He pulled Simma outside the great hall, his stare heavy, unsettling, like a shadow pressing down on the younger man's chest. Simma shifted uneasily beneath it, the silence stretching until it began to bite. Then, at last, the stranger's lips curved into a grin.

"Well," he said, his deep voice carrying a curious mix of pride and intimidation, "good to know you passed your tournament, and that you have unlocked your beast."

For a moment, Simma smiled too. Relief slipped through him like a breeze; he had half-expected the man to order him into four hundred push-ups and four hundred and fifty sit-ups just for calling him strange man.

"Yeah," Simma replied, pride bubbling in his voice. "Well, I couldn't have done it without your help."

The towering figure smiled again; a smile so unfitting to his massive, mountain-like build, carved from ebony stone, that it almost looked out of place.

"And good to know you kept your word," he added, his eyes narrowing into a glare. "You didn't tell anyone about our training."

Simma shrugged, exhaling. "Oh, that?...." he chirped, "C'mon now...I'm no snitch."

The man's expression darkened. The smile faded, replaced by a stern heaviness, and his voice fell like a gavel.

"You know what isn't good?"

Simma blinked, caught between confusion and curiosity. "What?"

The man's gaze bore into him, filled with something that seemed close to disappointment.

"What's not good is that you don't know me." He didn't give Simma a chance to explain.

"Now you owe me one final training."

Simma threw his hands up and let them flop back to his sides like a man who had just been sentenced unfairly.

"Training… right here? For God's sake, it's Halloween."

The man nodded solemnly.

"Correct. Right here. And you'd be a coward not to take this simplest training after all the hard ones."

He had dared him. And Simma, no matter how tired, was not about to let anyone take him for a coward. Unless, of course, the "training" was fighting him. That would mean Nurse Stacy would be wiping blood off him all week, and he wasn't about to let that happen.

Still, courage gathered in his chest, and he straightened, masking his nerves with a mean, insulted face.

"Alright then. What's the training?" His voice came out flat, a bit defensive.

The man leaned in, his gaze piercing. "What's my name?"

The question hung in the air like a ghost; heavy and absurd, as if time itself stopped to listen. Simma blinked at him, then blinked again, staring like the man had suddenly lost his mind. 'How on earth was I supposed to know that? He'd never even introduced himself.'

Seconds dragged, stretching into what felt like a full minute, before Simma finally crossed his arms over his chest with the dramatic slouch of a bored, jobless man.

"Wait. You're serious?" he asked astounded, seeing that he wasn't taking back the question.

The man nodded once.

Simma chuckled, incredulously.

"You're telling me that you are… seriously… serious?"

The glare sharpened, but instead of snapping, the man simply said, "Yes."

Simma wasn't done. He pressed on, lips curling into mischief.

"You're still saying that you are seriously… serious… in the seriousness of your seriousity?"

That did it. The stranger's patience cracked. His jaw tensed as his voice boomed:

"Alright... are you drunk?"

"Yes," Simma answered immediately, hoping to dodge that impossible question he called a training. "I took three cups of alcoholic wine."

The man arched a brow, suspicion slicing through the excuse. Simma boned, throwing guilty sharp glimpses at him. But the man stare lingered on and Simma broke.

"Fine," He amended quickly. "Just two."

The stare continued, unblinking, stripping him bare.

"Okay, maybe only one," Simma muttered.

Still, those eyes pinned him down like spears.

"Alright, alright.... I didn't drink any," Simma confessed at last. "But even with a clear head, how am I supposed to answer that question? It's not like you...."

"Shut up, Simma," the man cut in sharply, slapping his palm against his own face in sheer frustration and disappointment as he looked around.

"I thought I taught you better," he asked, his voice laced with an estranged weight that made Simma flinch. "All you ever needed to do… was think."

The words pierced him. Simma lowered his head, shame rushing like a tide. The man was right, he hadn't even tried to think. Maybe he'd been too quick to dismiss it, too quick to....

Hang on.

Something stirred. A spark lit in the corners of his mind. 'All you just needed to do all this time was think.' He had heard those exact words before. Not once, or twice but countless times, and somehow same voice.

He searched deeper, through the tangled corridors of memory, through lives and lifetimes stacked upon each other.

Deeper, he dug. He remembered one of their past sessions, when the strange man had taken him to witness the effect of the Bloodbath, something he had made to appear with a wave of his hand. Then, he hasn't gotten his memories back, but he felt something inside him when he saw the effect of the bloodbath, and it was guilt.

The strange man had strangely noticed it and had said something then, not to condemn, but to soothe: 'It wasn't your fault.' Well, He knew that the bloodbath was definitely his fault. All he did there was just try to make him not hate himself, but rather forgive himself.

And that meant that he knows about his curse, if not why show him the effect of bloodbath.... 'yes,' he pondered inwardly, 'maybe he was trying to know if he could jagg my memories then'.

Only one man had ever known his curse since the beginning of his redemption trials, since the endless wheel of reincarnations. One man.... and Simma had confided in him when he was still just a boy of nineteen.

His name was...

"Zaro Black," Simma whispered, his eyes welling with tears. "you are Zaro Black"

The strange man (Zaro) smiled softly and opened his arms. Simma stepped forward, their embrace colliding like two lost fragments of the same soul finally brought together.

"How I have missed you, Zelihuth," Zaro said, his voice heavy with years of buried emotion.

"And I you, brother," Simma replied, patting his back firmly, grounding himself in the moment.

When they finally pulled apart, Zaro studied him. "You look younger once more."

Simma chuckled, wiping his eyes. Of course... it all fit now. He had suspected their meeting wasn't coincidence, but never had he guessed how deeply Zaro had seen through him before he even knew himself.

"Well, you look old now," Simma teased. "I hardly recognized you."

...

The truth was, Zaro was a Lotus. Unlike the sentinels, Lotuses didn't bear beasts. Instead, they were trained to channel Azrax energy into mana, which didn't consume their life force the way beast summoning and taming did. That gave them a far longer lifespan. In short; Lotuses were magicians, and they aged like fine wine.

And suddenly, Simma remembered how Zaro had first discovered his curse.

Back then, Zaro had been the cautious one, always afraid. One day, a Singrith had cornered him in the city, how it had survived undetected in the great city was anyone's guess. Zelihuth, who reincarnated at that time as Tyla Shift, had been only a recruit, his body weak, his power dim. But he couldn't let the Singrith drain Zaro's blood. After all, he was the reason such creatures existed in the first place.

So, he saved him.

He unleashed his demon self, more furious than fire, and tore the Singrith apart with his own teeth. They were both nineteen at the time, and that terrifying rescue revealed the truth..... Zelihuth was part demon (a Waithraite), and then part man.

But Zaro, grateful and bound by loyalty, swore never to tell a soul. From that day, they became brothers. And every lifetime afterward; whether as Kent, Hunt, Zavier, Dax, Morock, and now as Simma, their friendship endured.

Zaro, blessed with the long life of a Lotus, had lived through all 130 years since or thereabout. He even looked younger than Zolomon, despite his age.

And speaking of Zolomon, Simma was reminded of their unfinished business. Zolomon had answers he needed. The Umbrax had whispered truths in the demon's lair: that the Citadel was the curse, that it had stolen his parents, that it had chained him into baby Simma and abandoned him in the desert, where the Singriths found him and treated him like an slave, branding him an outcast.

That mystery still gnawed at him.

Well, that was the only thing the Umbrax had said to him that day that he was still trying to find out whether it was true.

….

Zaro tapped his shoulder, breaking his thoughts.

"I'm glad you're back. And I hope you don't go back to the Umbrax again this time," he said as he turned toward the great hall's doors.

"Oh.... and Zelihuth," he added, glancing back with a smirk. "Lesson 41 failed. Man, you couldn't even dance with a girl.... a beautiful one at that."

He nodded toward the hall and walked away, shaking his head in disbelief.

Simma flushed, chuckling shyly. "Don't worry, Zaro… you'll see me in action soon."

He took a deep breath, letting it fill his chest like a long-lost song.

"Feels good to be back indeed."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.