Chapter 377. LAST LESSON

Chapter 377: 377. LAST LESSON

Zaka’s laugh still tore through the broken trees when Sagiri stopped treating the duel like a study and started treating it like a debt coming due.

The two great cats circled him through ash and split cedar, waiting on the same impulse that lived in Zaka’s shoulders before either beast committed its claws.

Sagiri kept Nokai low while the Archive pressed a faster answer against the walls he had built around it, hungry for the simple blood that would end every calculation.

He refused that answer, then watched Zaka mistake restraint for hesitation and drive forward with the left cat rising beside him like a second blade.

The second beast cut through the ruined canopy to close Sagiri’s turn toward Galka Academy, yet its timing still depended on Zaka’s attention reaching both animals before either one changed direction.

’Anger times them,’ Sagiri thought, boots finding firm earth under ash, ’not skill. Just like ther master’

He stepped into the charge instead of away from it, turning around Zaka’s sword while Nokai brushed the weapon aside and left the waiting cat exposed for one clean heartbeat.

The beast corrected at once, forcing Zaka to twist his shoulder and keep its claws off his own back, which opened a gap between the animals wider than pride wanted to admit.

Sagiri stored the mistake with every earlier exchange from the duel while measuring how Zaka ranked the things he refused to lose.

Zaka protected his body first, his pride second, then the creatures carrying out his will.

"You are still fighting three ways at once," Sagiri said, voice flat while Nokai tracked the nearer cat, "that is why the forest keeps answering before you do."

Zaka’s mouth twisted around another laugh that never fully formed.

"Then stop talking and die like the South should," he snarled, blade rising while northern warriors watched from the broken line behind Salka.

The Grand Zorath of the North swung again before Sagiri could exploit the opening.

Sagiri ducked under the cut and drove his heel into the ground as the first cat crossed behind him, changing the soil under its paws into a shallow break left by earlier impacts.

The beast’s hind leg dropped into that break while Sagiri moved between the animal and Zaka, refusing to let them rebuild the triangle that had nearly crushed him in the last exchange.

Above him the second cat came through the canopy with claws already extended for his spine.

Sagiri trusted the pressure in the air, then turned Nokai across his back as it descended, letting the claws strike black metal before they slid toward the forest floor.

He guided the animal past his shoulder, then drove Nokai upward beneath its ribs with one clean motion that left no room for a second try.

The strike passed through fur and bone before the cat could twist free.

The great cat landed beside a broken cedar with dark blood spreading under its chest while loose branches shook around the weight that would not rise again.

Zaka stopped when he saw the body fold into the ash at the cedar roots.

He stared at his remaining companion as recognition moved through the living beast and replaced the impulse to attack with something closer to grief.

Sagiri held Nokai low, breath steady despite the burn under his torn cloth.

"You let it take the strike meant for you," he said, watching Zaka’s hand tighten on the sword, "then spent this entire fight asking both creatures to protect the man who started it."

Zaka looked at the dead cat without answering while ash settled on the cooling blood.

The surviving beast pressed against his side until fur stuck to his armor, while Sagiri forced that soft reading out of his mind because sympathy would not keep the next claws from his throat.

’Companion, not tool,’ Sagiri thought, Archive twitching with N’folu sand and old blood, ’killing it settles the fight without changing him.’

He forced the Archive’s sand-memory down before it could turn the duel into a massacre the North would never forgive.

Zaka raised his blade and drew the surviving cat into his stance while northern ranks shifted behind broken trunks.

Salka’s squad held the Galka line without crossing into a duel that still belonged to the Grand Zorath.

Sagiri could have ended the fight by opening the deeper part of himself the Archive kept offering like a clean ledger entry.

The Archive wanted that answer because it would make every consequence simple, every life into a recorded ending, every choice into ash that required no further accounting.

He refused the simple answer again while the living cat’s breath scraped through the ruined trees.

He waited for Zaka to rush first and drag the last cat into motion before the gap between them could widen into something Zaka would call mercy.

Sagiri understood what the Grand Zorath was protecting beneath the anger.

Zaka had stopped watching the soldiers, his whole focus locked on the remaining cat’s injured footing, the wound that had already changed its reach, plus the price of every mistake.

That choice gave Sagiri a usable measure of the man standing across the ash.

Zaka would abandon the battlefield before accepting that a creature under his command could be lost, which made the last cat both his shield and the leash controlling him.

"Send it away," Sagiri said, quiet while Nokai’s edge caught ash light, "if you still know the difference between a companion and a sacrifice."

"The North does not send strength away," Zaka answered, breath hard while the cat snarled against his hip, "I do not take lessons from a southern ghost carrying dead memory."

The beast came low while Zaka attacked high, rebuilding their formation around one purpose.

Sagiri retreated across the broken ground and offered them a path that looked open toward the burned trees.

They followed because both remained near the target they intended to destroy, coordination improving with every step as grief sharpened into shared hunger.

Sagiri let them believe he had accepted the trap, then moved toward two burned trunks and drove Nokai into the soil as the cat crossed above him.

The blade caught a buried root and pulled it free as the beast landed badly on the torn earth.

Zaka reached for the animal and sacrificed the angle that would have cut Sagiri’s shoulder, proving the leash still held even after blood had already taught him the cost.

Sagiri rose beneath the blade and struck its flat with Nokai, collapsing the three positions as Zaka tried to save the creature he had just used as a shield. ℴ

He backed away rather than taking the opening through Zaka’s chest.

Killing the Grand Zorath before separating him from the last cat would repeat the same mistake that had brought the first animal down.

Sagiri refused to become that kind of teacher while both armies watched through the broken trunks.

Zaka caught the cat by the neck and dragged it clear, leaving himself exposed to Sagiri.

Every northern eye still watching from the trees saw the Grand Zorath choose the beast over his own guard.

The surviving cat answered with a ragged snarl, injured leg dragging through ash while its breath rasped from the earlier wound it had taken crossing Sagiri’s path.

Zaka followed into the next charge with no formation left except grief and pride.

Sagiri turned his shoulders toward the paw, then placed himself between claw and northern blade, feeling Zaka’s weapon pass above his head until the wake stirred his hair.

Nokai cut across the cat’s front leg and destroyed the timing of the next attack without finishing the kill, because ending the bond would teach Zaka nothing worth keeping.

When the beast stumbled, Zaka reached for it again with both hands leaving his center open.

Sagiri drove his shoulder into the man’s chest and sent him backward through a fallen trunk across exposed roots, ash exploding under the impact while the Archive screamed for a deeper cut.

The surviving cat recovered and sprang toward Sagiri’s back before Zaka could finish rising.

Zaka’s warning arrived after the attack began, leaving Sagiri to turn beneath the claws with Nokai raised and his injured ribs taking the shock when impact drove him into the ground.

The Archive crowded the walls he had built around it and demanded the power to end everything before another breath could be spent on restraint.

Sagiri remembered Rusha’s hands, Bakuru’s worn spear, N’varu’s patient explanations, Kiuga’s laughter, Kaka’s scowl, then the people waiting behind Salka’s line.

He used those names like weights on a scale until he remained himself under the Archive’s pressure.

’Not yet,’ he thought, tasting copper and ash, ’one death already paid the first lesson.’

He moved with the pressure instead of against it, rolling beneath the cat before cutting a shallow line that forced the beast aside without opening its life the way the first had ended.

The cat hit earth hard and stayed down long enough for Zaka to see the choice Sagiri had refused to finish.

Then Zaka’s control broke the way pride breaks when grief finally outruns command.

The surviving beast rose into his rage while the laugh from the last Chapter changed its shape into a charge that needed no further order.

Zaka charged with the last cat across the ash, northern voices rising behind them.

Salka held his squad from rushing a duel that still belonged to the Grand Zorath and the Keeper.

Sagiri rose to meet them with Nokai turning toward the open ground, Archive sealed, first irreversible blow already cooling on the cedar roots behind him.

The study was over while the North still waited for a kneel that had not yet been earned.

What came next would decide whether the North bowed to strength or to the man still willing to teach it the cost of anger.