The hall fell into a suffocating stillness after Diallo's question sliced through the air like a guillotine.
All eyes turned to Jabari.
His heart pounded violently in his chest, echoing in his ears like war drums. A single bead of sweat traced a slow path down his temple as he held the gaze of the Supreme Elder. The room, despite being filled with people, felt deathly quiet – as though it were holding its breath, waiting for the answer.
And then-
Soft, almost like wind brushing across silk – a chuckle.
It escaped from Aziz.
All heads swivelled from the disciple to the Master.
"Is something funny?" Diallo asked, his voice still calm, still composed – but every Elder present who had served under him for long enough felt the unmistakable undertow of fury. The Supreme Elder was not amused.
"No, no, nothing at all," Aziz replied lightly, waving a hand as if brushing away smoke. "Don't mind me. Carry on. Just pretend I'm not even here."
His lips trembled with suppressed laughter, though it wasn't aimed at the Elders. His gaze was locked onto Jabari, the corners of his mouth twitching in "encouragement." That casual dismissal of the Council's wrath only served to inflame it.
Elder Bamidele stood with fury in his eyes, voice booming through the hall. "Mr Aziz, we offered you and your nation a gesture of unprecedented goodwill! And you took that hand and spat on it! Now, you mock this trial? Who do you think you are?!"
But Aziz didn't so much as glance at him.
He remained fixed on Jabari – teasing, unbothered, amused.
That smile – so out of place, so maddening – was a lifeline. Despite the pressure he faced from the Supreme Elder, his Master's infuriating grin was enough to snap him out of his pressure-induced daze.
Jabari straightened.
"I reject your verdict!" he said suddenly, his voice cutting through the swell of anger like a blade through silk.
Every Elder snapped their gaze back to him. He stood tall, sweat still on his brow, but his breath was steady now. His shoulders had squared, his gaze unwavering.
He stared directly into the Supreme Elder's eyes.
Just moments earlier, when Diallo had opened those ancient eyes, Jabari had felt like he was being dragged into a void – an endless abyss of cold, suffocating darkness. The sheer weight of that gaze had pressed against his soul like a mountain. It was unlike anything he'd ever experienced. There was no resistance. No struggle. Only insignificance.
He would have broken. But then came Aziz's laugh.
Like a dagger of sound piercing the thick, intangible fog, it had cut through Diallo's pressure, letting Jabari breathe again. Letting him think again.
In that breath of clarity, shame surged within him – not because he was weak, but because he allowed himself to show such a humiliating side in public. His mind had reasoned that Diallo's strength was beyond comparison, but his heart rebelled.
He was Jabari, disciple of Aziz!
He had fought Beast-Warriors. He had fought Magical Beasts. He had survived betrayals. But most importantly, he had trained under a monster who crushed his body and rebuilt it day after day. He would not be made small again, not by the likes of Diallo!
So he channelled that fury. That indignation.
And now, as Diallo's chilling gaze narrowed on him once more, Jabari held firm, forcing himself to meet that gaze with the blazing defiance of someone who refused to kneel.
"You reject?" Diallo's voice was still composed, but his fingers curled ever so slightly. The air around him pulsed. The Elders shifted in their seats, sensing the storm that brewed behind his calm facade.
Since the night of the beast tide, the pressure on Diallo had only grown.
It was the worst tragedy in the Institute's recorded history – an attack that claimed the lives of dozens of first-year students, those meant to be protected above all else. Tribes with powerful names and deeper pockets were already whispering, questioning, and blaming.
And to make matters worse, the architect of the disaster – the mysterious youth, Silver – had slipped through their fingers.
Now, to add insult to injury, a foreign emissary had become a Beast-Warrior without so much as a whisper to the Council.
Diallo could already feel the weight of what was coming: letters from ordinary tribes, angry emissaries from the more powerful tribes, whispers of incompetence echoing through the halls of HQ…
Someone would pay. Someone had to. He just couldn't let it be him.
He'd hoped that Jabari would fold. That the boy would accept the blame, become the necessary sacrifice to preserve the Institute's image.
But now the boy stood there, unwavering, staring directly into the heart of the storm. Defiant.
And Diallo's patience was nearing its end.
"On what grounds do you reject the verdict?" Diallo's voice had dropped into a frigid register, every syllable laced with escalating menace. "Was it not you who killed one of your fellow classmates during the beast tide?"
"I only killed Gichinga after he-"
"I don't want to hear your excuses!" Diallo snapped, his voice cracking like thunder across the hall. "You are to answer only 'yes' or 'no'. Did you, or did you not, kill your classmate Gichinga after a prior disagreement?"
Jabari stared back into the Supreme Elder's stormy gaze, calm and unwavering. Then, finally, he spoke.
"Yes."
The admission came without hesitation, without emotion.
Diallo leaned forward, his eyes narrowing. "And did your so-called 'Master' become a Beast-Warrior by absorbing the blood meant for your Awakening?"
"Yes," Jabari answered, his voice like stone – flat and impenetrable.
A heavy silence gripped the room.
"Then," Diallo declared, rising to his feet, his robes billowing slightly with the movement, "as punishment for your transgressions against the Institute, I, Supreme Elder Diallo, hereby declare that you, Jabari, are expelled from the Institute!"
The words rang out like a final verdict from the heavens.
A hush swept through the room.
"…Okay," Jabari said.
The single word dropped like a stone into the silence.
Diallo's brows twitched. Elder Bamidele erupted.
"Okay?! After everything the Institute has done for you, you betray us, and all you have to say is 'Okay'?!" he roared, slamming his fist into the wooden table with such force that a crater-sized dent formed beneath his knuckles.
"Yes," Jabari replied, unmoved.
Only moments ago, the weight of Diallo's spiritual pressure had been enough to make his soul tremble. Now, he stood tall, indifferent. Controlled. A wall that refused to crack.
The Elders stared in disbelief. Most students, upon facing expulsion from the most revered institution in Ulo, would beg, cry, or, at the very least, flinch. For many, it was the death of a dream.
But not Jabari. Not anymore.
His lack of reaction rattled them.
But there were those in the room who understood why.
August. Danso. Azurian. Zaire. Each of them shifted subtly as their eyes flicked toward Aziz.
Because they knew. They understood that Jabari's strength, progress, and transformation had little to do with the Institute's teachings. Everything he had become – every boundary he had broken – was because of that man.
And now, as they looked at Aziz, the hair on the back of their necks stood up.
The playful grin was gone. The amused glint in his eyes had vanished.
Aziz, too, was staring at Diallo. His face was unreadable, but the tension beneath his stillness was a quiet, boiling threat. They could feel it in the air – like the eye of a hurricane that had just found its target.
"Seeing how much of an ingrate you are," Elder Bamidele sneered, trying to reclaim authority, "you can leave the weapon given to you by us and fuck off!"
"No," Jabari replied simply, for the first time allowing a flicker of emotion – defiance – to creep into his otherwise monotone voice.
He looked down at the glaive in his hands. His fingers curled around the shaft with something almost like reverence. That weapon wasn't a symbol of the Institute. It was his – earned, wielded, bled with.
When he looked back up, there was no hesitation in his eyes.
"What did you say?!" Diallo's voice finally cracked, his composure beginning to disintegrate beneath the rising tide of fury.
The pressure intensified. It pressed down on Jabari like a tidal wave crashing from the heavens. Elders shifted, students held their breath, and even Jamal opened his eyes.
But Jabari stood unmoved.
"No."
"The weapon you received is reserved for Seeded Students," Diallo barked, his voice shaking the walls. "You are no longer a student – let alone a Seeded one. That glaive does not belong to you. Hand it over and FUCK OFF!"
A lesser will would have bent, broken, and shattered under the sheer weight of Diallo's fury.
But Jabari's voice remained calm. Flat. Diamond-hard.
"No."
The storm had arrived. And Jabari had chosen to meet it head-on.
"You ungrateful little bastard." Elder Bamidele roared, his voice filled with venom as he vaulted over the council table. "HAND IT OVER OR DIE!"
He launched himself at Jabari, a blur of wind and fury. The speed of his charge was so intense that Jabari couldn't even register the movement – only the sensation of danger screaming toward him.
"No! STOP!" Elder Zaire bellowed, bolting up from his seat as panic surged through his veins.
But Zaire was a water-based Beast-Warrior, a master of flow and adaptability – not of speed. And Bamidele, with his wind-based affinity, had long since carved his reputation as one of the fastest warriors in the Western Branch. The moment he had leapt, there was no catching him.
He closed in on Jabari in a flash, hand reaching for the glaive, fury clouding reason. He intended to seize the weapon, break the boy's will, and remind everyone in the room of the Institute's power.
But his instincts – honed through decades of war and bloodshed – flared in desperate warning.
His heart hammered violently against his ribs. His skin prickled, and his back was drenched in sweat. Danger.
Pure, primal, mortal danger.
He twisted, trying to flee, but it was already too late.
The world around him dimmed.
*Boom!*
Aziz appeared like a phantom. One moment, he was watching calmly in the background. The next, he was in front of Jabari, his hand gripping Bamidele's face with vice-like force.
With a thunderous crash, he drove the back of the Elder's skull into the floor with brutal efficiency, forming a small crater of cracked stone beneath him. The entire hall shuddered with the impact.
Silence followed – shocked, suffocating silence.
Jabari, already alert after activating his spirit-enhanced vision the moment tensions rose, had still been unable to track Bamidele's movement. In that instant, he had genuinely believed he wouldn't survive.
But then… Aziz stood there.
Unmoving. Unshaken. Unstoppable.
Jabari's breath steadied. The moment he saw his Master before him, calm and unyielding, any fear he'd felt evaporated like mist under the sun.
Invincible!
That was all Jabari thought as he looked down at the crumpled figure of Bamidele – an Elder held in high regard, second only to the Grand and Supreme Elders in power within the Western Branch. Now unconscious, helpless, beneath his Master's boot.
Aziz raised his gaze, his eyes colder than steel as they swept across the room.
A horrifying pressure erupted from him – silent but absolute. The air in the hall grew thin, heavy, and suffocating. Breathing became a conscious effort. Elders who had faced death in countless forms now found their hearts gripped by a terror that defied logic.
In that moment, it felt as though the towering Elders of the Beast-Warrior Institute were the ones standing on trial. And Aziz?
He was the judge, the jury, and the executioner!
He spoke softly, yet his voice struck with the weight of finality.
"Next person to make a move on my disciple…
loses their head!"
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