On the Path of Eternal Strength.-Chapter 63 - 61 Where the abyss learns to devour

There was no cut.

There was no transition.

Only the imperceptible passage of a new time, one that did not hurt.

The walls were no longer strange. The air was not heavy with judgment or danger. The apartment did not speak... but it allowed inhabiting. And in that small miracle of shared silence, life found a different rhythm. Slower. Warmer. More human.

The sofa, which at first had been a boundary, was now a refuge. The table, which had no name, became a center. Valentina was still there, beside the low shelf, touching the wooden figures with her fingers as if they were relics. She did not play with them the way one plays with toys. She touched them as if confirming that they existed. As if they promised her they would still be there tomorrow.

In the kitchen, Óscar opened a cupboard with a carefree motion, took out some ingredients with that mix of improvisation and internal logic of his, and announced in a light voice, without looking at anyone:

—Fried rice. I’m not planning to save the world with anything else.

Valentina lifted her gaze, with big, expectant eyes. She did not fully understand what “fried rice” implied, but she understood it the way promises are understood when one is still a child: with the body first.

—Can I help? —she asked, softly.

—Obviously —Óscar replied, without hesitation—. But be careful, this rice will be legendary.

And although he had not the slightest plan to follow any recipe, he began with almost theatrical precision. The pan turned, the ingredients sizzled. He cut vegetables with a crooked but quick style. He cracked eggs without fear of disaster. Valentina watched him like someone attending a ritual of fire.

Sebastián sat nearby, but not at the table. He watched without tension. As if confirming that the scene did not break were his only task. Virka, for her part, leaned against the nearest wall. She did not participate, but she did not move away either. She breathed alongside them, as if what she had learned in the past days were still settling into her ribs.

The aroma began to fill the apartment. It was not special. It was not exotic. But it was real. And in Valentina’s life, that made it sacred.

When the rice was ready, Óscar served generous portions on plates that did not match. There was no ceremony. There were no prayers. They just sat down.

Valentina was the first to taste it. Her face lit up with a mixture of surprise and primitive pleasure. She ate quickly at first, then more slowly, as if afraid it would end.

Óscar ate as well, with quiet intensity. Not from hunger, but like someone trying to remind himself that he is alive.

Sebastián took some, without speaking. Virka as well. But their bites were small, symbolic. They did not need food. But they were not going to miss that table.

At one point, Valentina carefully put two pieces of rice inside her backpack. She did it with gentle movements, as if hiding a treasure. Then she murmured something to the backpack, barely audible. An invisible sentence, addressed to no one... or to everyone.

Óscar looked at her, curious.

—For later?

Valentina tensed. She looked at him as if she had been caught stealing something she didn’t know was hers. Then she nodded quickly, too quickly, moving her little hands as if with that gesture she could convince the world that everything was fine.

Óscar smiled. Not mockingly, but with a strange tenderness in him.

Sebastián spoke then, without raising his voice:

—Let her be.

And that simple phrase, said without harshness, was enough.

Óscar raised his hands as if surrendering on purpose.

—Understood. Secret code accepted.

They kept eating.

When the plates were half empty, and the sun began to change the color of the walls, Óscar stood up. He went for his guitar without hurry, tuned it with quick, almost automatic movements, and began to play.

He didn’t say what song it was. It didn’t matter. The strings were soft, clean. Melody without lyrics. A story without words.

Valentina watched him, fascinated. Then she began to hum. At first it was a barely articulated murmur. But then it turned into singing. Not perfect. Not in tune. But sincere. Like only someone who never knew they had the right to do it can sing.

And then, without warning, Virka sat beside her. Her voice was not that of a beast. Nor that of a human. It was a dark, deep vibration that did not break the harmony, but wrapped around it. Between the two of them, without meaning to, they created something more.

Óscar kept playing. He didn’t need to be the protagonist.

And Sebastián, a few meters away, closed his eyes. Not to sleep. But to sink into himself. He sat with his legs crossed, his torso straight, his back firm. His breathing changed rhythm. The internal core activated. Cultivation began. Silent, deep, invisible to anyone... except to Virka.

The music continued.

There were no questions.

There was no destination.

Only that moment.

And a girl who was singing.

And another who accompanied her.

And a young man who played without intending to save anything.

And a cultivator who, for the first time in many days, did not need to move.

Thus the day went on.

Until the sunlight gave up.

And nightfall arrived without tragedy

The day did not end with silence, but neither did it end with words. When the last trace of rice was swept away by Valentina’s spoon, when the music faded into the residual vibration of the air, and when the sun completely vanished beyond the windows, no one said “it’s time to sleep.” It simply happened. As happens the calm that does not need to be named.

Óscar picked up the plates without asking questions. Sebastián had remained still, cultivating, barely open to external perception. Virka was still beside the girl, her back resting against the wall, her eyes half-closed as if listening to something deeper than the music. Valentina... simply understood. Something in her recognized when she had to move, even if no one asked her to.

What followed was a moment of almost choreographed disorder. Óscar guided her down the hallway with a dim flashlight, not because there was no electric light, but because he used that small light as a way not to break the night.

—I only have one extra bed —he said, shrugging—. But it’s better than many things. I promise you.

Valentina nodded. Her backpack was still with her, hanging like part of her body. Óscar opened a door. The room was small. A low bed, without a headboard. A thick blanket, one of those that didn’t match but kept you warm. A window with muted curtains. A shelf with disordered books. An old stuffed animal on the pillow. It didn’t look like the stuffed animal belonged to Óscar. It looked like it had always been there, waiting.

—If you need anything, knock on the wall —he said, and withdrew with the same calm with which he had served the food.

Valentina stood still for several seconds. She did not sit down. She did not run to hug the bed. She only looked at everything. She confirmed there were no threatening shadows. That the wardrobe had no gaps. That the walls were not like the ones from before.

And then, for the first time since she had arrived, she took off her shoes.

It was a simple gesture, but it meant too much. Then she climbed onto the bed clumsily. She sat on her legs. She took from her backpack a pair of small figures made of hardened modeling clay: a creature with long ears and a house with three doors. She placed them on the low shelf, aligned with extreme care. After that, she took out the two handfuls of rice she had saved. Not to eat them. She placed them inside an empty jar she found on the shelf.

Finally, she turned off the flashlight.

And in the darkness, Valentina did not cry. She did not pray. She did not ask for anything to change. She simply lay on her back, with her eyes open.

The ceiling was an ordinary ceiling. Without cracks. Without stains. Without voices.

And that was enough.

In the main living room, the atmosphere had changed. Sebastián had finished his cultivation. He straightened up without words, walking until he stood in front of the window. The city shone in the night, but he did not look at it like a child who admires. Nor like a man who evaluates. He looked at it like someone who has survived too much to have faith in anything that shines.

Virka approached him.

—What did you see? —she asked, without softness or harshness.

—Nothing. And that’s why it was important.

She said nothing more. That was enough for her. Sebastián turned slowly, observing the space. Then his voice crossed the room:

—You have a good home, Óscar.

The boy with the bun appeared from the kitchen, drying his hands.

—It’s not mine. I just live here. Like everyone. In the end... nothing belongs to us. But thanks.

Sebastián nodded.

—Tomorrow everything is going to move. There’s no turning back.

—And you? —Óscar asked—. Have you already chosen to move?

The silence was not uncomfortable. It was the only possible one.

Sebastián did not answer.

But Virka did.

—It has already begun.

Óscar did not reply. He simply turned off the last light.

Not because it was late.

But because the night had to be allowed to do its part.

The switch stayed down and the apartment breathed differently. There was no total darkness; only that domestic dimness that does not threaten, that does not hide dangerous corners. The skyscraper was still alive outside, but inside the pulse slowed, almost intimate, as if the walls had learned to listen without demanding explanations.

Óscar stretched his arms with exaggeration, a gesture more theatrical than tired. He walked barefoot to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, looked at it for two seconds, and closed it without taking anything out. He returned to the center of the living room with a crooked smile, the kind that does not ask permission to exist. He looked at Sebastián and Virka, held in that silence that was no longer uncomfortable, and spoke like someone dropping a final piece before leaving the board.

—If you’re going to do couple things... —he said, in a low, teasing voice, without lewdness— better in silence. Don’t wake me. Or Valentina. And if you can avoid teaching the house new sounds... I’d appreciate it.

He did not wait for an answer. He did not need one. He turned on his heels, walked down the hallway and, before disappearing, let out a brief laugh, clean, absolutely his. It was not obscene. It was confidence. The laugh of someone who already feels inside.

The door to his room closed with a soft click. After that, nothing. No footsteps. No lights. Only the settling of the night.

Virka did not move immediately. Neither did Sebastián. The silence thickened, but it did not weigh. It was a silence that accepted bodies, that did not judge what was going to happen within it. Virka was the first to break it. She approached without sound, with that way of moving of hers that seemed to deny the floor. She sat on Sebastián’s legs with calm determination, resting her hands on his chest as if checking that the heartbeat was still there, firm, obedient to a will that was not her own.

They looked at each other. There were no words. There was no permission. The kiss was direct, deep, without rehearsal. Tongues that sought each other as if they already knew the way, mouths that did not ask for softness but for truth. Their breathing broke in both of them, not from blind urgency, but from recognition. It was desire, yes, but it was also something older: confirmation.

Virka kissed him with contained hunger, like someone who allows herself to bite because she knows how far. Sebastián responded without hesitation, trapping her mouth with his, his hands firm on her back, traveling muscle and heat with precise memory. There were no timid caresses. There were shared assaults, a coming and going of breaths that blended until they lost their origin.

She descended to Sebastián’s neck, bit carefully, left marks that burned for an instant. He offered his neck without pulling away. When she released him, the marked skin throbbed... and then closed, regeneration acting without ceremony, erasing the trace as if the body refused to keep small memories. Virka noticed. She did not get angry. She accepted it. That was how he was. That was his flesh.

Sebastián returned the gesture. His lips moved down, bit Virka’s neck, the edge of her lip, her collarbone. She gasped low, without exaggeration, with that dangerous restraint that defined her. They remained like that for a long while, without advancing further, without crossing the limit that did not need to be named. Desire does not always demand culmination. Sometimes it demands permanence.

When they separated, both were breathing deeply. Virka leaned for a moment against his chest. Sebastián closed his eyes. Not from exhaustion. From stillness.

—I’m going to sleep with Valentina —she said at last, her voice already calm.

—That’s fine —Sebastián replied—. I’ll stay here. I want to cultivate a bit. This place... helps.

Virka nodded. Before leaving, she added:

—I’ll tell Narka to keep you company. He’s in the backpack.

—Thank you.

She walked away without further words. The door to Valentina’s room opened and closed carefully, as if the air itself asked for silence.

Sebastián was left alone in the living room. He crossed his legs, rested his fists on his knees, and regulated his breathing. The apartment was still, but not asleep. In Valentina’s backpack, beside the table, something vibrated. A slight, ancient tremor. Narka was awakening without haste, attentive, ready to listen.

Sebastián began to cultivate. There was no light. There was no external manifestation. Only internal movement, arranging itself like a river learning its course anew. Outside, the city kept turning. Inside, the night fulfilled its task: to sustain without demanding.

The stillness held for only a few minutes before a shadow shifted along the edge of the room. Narka emerged from his reduced form, without making any sound at all. His mineral body, cracked by time, glimmered faintly under the nocturnal reflection from the window. He did not interrupt the process. He did not stop it. He sat a few meters away, and watched. He waited for the boy to notice his presence.

He did.

—What are you trying this time? —Narka asked in a deep voice, barely a whisper sliding between the furniture.

Sebastián did not open his eyes.

—Since I used the Armex today in class... the Core has been craving something —he replied, without altering the rhythm of his breathing—. Electrical energy. Not the suit’s. Not Óscar’s. The environment’s.

Narka showed no surprise. He had felt that change.

—I noticed. Since we came back to be close again... the Core has begun emitting more aggressive pulses. Not toward you. But toward the world.

—It wants to test —Sebastián continued—. To devour that energy. To see if it can turn it into Qi.

He opened his eyes, not with urgency, but with firmness. The room was in penumbra, but his pupils seemed to move within a liquid red that spun with lethal order.

—And I need you to help me —he said without preamble—. If it starts absorbing more than it should, it could affect the building’s electrical system. I have no way to measure the range. But you do.

Narka nodded. Not because he obeyed, but because he understood. And because it was his duty to accompany that abyss.

—Before we begin, there is something you need to understand —said the colossus with golden eyes, without approaching—. Cultivators, for the most part, absorb energy from the environment through the body. It is the body that is alive, that breathes, that feels. That is why everything the body perceives, everything it touches, vibrates, or inhabits nearby... can be absorbed if the proper channel is trained.

—I know —Sebastián replied—. The body acts as a mediator.

—Exactly —Narka affirmed—. It is a sensory network. First it detects, then it filters. After that the energy passes through the mediators. Only after that does it reach the cultivator’s core. And it is there that it is refined, converted, used.

Sebastián did not interrupt. He only adjusted his shoulders slightly.

—But with you it is not like that —Narka continued, in a lower tone—. What I have observed since I awakened... is that your Inverted Origin Core does not wait. It does not filter. It does not use the mediators as a bridge. It devours directly.

The silence that followed was not one of doubt, but of confirmation. Sebastián acknowledged it without words.

—Since it awakened... my mediators only serve as a transmission network —he said at last—. They do not filter. They do not absorb. They only conduct what the Core has already transformed.

—Then you do not absorb like a common cultivator —Narka concluded—. You do it like an inverse source. Your body does not extract from the world. It is the world that draws near to you. And the Core is the one that decides what to take.

—That’s why it’s dangerous —Sebastián admitted, still calm—. Because my will alone is not enough to stop it. The Core reacts on its own. And now it wants electricity.

There was a brief creak at the window. The wind changed.

—The advantage —Narka added, without judgment—, is that you can obtain energy from many more sources. What a common cultivator would not do, you can attempt. What they cannot absorb, you can devour. But there is a price. There is no containment if there is no absolute control.

Sebastián closed his eyes again.

—That’s why you’re here.

Narka nodded. There was nothing more to say. He rose with the slowness of a mountain in motion, and positioned himself at the edge of the living room, covering with his body part of the wall more

close to the building’s electrical system. He did not touch anything. He only connected, subtly, with the ambient vibration.

The boy, at the center, breathed.

He did not channel external Qi. He did not feel the energy of the air. He did not use senses. He simply allowed it. As if his entire body were an abyss awaiting the inevitable.

The Inverted Origin Core, within his chest, began to spin.

At first in silence. Then with an internal pressure that was not pain, but demand. Like a deep muscle asking for fresh blood. The desire was not mental. It was physical. Vibrant. Sharp.

Electrical energy was not visible. But it was there. In the walls. In the air. In the distribution networks that ran through every corner of the building. It was not pure, nor did it contain Qi. But it was real. Charged. Alive in its own way.

And the Core... called it.

There were no thunderclaps. There was no spark. But the hairs on Sebastián’s left arm stood on end. The air, for a second, stopped flowing normally. A subtle sensation of attraction, like when a storm is near but has not yet broken the sky.

The Core began to devour.

Not by impulse. Not by rage. But by structural hunger. As if that were one of its basic functions. To turn what is alien into its own. To make the external into inner strength.

Narka, attentive, perceived the slight drop in the electrical flow of the room. Not dangerous yet. But real.

—It’s working —he murmured.

Sebastián did not respond.

Inside him, something else was happening. The energy, barely arrived, was processed immediately. The Core crushed it, broke it down, subdued it. Not as a common core would. It did not seek compatibility. Only efficiency.

And his mediators, useless for absorption, lit up like distribution channels. They carried that new force through the arms, along the spine, through the sternum. Not like electrical current, but like something more primitive. Raw. Still without a name.

Sebastián let it flow. Not to use it yet. But to learn. To feel. To measure.

And then Narka’s voice, deep, guided him.

—Now... feel what you cannot yet name. Use your consciousness. Not as a sense. But as a space. Expand perception beyond the body. Touch the energy before it arrives. Attract without possessing. Receive without forcing.

Sebastián obeyed. Not with effort. But with intention.

And in doing so, something opened. It was not a channel, nor a new ability. It was the subtle expansion of what was already within him. The Core, now more sensitive, began to detect not only electricity... but other lesser forms of energy. Thermal. Vibrational. Of pressure. All floating nearby. All devourable.

But it did not do it.

Not yet.

It only recognized them. Like a predator that has discovered new prey... but decides, for now, to observe them.

And in that instant, for the first time since he ignited the Core that night... Sebastián smiled.

Not out of pleasure.

But because at last... he was understanding what it meant to have a Core that does not respond to the world, but redraws it.

______________________________________________

END OF Chapter 61

The path continues...

New Chapters are revealed every

Sunday, and also between Wednesday or Thursday,

when the will of the tale so decides.

Each one leaves another scar on Sebastián’s journey.

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