron.
A brittle silence followed. Cherlyn stood perfectly still, her posture taut like a drawn bow, then slowly turned to glance at Felzein.
He hadn't moved, but there was a glimmer in his eye. Thoughts racing, possibilities aligning.
And then, with a voice smooth as velvet laced with steel, Felzein spoke.
“Are you certain you wish to see my credentials?” he asked, every syllable deliberate, the weight of unspoken consequence hanging in the pause that followed.
The guard hesitated, a flicker of doubt creasing his brow, before nodding with a stiffness borne more of duty than conviction.
“Those are the rules,” he said, though his voice now lacked the firmness it held moments before.
But something had shifted. The calm in Felzein’s demeanour now seemed perilous.
There was a glint in his gaze, one that hinted not at compliance, but at dominion.
Without haste, Felzein drew a slender wallet from the inner pocket of his coat. He opened it with a languid precision and produced a single card.
It was golden, unmistakably so, not merely metallic, but suffused with a lustre that seemed almost alive, as though authority itself had taken form.
At its centre gleamed the letters “VAF,” austere and resolute, while the bottom corner bore a name etched in quiet elegance : Professor VAF.
The card did not demand attention, it commanded it. And in its silent glow, the guard’s certainty began to unravel.
The guard took the card, his expression unreadable, yet a flicker of unease danced in his eyes, betraying the inner current of tension rising beneath his otherwise rigid demeanour.
“What is this?” he demanded, his voice carrying a brittle edge, betraying the faintest quiver though cloaked in a façade of authority.
Felzein replied with a thin, measured smile, a smile that bore both gravity and an almost imperceptible shade of derision.
“Why don’t you go ahead and scan it,” he said calmly, nodding towards the scanner affixed to the guard’s forearm.
The guards glanced at one another, silent messages flitting between them. Doubt, caution, perhaps even fear.
Whatever this card was, it was evidently beyond their pay grade.
At length, the one holding the card gave a hesitant nod, as though yielding to an invisible weight pressing down upon the moment.
Slowly, with visible reluctance, he brought the gleaming golden card to the scanner.
Time itself seemed to hold its breath.
BEEP...
A single, stark tone echoed through the room, followed by a jarring message on the scanner’s display.
"Access Denied!"
The words hung in the air like a slap.
A furrow carved its way across the guard’s brow. He scanned the card again, slower this time, as though mere carefulness could compel a different result.
BEEP...
"Access Denied!"
There it was again. Final. Cold. Unyielding.
The guard’s eyes narrowed, his jaw tightened. He fixed Felzein with a stare that bristled with accusation and smouldering irritation.
“What game are you playing at, boy?” he snapped, his voice now tinged with fury. “Is this some sort of joke to you?!”
The atmosphere turned electric, charged with the weight of sudden escalation.
Yet Felzein did not flinch. He stood perfectly still, his gaze cool, unreadable.
“Unbelievable,” he murmured, voice just loud enough to cut through the tension like a whisper of steel. “How completely ignorant.”
That did it.
“You insolent little!!!” the guard roared, his composure shattering like glass.
In a flash, he threw a punch, his fist arcing through the air with brute force aimed squarely at Felzein’s face.
At once, the remaining three guards raised their weapons, movements crisp and coordinated, eyes locked on Felzein as the moment teetered on the edge of chaos.
THWACK!!!
The strike came fast, fierce, and filled with intent, yet it was halted with the simplest of gestures.
Felzein’s right palm, calm and deliberate, caught the incoming blow mid-air, stopping it cold.
For a heartbeat, the corridor seemed to hold its breath. Only the guard’s ragged inhalations broke the charged silence.
“Weak,” Felzein murmured, not in boast, but in quiet disappointment, like a teacher to a lazy pupil.
His eyes, glacial and unreadable, lingered on the man before him with a detached disapproval.
The guard’s brows furrowed. A flicker of surprise passed over his face, quickly replaced by grim resolve.
Wordlessly, he shrugged off his dark jacket.
Under the harsh corridor light, his frame emerged.
Broad, battle-forged, each muscle etched with the discipline of years in violent service.
“You’ve got spirit, boy,” he said at last, surveying Felzein with a predator’s gleam in his eye. “It’s been far too long since my bones tasted a proper fight... and they’re aching for it.”
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
He rolled his shoulders and twisted his neck, a symphony of popping joints echoing like distant gunfire, an overture to what he clearly intended to be a brutal ballet.
Felzein did not so much as flinch. His stillness was its own language, a statement carved not in stone, but in steel.
Within, a single thought moved like a shadow beneath the surface. This man is a fool. To stand against me is to invite the end.
A smile barely perceptible, curved at the corner of his lips. It was not joy. It was inevitability.
From the sidelines, Cherlyn exhaled, long and slow, her voice composed as ever, “You’re exactly the same, Felzein.”
Then, as if commenting on the choice of wine at dinner, she added, “Don’t kill him.”
She stepped lightly to a nearby wall and leaned against it, arms folded, settling in as one might for a performance.
There was no tension in her shoulders. No concern in her eyes.
The guard turned his head slightly, eyebrows rising, “Are you mocking me, Agent Lyn?”
Cherlyn’s lips parted in a knowing half-smile, “I suggest you stand down. That boy...” she nodded toward Felzein, “...is not the lesson you want to learn today.”
But the guard only chuckled, a low, rough sound that hinted at unshaken arrogance, “So he’s special, is he?”
He crouched, fists raised, the stance of a man who had tasted war and thought himself its master.
“Well then,” he muttered, eyes gleaming, “let’s see if the young pup can handle a bit of pain. Best he learns early.”
Felzein let out a soft, almost derisive laugh, one that echoed through the narrow corridor like the whisper of a blade unsheathed.
“Oh, but truly,” he said, with a glint of amusement in his eye, “it is you who ought to be taught.”
“Enough of your bloody mouth!” the guard roared, fury propelling his limbs as he unleashed a brutal kick aimed squarely at Felzein’s face.
But Felzein, unhurried and calm as a man waiting for the kettle to boil, slipped his left hand into the pocket of his trousers.
And with nothing more than the languid lift of his right arm, he caught the strike as if catching a falling apple from a low branch.
THWACK!!!
The corridor shuddered with the force of the blow, but Felzein did not.
He stood as immovable as a statue, his boots rooted to the ground, not so much as a flinch betraying the violence of the impact.
His gaze settled coldly on the man before him, not with fear or anger, but with the quiet scrutiny one might reserve for a puzzling curiosity, as though the guard were some peculiar specimen stumbled upon in the wild, aggressive yet ultimately insignificant.