"This was the final lesson, wasn't it?"
Someone muttered after a short silence.
They weren't talking to anyone in particular.
Just thinking out loud. Letting it sit heavy in the air.
"Yeah…"
Another answered, eyes still locked on the fallen Malik.
"The final lesson."
A lesson that wasn't taught in words.
It wasn't written in scrolls or whispered between masters and students.
No. This one was given. Burned into the skin. Carved into the earth. Etched in fire and grief.
Control.
He'd learned control.
Because no one that broken, no one with that much fury boiling inside him, could've fought like that... without losing his mind.
He should've lost all that he had in there.
Long before this, long before now, but especially now.
He should've lost it after the fourth Jinn. Or the third. Or when Cassim said that.
But he didn't.
He kept going.
Step after step.
Cut after cut.
Even when the whole world begged him to just fall already.
He didn't.
He chose.
