Zeph Kaizen's Arc

Chapter 20 of 51

Zeph held the tiger's face behind his eyes and tried to say no. The word would not come clean. He saw the blue-striped fur. He felt the weight of the animal against his ribs on the ridge, the low breath at his ear when the fourth hunter went down. The tiger had chosen him. Refusing a stranger at the door had been sharp and simple. This was not. "You are holding it," Zento said. The small ancestor sat cross-legged in the pale space of the meditation, white hair still, blue eyes fixed on him. "You are not refusing it. Say the word." "I refuse the tiger," Zeph said. The chamber shivered. Not the clean shiver he knew. Something under the floor turned sour. He felt the same wet weight he had felt when the young Saiyan died at the door. Corruption, seeping back in. Zento's face tightened. "Half. You said it with half your mouth. Stop, or you will foul this room again." Zeph opened his eyes. Kaine was already crouched beside him, one hand on the stone, checking the grain of it. His yellow eyes lifted. "You can't split this one," Kaine said. "The bond is deeper than the boy at the door. A half-refusal will rot the chamber worse than his death did. Then you lose Zento for a day. Maybe two. You don't have two." "I can't lie to it," Zeph said. "It came back for me." "Then don't lie. Refuse the whole thing or walk out and quit the trial." Zeph pressed his palms to his knees. He thought of the tiger standing over the last hunter, blood on its jaw. He thought of it lying down beside Keji in the snow while he walked east alone. He closed his eyes again. He built the tiger in his mind, whole, every stripe, the blue ice along its shoulders. He did not soften it. He held it exact. "I refuse the tiger," he said. "I refuse what it chose. I refuse to keep it." Heat rose under his sternum. Not the merged door. Something above it. His hair lifted at the roots. His shoulders locked. A pulse ran down his arms and out through his hands and the stone under his knees hummed. The pulse held for three counts, then dropped. He opened his eyes. His hands were shaking. The chamber was clean. No sour weight under the floor. Zento was watching him with something close to approval. "Second payment," Zento said. "Taken." Kaine stood. He was already looking at the door. "You paid it whole. Good. But the transformation reached higher this time. It will carry." "Carry where?" "Out. The pulse went through the walls." Kaine's jaw set. "Anything hunting a signature just felt you. Bigger than the cat. Bigger than the bird." Zeph got to his feet.