The Medallion's Keeper Ch.1

"What do you mean by that, doctor?" Kya asked in puzzlement.

"It's hard to explain, miss. But the only thing that matters is that the boy needs some rest and maybe he could get out of the hospital if his wounds would keep healing at a rapid pace." Priyanka replied while looking over the clipboard.

"Wait... burned building? Fire?" At that moment, the memories quickly came back to Shen as he remembered everything. The night when his father gave him the medallion, told him to get out of the dojo and run as far as he could, but then Shen returned with the hopes to help his father, only to witness him dying at the hands of an assassin. "Did... Did you find my father? My friends?"

The doctor grimaced as she hesitated to answer, only to notice the anxious look on Katara and Kya's faces. Letting out a sigh, she sat next to the boy and placed his hand gently on Shen's shoulder. "I'm sorry, son. We tried everything to find the other people at the dojo, but... I'm afraid that you're the only survivor."

At that moment, Shen felt like his heart shattered in tiny pieces. His hands gripped around the sheets, biting his bottom lip in anguish as he couldn't bear the thought that he lost everything. His father, his friends, his home, everything was now burned into ashes. He wanted to cry, to curse at the people who ruined his life, but he refused to let them win by breaking himself apart.

Suddenly, he felt a pair of hands cupping on the side of his face. Opening his eyes wide, he turned his gaze at Katara's mother wearing a look of pity.

"I'm so sorry. I know how it feels when you lose someone you love." Kya said with a sorrowful tone, as she wiped the tear off his eye with her thumb. "But you're not alone, Shen. We're here to help you, and I promise we'll find a way to get through this together.

"As a family." Katara joined in, placing her hand gently on his cast-covered arm.

"How? I have nothing left... even the medallion he gave it to me and made me promise I would protect it. And I failed..." Shen replied, averting her gaze dishearteningly.

"Actually... You didn't." The doctor took something out of her pocket and handed it to Shen, which the boy looked at and gasped when he saw the familiar golden pendant with the crest of a dragon. It was his father's medallion. "The firemen found this in your hand after they pulled you out of the rubble. They asked me to give this to you when you'd wake up."

Shen raised his good arm to let the doctor hand the medallion to him, as there wasn't a single scratch or dirt on it, it looked as good as new. Gripping the medal around his hand, Shen turned back to the doctor with a saddened, yet sincere look of appreciation. "Thank you."

Priyanka smiled and rubbed the boy's head, before she stood up and turned to Kya. "Can I speak with you outside for a moment?"

Kya blinked her eyes, but she nodded her head and turned to her daughter. "Can you look after Shen while I'm gone? It won't take long."

"Sure!" Katara said with a smile, as she shared a comforting look to Shen.

The doctor and the single mother got out of the room as Priyanka closed the door. "If I may be straight with you, I'm glad you made the decision to take that boy under your care."

"Shen is my daughter's friend and we have known him for a long time. His father asked me that if something happened to him, I would look after him, so he could still have a chance to have a good life." Kya said with a smile, but it disappeared in a second as she let out a dejected sigh. "But I never thought it would happen this soon. I can't imagine how awful Shen must be feeling for losing his father."

"That's what worries me, in fact." Doctor Priyanka said with a serious tone. "As I said earlier, he's making a great recovery despite all the injuries he suffered at the fire, which I'm still wondering how's that possible. But the main issue is the everlasting effect he could suffer from experiencing such trauma."

"How bad is it gonna be?" Kya asked anxiously.

"It's hard to tell. He could experience the survivor's guilt or maybe he will grow a new fear of the fire or alike. In any case, it could affect his lifestyle, that's why I'm here to tell you that you have to keep an eye on him and help him in any way to get through his trauma. For now, we couldn't be sure what's going through his mind right now until he's willing to open himself up."

While Priyanka and Kya were having a private conversation, Katara was sitting in a chair while watching her friend looking at the medallion. The air became a little tense for Katara since none of them haven't spoken a word so far, so she thought it would be best to break silence so Shen could feel comfortable.

"That is a beautiful pendant. I'm sure that belonged to your ancestors."

"Yeah, it used to belong to my grandpa, then my grandpa's father. You could say it's our family heirloom, but it's more than that..." Shen replied while he traced his thumb across the golden crest of the dragon. "My father told me it carries a great power that only those who can vow to protect it can have it."

"I'm sure he wanted you to have it so you would never forget about him, that shows how much he loved you." Katara said with a sincere smile.

Shen looked at Katara as he was about to deny that claim, but he remained silent and thought maybe she had a point. His father always forbade him to even take a look at the medallion, but maybe because he didn't want to make his son carry that burden unless the time was right. If what his father said was true that the medallion has some sort of power, it could mean that some people would want to use it for wrong purposes.

People like those assassins who killed his father...

Shen could remember the faces of the people who came for the medallion. The guy in a mask, the ample-bodied man with a shaved head, a middle-aged lady, a young woman with a merciless look, and their leader. These assassins took his father, took his friends, and burnt down his home, all because they wanted to get their hands on the pendant. It was their desire for power that ruined his life

"Shen?" Katara noticed his hand clenching his medallion so tightly, before looking at his face and froze when she saw the unbridled fury in his eyes.

Shen didn't hear her words as he became overwhelmed by a strong emotion that began boiling down like a steaming pot.

Revenge.

(Play Song: Sifu OST - Martial Mastery)

The world around him turned red as his rage and desire for vengeance overtook all of his senses. Every bit of the world he's surrounded with has been transformed into a deep shade of red. Nothing else seemed to take precedence. The sounds vanished. The birds stopped their song. And any other emotion in Shen's heart became fuel for his inner fire of vengeance.

The once frightened, hurt child he was was no more, instead he completely changed into a fully recovered grown man, who grew his hair with a bun tied on the back of his head. He was now wearing his training gear, which consisted of a traditional black frog-button shirt with rolled up sleeves and a matching pair of trousers with a red scarf tied around his waist. Under the scarf, there was the medallion that he decided to carry with him to fulfill his father's dying wish.

Raising his hands to make a salute with the palm of his hand resting on his knuckles, before his piercing eyes shot wide open and began with his usual practice, which was performing combination after combination of Kung-Fu techniques, from the fighting styles of animals such as the Tiger and the Mantis, to the old roots of the martial arts such as the Wing Chun.

For eight years, after that fateful night at the dojo and meeting his father's assassins, Shen spent perfecting all the techniques he learned from his father. He now became swift, agile, and lethal. To fight against these assassins, he knew he had to respond aggression with aggression.

After practicing the technique of the Southern Fist, Shen stopped for a moment as he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened them again, he found himself surrounded by a group of shadowy individuals with barely recognizable faces. He would call them live dummies, but they're created by his imagination to practice a scenario when he'd find himself facing more than one.

All of the shadow targets rushed in to block his escape, but Shen lunged forward and launched a flying knee to take down one of the targets. Another target tried to attack him from behind, but Shen ducked to dodge a punch before spinning around and kicked him in the chest, sending the target staggering back with his guard down that he took the chance to finish it off with a barrage of punches and a elbow to the face.

He continued beating his targets one by one until there was no one left. Shen was aware that they're nothing comparable to what these assassins are capable of, but he barely knows their skills and fighting styles, and any real-life situation can be unpredictable than his training session. Nevertheless he's just preparing for whatever obstacle he's gonna face.

No matter how long it would take, or how difficult it's gonna be, he's not gonna stop until he finds the man who was the mastermind behind the assassination of his father.

He turned around to face the shadowy figures of the assassins, but Shen was focusing more on the young man standing in the middle, the same man who took his father away from him. Shen can still remember the words this man said to him.

'He got what he deserved'

Shen still can't understand what he meant by that and what his father did to deserve such fate. But it doesn't matter for him, that murderer took everything he knew and loved and he must pay for his actions.

Unfortunately, Shen still doesn't know that revenge will always evolve, and one cycle ended with the death of his father, a new cycle just began with Shen vowing to find the man who killed him.

To Be Continued...