Zeph Kaizen's Arc

Chapter 21 of 51

Zeph felt the pulse leave him and knew it had not stopped at the walls. It had gone out into the trees and the ridges beyond. Somewhere, something had turned its head toward the hall. "How long?" he asked. Kaine listened at the door. His dreadlocks hung still. "Minutes. Not an hour." "Can I hide the signature?" "No. You wrote it into the stone when you paid. It bleeds until it fades. That takes a day." Zeph looked at Zento, still seated in the pale space behind his eyes, then let the meditation drop. The ancestor was gone. The door to him closed the moment Zeph stood in a fight. "Then I meet it here," Zeph said. Kaine turned. His yellow eyes were flat. "You are not ready for what is coming. It felt your transformation. It knows what you are becoming. It will try to end it before you finish." "I don't have three payments made. I can't finish now." "No. You fight with what you have." Zeph went to the pack by the wall and pulled out the gauntlet. The metal was cold. The seams along the fingers had not lit in weeks. Keji had said he no longer needed it. He slid it on anyway. The runes caught and glowed pale blue, then orange, then pink along each finger. Kaine watched him. "That tool was set aside." "I set it aside for training. This isn't training." Zeph flexed his hand. The gauntlet hummed against his wrist. "I need to live long enough to make the third payment. That's all it has to do." Kaine's mouth moved, close to a smile. "Then use it. But when the fight starts, chain your bursts. Refusal and Stillness. Do not try to hold. Hit and release. Hit and release." Zeph stepped to the door and pushed it open. The stairs of the hall dropped away in cracked slabs. The sky above the eastern ridge was the color of old iron. He saw it then, high up, circling once and dropping. Not a bird. Something with a wingspan wider than the doorway. It came down in silence and struck the top step. The stone cracked under its feet. Zeph opened both doors inside himself. The gauntlet flared. He drove his fist forward in one short burst, and the air between him and the creature bent. The creature took the hit at the shoulder and slid back one step. Only one. He closed the doors. Opened them. Struck again. The creature swung and he moved under it, gauntlet up, and hit its ribs. It grunted and gave ground down two stairs. He was not winning. He was buying minutes. Inside the hall, behind him, Kaine spoke low. "Hold it there. That is all you have to do. Hold it there until the signature fades." Zeph set his feet on the cracked stone and swung again.