On the Path of Eternal Strength.-Chapter 76 - 74 Between Blood and Dawn

The beast’s jaw cracked without sound. What had begun as a contained threat transformed into pure movement. Virka did not need to flex her body to tense the world: she tensed it with her decision. And then, she advanced.

The ground did not crack beneath her feet. There was no brute force in her beginning. Only an axis broken by intention. Her body projected forward with the precision of a trap that had never been opened, and behind her, like a shadow clinging to her spine, the canine beast shrank. The paws stopped touching the ground, the bones curved in on themselves, the bestial silhouette reduced its size as it aligned with its executioner. In seconds, the monstrosity that had once measured five meters reduced itself to a two-meter head, with a cracked skull and extended jaw, whose thickness equaled that of an ancient ceremonial stone, immovable.

It was the living manifestation of the Fang of Total Rupture.

And that head of black aura, thick, vibrating, was not going to stop. It advanced first. Before the body. Before the muscle. It was the announcement of a death that did not ask permission. A claw projected from hunger.

But the man in the cyan nylon suit did not wait. He moved ahead with surgical precision, three meters before impact. His arm rose as if he had spent years waiting for that instant, and from his palm, the white mist burst forth like a polar exhalation. It was not fog. It was not vapor. It was a solid breath that began to spin, not toward the sky, but forward. A horizontal, compact, straight tornado, whose form did not spin in an open spiral, but in contained circles, tight like frozen blades. The trajectory was frontal. Calculated. And when that frozen column collided with Virka’s technique, the world stopped for a breath.

Both powers canceled each other out. Black aura and white mist. Force and cold. Hunger and judgment. The impact did not create an explosion, but a simultaneous dissolution. As if two truths had been spoken at the same time... and both refused to yield.

The projected skull of the beast dissolved into dark lines. The tornado fragmented into formless frost. The balance was perfect. And that made it more dangerous.

But Virka did not stop. She was already turning to the left, before the fragments fell. Her Battle Domain had read the body of the second enemy: the man in the black suit with golden edges. He was descending from the air with a momentum that did not belong to gravity, but to resentment. A charge at more than one hundred kilometers per hour. But his trajectory was predictable. His weight, calculable. Virka no longer saw bodies: she read trajectories. And before that body could land where she had been, she was no longer there.

From where the impact should have happened, the ground trembled by inertia. And on the other side, the real attack had begun.

The man in the cyan suit, after his intervention, placed his hand on the concrete. The white mist sprouted from his fingers like a root seeking soil. It extended in a straight line. Then it branched out. The ground, in a strip of several meters, was covered with sudden frost. Like a flower of ice growing beneath the feet. It sought to immobilize her. Break her axis. Anchor her. But it did not succeed.

Virka had already felt it.

She jumped, not like one who flees, but like one who answers. And her fall was more than a descent: it was a punishment. Stride of the Foundation Breaker. Both arms back. Right knee raised. Aura accumulated in the sole of her foot. Her entire body became a fall. Not toward the enemy. Toward the very structure of the world.

When Virka’s heel touched the concrete, the ground ceased to be a plane. It became a scream. The cracks spread like blind lightning. Not outward, but downward. A zone seven meters around collapsed. It did not break. It surrendered. The ice was destroyed at its base. The man in the cyan suit lost stability, forced to step back in a short jump. But he was not the target.

Virka had already felt the other one.

The air at her back vibrated. The second enemy — the one in the black suit with golden edges — was already upon her. The charge did not come from the air. It came from the broken ground. He used the chaos as a channel. As if he fed on destruction. But that too was part of the calculation. Virka no longer reacted. She moved ahead.

When the enemy was less than a meter away, when his momentum was inevitable, when his speed turned him into a projectile, Virka responded with a single technique:

Claw of Internal Rending.

Her arm launched like a diagonal stroke. The hand open, the fingers curved like pincers. She did not seek to stop him. She let him come closer. And when he was within range, her hand caught the exact section between the neck and the shoulder. The wrist twisted. The black aura projected. And then, the impact.

The translucent energy that enveloped the man collided with Virka’s black aura. It was not a physical blow. It was a confrontation of living forces. The aura twisted. The world contracted. And in that clash, both were thrown in opposite directions. But not equally.

Virka stepped back three paces. Her legs absorbed the inertia. Her chest vibrated. Her breathing altered. But her center was not broken.

The other one... went flying.

The man in the black suit with golden edges was projected against one of the lateral walls of the Veil. His body struck with the force of a colossal creature. The wall cracked. It did not stop him. It only wedged him in. And there he remained.

Virka did not waste time. Her gaze was already on the second enemy.

The one in the cyan suit was still rising. One knee on the ground. One hand against the concrete. Vulnerable. Perfect.

Virka did not hesitate. She raised her right arm. Palm extended. Opposite leg forward. Black aura spiraling at the center of her hand.

Collapse of the Hollow Core.

The attack was projected without physical contact. A black line, narrow, without edge, advanced straight toward the center of the enemy’s chest. It did not seek to break skin. It sought to implode. But the enemy responded.

Both hands forward. White mist concentrated. A wall of thick frost formed. A defensive barrier that seemed to have the thickness of mineral. The black aura struck.

And the wall... broke.

It did not explode. It did not crack. It simply ceased to be. It dissolved as if it had touched an incompatible dimension. The aura advanced through the frozen dust, now without containment.

And behind the dust, Virka.

She did not stop.

She had already turned.

Lash of the Exposed Spine.

Her back curved. Arm loaded. Leg anchored. Black aura running along her spine. The movement was complete. She spun 360°, her arm acting like a brutal whip, without shadow or delay. The blow was aimed at the chest of the man in the cyan suit... but it did not end there.

Because in that instant, Virka felt.

From the center of the enemy’s body — heart, diaphragm, plexus — a flow of energy began moving toward his arms. He wanted to release the mist again. And behind, a few meters away, the other enemy was already coming. Wounded, but not defeated.

It did not matter.

The impact landed.

Virka’s arm, her aura spinning like a vertebral serpent, struck the man in the cyan suit. It went through him like a judgment. The aura did the rest. The enemy’s spine arched. His entire body folded backward.

And without pause, Virka kept spinning.

The black whip crossed the air once more. And it found the man in the black suit with golden edges just as he entered range. The impact was dry, brutal, inevitable. There was no defense. There was no response. Only a body pierced by a line of darkness.

The previous blow still echoed in the air when Virka understood that the only exit was definitive. There was no margin to prolong the confrontation. Both enemies were open, their balance broken, their energy out of rhythm after the lash that had crossed their bodies. The decision did not arise from anger, but from precision. She raised both hands with controlled slowness, and the black aura concentrated in her palms until it acquired a defined form, compact, delimited by sharp edges as if the void itself had been molded by her will. The energy did not oscillate; it breathed with a pulse of its own, ready to penetrate, to pass through flesh and core with a single simultaneous movement. Two trajectories. Two hearts. A single irreversible instant.

But before the attack descended, something fractured inside her mind. It was not a distraction nor a doubt. It was an internal explosion, a pressure that expanded behind her eyes as if her skull were trying to contain a storm that did not belong to her. The pain burst forth with sudden violence, a devastating migraine that shattered the clarity that seconds earlier governed her perception. Blood began to descend from her nose in a dark and silent line, and with it the state that had allowed her to read the world like an open diagram extinguished. The Battle Domain vanished without transition, like a door closed from the other side. Trajectories stopped revealing themselves. Space became opaque again, unpredictable, heavy.

The opening was real.

The man in the black nylon suit with golden edges understood it in the same instant that Virka’s gaze lost that absolute edge. From his kneeling position, his torso still marked by the previous impact, he rose like a released spring. His ascent was not disordered: it was vertical, clean, executed with controlled violence. The fist ascended in a precise uppercut, a “gazelle strike” whose trajectory cut the air with surgical determination. The translucent energy enveloped his arm like a living membrane, vibrating, concentrated at the exact point where the impact would be most devastating.

Virka reacted by instinct. She crossed both hands in front of her torso, reinforcing them with the black aura she still had left. In the same fraction of a second she tried to concentrate energy in her abdomen, to build a second defense beneath the first, to densify her core to absorb the collision. Her instinct told her that the defense was incomplete, that time was not enough. She did not make it. The fist struck before the accumulation was sealed. The collision was not thunderous, but deep, as if two compact forces compressed until they lost shape. The translucent energy passed through the partial defense and struck her abdomen with direct brutality. The air left her lungs and her body was projected backward with undeniable violence.

The world spun.

Virka crossed several meters before forcing the descent, bending her knees in the air and driving her feet into the concrete upon landing. The aura in her soles absorbed part of the inertia; the ground cracked beneath her in an irregular circle as she slid until stopping in a crouch. Her head continued to throb with unbearable pressure. The Battle Domain did not return. Perception was no longer an ordered net, but fragments.

The man in the black nylon suit with golden edges advanced slowly, laughter escaping from his throat in a low, contained tone, not arrogant but enjoyed, aware that he had reached the exact point where the balance tilted. “It will no longer be so easy without her special state,” he declared with a cadence laden with irony, without raising his voice, savoring the opening. Virka lifted her face slowly, blood marking the edge of her lips, her red eyes fixed and intense despite the pain trying to fracture her concentration. Her breathing was irregular, but her posture did not break. “Even without the Battle Domain... the strength remains,” she replied with dry firmness, without hesitation. She barely turned her head to the side, signaling with her gaze toward the man in the cyan nylon suit with white stripes, whose body remained folded, unconscious, defeated by the previous impact. “He no longer represents a threat. Only two remain. One will live. The other will not.”

There was no theatrical challenge in her words. Only certainty.

Virka gathered what remained of her aura. She concentrated it in her feet, in her hands, in the core of her chest. Each breath was heavier than the last, but her center did not yield. Beneath her soles, the concrete vibrated before fracturing in a dry burst that propelled her forward. Her advance was a black line that split space with brutal speed. The man released his translucent energy over his entire body, forming a uniform protective layer as he crossed his arms in front of his torso, attempting to absorb the charge. The technique was already in motion. The Roar of the Imminent End compressed in Virka’s chest like a scream held to the limit. When both her fists struck the enemy’s torso, the aura burst forward in a compact wave that passed through the translucent defense as if it had reached its point of structural fatigue. The impact lifted the man from the ground and hurled him backward violently, dragging him several meters across the concrete. The protective energy cracked and collapsed, leaving his body partially destroyed: skin torn open, muscles shredded, fragments of bone visible beneath the lacerated flesh. He was still breathing, but each inhalation was an agonizing effort.

Virka remained motionless for only an instant before advancing. Her aura was weakened, concentrated only in her hands. Each step seemed to drag the weight of accumulated exhaustion. She stopped in front of the dying body. Without words, without pause, she extended her hand in the shape of a claw and plunged it into the enemy’s chest with direct precision. Her fingers passed through weakened flesh and bone until reaching the heart. She crushed it from within. The body tensed once and went still. Inside the torso she felt a structure foreign to organic tissue: a smooth sphere, transparent like glass. She extracted it slowly. Within it floated a black cube that, once outside, descended to the internal bottom of the sphere like an object without energy. She let it drop.

She turned toward the man in the cyan nylon suit with white stripes. He was still breathing, unconscious, unaware of what was approaching. There was aura left in only one of her hands. She walked toward him with heavy steps and repeated the gesture. The black claw passed through the chest without significant resistance. She crushed the heart and felt another circular sphere. She extracted it. This one contained a small white circle with shapes resembling suspended clouds that, upon leaving the body, stopped floating and fell inert inside the sphere. She let it fall beside the other one.

The Veil began to distort. The darkness lost density and the invisible walls vibrated before dissolving like ink diluted in water. Total exhaustion descended upon Virka as her aura extinguished almost completely. When the blackness finished dissipating, she appeared standing on the road in front of the Eterna Transport S.A. building, cordoned off with security tape that moved gently in the night. Only one black car remained there. The driver’s door opened and Selena stepped out with her straight, cold posture, evaluating first the surroundings and then the bloodstained figure in front of her. She declared that she would take care of the corpses and that the area was under control, adding that they needed to search for Sebastián, since he had not yet been located. Virka did not respond; the silence was more solid than any reply. Covered in blood, sweat, and with torn clothes, she advanced toward the vehicle with firm steps despite the exhaustion. Selena opened the rear door without taking her eyes off the surroundings. Virka entered the back seat. Selena took the wheel, started the engine, and the car set off, moving away in silence while the night regained its stillness.

The automobile moved forward with an almost unreal stability, as if the night itself were pushing it away from the place where the blood was still fresh on the asphalt. The lights of the outskirts were left behind in increasingly sparse rows, while the road opened into wide lines leading toward the central area of the city. Inside the cabin, the silence was not empty: it was a dense presence occupying every space between the two women. In the back seat, Virka remained upright despite the exhaustion that pressed on her muscles and tightened her breathing. Her jet-black hair, long to her waist, fell in disordered strands over her back, some stuck by dried sweat and the blood that marked her white skin with a slight gray tone under shadow. Her bright red eyes, without a clear pupil, remained open, attentive, although the pressure in her skull throbbed like a constant hammer that would not yield. The loss of the Battle Domain was not only technical; it was a perceptive amputation. The world no longer opened into predictable trajectories. It returned to being uncertain, heavy, opaque. Her aura was almost extinguished; barely a warm remnant in the center of her chest, a minimal ember sustaining her posture by pure will.

Selena drove with her back straight, both hands firm on the wheel, precise movements, without a single unnecessary gesture. Her face showed no visible tension. Her gaze remained fixed on the road, evaluating distances, speeds, lights that approached and receded. The city began to change shape around them. The avenues widened, the lanes multiplied, and the flow of vehicles increased progressively. Heavy trucks passed beside them, motorcycles slipped between cars, white and red headlights drew rivers of light in constant motion. The world continued its course, unaware of the battle that had taken place in a plane invisible to most.

The journey extended in silence. The highway lights followed one another with hypnotic regularity, marking the passage of time with a cold cadence. Little by little, the sky began to lighten on the horizon. A grayish blue displaced the deep darkness, and the contours of the buildings began to define themselves more clearly. The city awakened. Pedestrian bridges were outlined against the emerging light, buses began early routes, isolated pedestrians walked quickly toward a new day that ignored the violence of the dawn.

It was then that Virka broke the silence.

Her voice emerged from the back seat, lower than usual, not from insecurity but from the physical weight that pierced through her. “Why do you do it yourself?” The question traveled cleanly, without adornment. “Not your men.”

Selena did not take her eyes off the road. “It is more effective.”

The response was immediate, measured, without hesitation.

Virka closed her eyes for just an instant; the pressure at her temple intensified like a contained electric current. “Do not try to hide it.” Her tone did not rise, but it acquired a different roughness, deeper. “Do not try to lie to me in that way.”

Selena changed lanes with calculated smoothness, merging into a more crowded section of the highway. “Hide what exactly?”

The light of dawn began to filter more clearly through the windshield, bathing the interior of the vehicle with a pale glow that revealed every detail: the dried blood on Virka’s skin, the small tears in the fabric of her dark dress, the contained rigidity in her shoulders.

“Your relationship with Sebastián is changing.” The words came out with controlled effort. “You can deny it. You can disguise it under efficiency or strategy. But it is perceptible.” Her breathing was heavier than she would have allowed at another time. “In the end, I am a woman. And I am a beast. I detect when someone approaches what I have chosen.”

Traffic increased as they approached the urban center. Towers of concrete and glass emerged on both sides, reflecting the first light of day.

Selena remained serene. “It was inevitable that you would notice.” There was no sarcasm. Only acknowledgment. “But what you perceive is not what you assume. That change did not begin as something romantic.” Her hands did not tense on the wheel. “It is friendship. And that is different.”

Virka rested her head against the backrest for a second, as if that brief contact could relieve the pressure piercing her skull. Her red eyes, however, did not lose intensity. “Friendship can transform.”

The sun finally rose over the horizon, a golden line that cut the sky and cast long shadows across the highway.

“If any woman attempts to cross that boundary,” Virka continued, her voice deeper, more territorial, “if someone intends to displace me... I will kill her.” It was not a shout. It was not an outburst. It was an instinctive declaration, spoken with the naturalness of someone describing a necessary act. “Sebastián is the bond I chose. He is my partner. I protected him. I claimed him. I will not yield that place.”

Selena did not reduce her speed nor modify her posture. “I perceive your intention.” Her voice remained firm, steady. “But listen to me clearly.” Her eyes shifted slightly toward the rearview mirror, meeting the intense red in the reflection. “Do you believe you can possess him?”

The question was not accusatory. It was analytical.

“You speak of choice,” Selena continued. “If, hypothetically, something were to change, it would not be through manipulation. It would be through decision. And not only mine.” She made a brief, calculated pause. “Besides, it is unlikely. Age differences. Different nature. Political implications. Too many variables.”

Virka remained silent for a few seconds. The pain in her head was still there, constant, like a fissure that would not finish closing.

“But if it were not me,” Selena added with the same calm, “if it were another woman. If someone else approached. If he reciprocated.” Traffic flowed around them, indifferent. “Do you believe Sebastián would abandon what he built with you?”

Dawn already dominated the sky.

“He carries every decision,” Selena went on. “Every consequence. He does not flee. He does not abandon. It is almost an obsession in him to sustain what he chooses.”

The vehicle entered the more central area of the city. Traffic lights, intersections, pedestrians, the growing noise of a day fully awakening.

“If, at some point, his path included something you do not desire,” Selena concluded, “would you be capable of accepting it? Or would you try to break it even if it were his decision?”

Silence settled again, but this time it was not empty. It was a contained tension vibrating between them like an invisible string.

Virka did not respond immediately. Her aura was exhausted. Her body resented every movement. The Battle Domain remained absent. The pain persisted. But her presence did not weaken in intention. Her red eyes remained fixed on the mirror’s reflection, dangerous even in exhaustion.

The city was already fully awake.

The automobile advanced through the constant flow of the morning, carrying with it a question that did not demand an immediate answer, but that would not disappear.

_____________________________________________________

END OF Chapter 74

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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