On the Path of Eternal Strength.

The night had settled over the unfinished structure of the mansion.

The bare walls and the gaps where someday there would be windows let the cold breeze slip through. The silence was dense, barely broken by the creak of the provisional wood and the faint breath of Virka, leaning against an unfinished stone column. Narka remained on one of the nearby planks, in his reduced form, still as if he were listening to something only he could perceive.

Sebastián was sitting on a pile of cement sacks, with the cellphone that Selena and Helena had given him still in his hands. The bluish light partially illuminated his face, marking the shadows on his cheekbones and the perpetual gleam in his red eyes.

It had been hours since the conversation with Virka and Narka had ended, but his mind would not rest. Something remained. Something he could not leave for later.

Slowly, he brought his left hand to the storage ring. A minimal flash, barely perceptible, preceded the appearance of a small folded paper, its edges slightly worn by time.

On it, two numbers written with different precision: the cold, firm stroke of the hooded man, and the more slanted, fluid handwriting of the woman who accompanied him.

Sebastián looked at the paper for a few seconds, as if weighing the decision.

Virka, without opening her eyes, spoke with her low but sharp voice:

—That is not an ordinary contact.

—No —he replied, without taking his eyes off the paper—. But I need it.

Narka slowly turned his head toward him, without uttering a word. It wasn't necessary: his silence was both a warning and permission at the same time.

Sebastián dialed the man's number first. The dialing tone echoed in the empty darkness of the place.

A click. And then, a voice.

—It took you longer than I thought —the hooded man's voice was as cold as he remembered.

—I had other things to do —Sebastián answered with that calm that wasn't calm, but contained edge.

A brief silence. Then, the feminine voice, entering the line as if she had always been listening.

—And now… what is it that you want from us? —her tone was an absolute contrast: agile, curious, almost playful, but with an equally dangerous undertone.

Sebastián shifted on the sack, the light of the cellphone projecting a red reflection in his eyes.

—I need a meeting. Face to face.

—A face-to-face meeting is not possible —the hooded man's voice was cutting, without a trace of hesitation. It wasn't an aggressive refusal, but a cold decree, as if for him the conditions of the world were laws written before any word.

—But that doesn't mean we can't talk —the woman entered at once, her tone the opposite of his: light, almost playful, with a strange warmth that did not hide the hidden edge. She sounded like someone enjoying a conversation in the middle of a minefield.

Sebastián did not respond immediately. The bluish light of the cellphone kept bathing his face, drawing tense shadows on his cheekbones and igniting reddish sparks in the perpetual whirl of his irises. With his thumb, he brushed the metallic edge of the device, feeling how the silence stretched between them.

—Then… —his voice emerged deep, unhurried—, tell me what your objective is.

On the other side there was a brief void. It wasn't doubt, but calculation. The hooded man spoke first, with a rhythm so precise that every word seemed placed with tweezers.

—To maintain balance. Between humans… and the profane.

The woman took her turn without waiting for him to finish completely, as if she detested long pauses:

—Although of course… the profane are not that simple. They have their own wars, older than human memory. They hate each other, devour each other… and yet, when they look here, they do it as a single beast.

Sebastián tilted his head slightly. The way his breathing slowed was almost imperceptible.

—I already knew that —he cut in, letting the phrase drop heavily into the line.

The woman fell silent for the first time. The hooded man resumed, with a level of pressure that didn't reach demand.

—That is good. Where did you hear it?

—I didn't hear it —Sebastián lowered his voice, but not to soften it—. I discovered it.

He added nothing more. The void he left was dense, and neither of the two hooded figures broke it. The woman, however, exhaled a brief, dry laugh that didn't sound like mockery but like recognition. The hooded man yielded and shifted course:

—Maintaining balance is not a matter of speeches. An army is needed. Someone to keep the profane at bay, to prevent their wars from ending humanity before it can defend itself.

Sebastián closed his eyes for a moment, as if evaluating not what they told him, but the root of their intentions. Then he spoke with a calm that wasn't passivity, but measured threat:

—I don't care. All destruction brings something new. It's an inevitable cycle. Collapse, emptiness, and then… whatever manages to grow.

His eyes opened, redder than before under the cold light of the device.

—But if the profane cross my path… I will not hesitate to tear them out by the root. Don't expect me to be your soldier.

There was a slight change in the air on the other side of the call. The hooded man did not sound disappointed or surprised.

—It doesn't matter.

The woman leaned closer to the microphone, her voice sliding like a sharp thread:

—Because we're not looking for soldiers. We're looking for monsters that do not bend. Creatures that, when the earth grows still, do not kneel even to save themselves. And you… Sebastián, you are exactly that.

The line died with a dull snap. The silence that remained was not the same as before: it was heavier, as if the words spoken had chained something invisible to the air of the unfinished mansion.

Virka opened her eyes slowly from her place against the column, and although she said nothing, her gaze was enough to confirm she had heard everything. Narka, in his reduced form, tilted his head toward Sebastián, his golden eye glinting for an instant before closing again, as if he had accepted an inevitable fact. The silence after the final click of the call spread like an invisible stain over the unfinished mansion. The cold breeze seeped through the gaps in the walls, carrying with it a distant murmur, as if the whole world were breathing very slowly.

Sebastián lowered the cellphone calmly, but did not put it away. His fingers remained around the device, as if it were a fragment of something that had not yet finished being said. Virka opened her eyes slowly, a red gleam lighting up in her nocturnal gaze. Narka, in his reduced form, tilted his head on the plank, his golden eye fixed on Sebastián.

—Monsters that do not bend… —Virka repeated in a low voice, letting the words drag like a blade over stone—. That's what they call you.

—That's how they see us —Sebastián corrected without looking at her—. And for them, that's enough.

Narka lowered his gaze for a moment, as if contemplating centuries of memories in a single image.

—The price of being a monster is not surviving the danger —his voice was deep, slow—. It's surviving yourself after everything you do to avoid bending.

Virka turned her head toward him, with a faint smirk.

—Or maybe there is no price, only habit. If you live long enough in the shadows, the light stops mattering.

Sebastián leaned forward, letting the faint blue light of the cellphone illuminate the edge of his jaw.

—The price only exists for those who believe they cannot pay it. I decided long ago that I owe nothing to anyone.

Narka's golden eye gleamed more intensely.

—So he believes. But even those who do not kneel can still walk on someone else's board without realizing it.

ChatGPT dijo:

Virka narrowed her eyes, her tone sharp and cutting.

—And if your path ends up leading you to the same place as them? What if everything you do… only makes them stronger?

Sebastián lifted his gaze toward her. There was no anger, no defense; only an unmoving certainty.

—Then it will be because I decided it, not because they pushed me. And if one day I realize that my course is theirs, I will destroy it along with the path.

The answer hung in the air for a few seconds. The air felt colder, and the empty structure groaned under a sudden draft. Narka spoke again, his voice heavy with something that was not warning, but testimony.

—I've seen that balance they speak of far too many times. It's not harmony… it's a tug between chains, pulled in different directions. And there is always someone who decides which end must win.

—Balance is a lie the powerful tell to sleep soundly —Virka added, her tone not anger but ancient disdain—. It doesn't matter if they're humans or profane, they always say they do it to "maintain" something. But in truth, they only want to maintain their hand over the world.

Sebastián placed the cellphone on his knees and rested his elbows on them, bending slightly forward.

—Let them kill each other for their balance. I won't protect an order that isn't mine. If something must be maintained, it will be my own path. The rest… can beg.

Virka watched him in silence. Her red eyes seemed like a shattered mirror, reflecting something not entirely human. Narka, on the other hand, did not look away, as if searching for a crack in those words. He found none.

—Then —said the small titan in a grave voice—, if the profane cross your path again, what will you do?

—The same as with anyone who tries to break it —Sebastián raised his gaze, his eyes fixed, implacable—. I won't move them aside. I won't ignore them. I'll erase them.

For a moment, the wind slipped through an open gap in the wall, stirring a sheet of plastic on the ground. The crackling filled the pause that followed, and Virka leaned back against the column again, closing her eyes like someone accepting that Sebastián's answers would not change.

Narka turned his head toward the night beyond the broken walls.

—Then be prepared. Monsters do not bend… but they always draw other monsters.

Silence returned, but it was no longer the same. It was denser, as if the words had left a weight that none of them tried to lift.

The night clung to the unfinished mansion like damp, cold skin. The bare columns stood like the ribs of an immense animal, trapping the breeze that slipped through the gaps where someday there would be windows. Outside, the world felt empty; inside, every shadow seemed to be watching.

Sebastián had not moved since placing the cellphone on his knees. His back was slightly hunched forward, as if trying to listen more closely to the silence. The faint glow of the screen, now gone dark, had left behind a subtle red gleam in his eyes, which remained fixed on an undefined point. Virka stayed leaned against the column, her legs crossed and her breathing steady, though her half-open eyelids betrayed that she was not resting. Narka, reduced upon the plank, kept his golden eye fixed on a windowless wall, unmoving, like a statue waiting for some motion to justify its awakening.

The air shifted without warning. The breeze slipping through the gaps no longer carried only the scent of dust and damp cement. Now there was a metallic tinge, faint yet unmistakable: fresh iron, not rusted, mixed with something denser… like soil freshly turned. It was a smell that did not belong to an abandoned place, but to a scene recently disturbed.

Narka blinked once, very slowly, and spoke without turning his gaze from the wall.

—There is no one nearby… but we are not alone.

Sebastián turned his head just enough to glance at him from the corner of his eye.

—It's not presence. It's a trace.

Virka opened her eyes fully and let her gaze sink into the darkness, as if she wanted to rip secrets from the night.

—A trace doesn't always mean they've left —she said softly, but with the tension of someone already preparing a blade.

A creak slid out from within the structure. It wasn't the erratic strike of the wind against a loose board, but a precise, deliberate sound… like a foot testing its weight before settling. The wood answered with a brief complaint and then, silence.

Sebastián did not turn toward the noise. His eyes locked on another point, empty, as if he knew that what was there did not need light to be seen. His breathing grew slower, deeper. Virka straightened her body without rising, muscles in her legs tensed as if she could leap at any moment. Narka, however, remained still, but the glow of his eye intensified, reflecting a light that came from nowhere visible.

The calm did not break suddenly; it cracked, slow and deep, like a stone slab beginning to fracture from within before splitting apart. The cold in the air ceased to be a breeze and became weight, pressing against the skin, pushing against the chest. Something, somewhere in the mansion, was present without being there… and the way it moved was so subtle it seemed to mock perception itself.

Sebastián lifted his chin, as if offering the darkness a silent challenge. The silence that answered was not an absence of sound, but containment, as though something had chosen to wait for the exact moment to reveal itself.

—Whatever it is… —murmured Virka, her fingers brushing the ground like claws readying—, it has already heard us.

Narka turned his head, but not toward the noise. His gaze locked on Sebastián.

—And you have already seen it.

The night seemed intact, but something in its structure had shifted. It wasn't a sound, nor a scent, not even a vibration; it was as if reality had forgotten a piece and, in its absence, everything was left slightly askew. The lines of the walls seemed to deviate by barely a millimeter, the shadows cast did not match their sources of light, and the air felt too still, as if the breeze had been caught beneath an invisible bell.

Narka was the first to react. He didn't snap his head up, but rather halted the slow rhythm of his breathing. His golden eye contracted and, for an instant, the inner reflection seemed to tremble, as if something invisible had passed before it. Virka opened her eyes without haste, but she did not fix them on a single point; she moved them side to side, following an irregular pattern, like a predator that cannot find its prey's silhouette, but can smell it.

Sebastián did not move a single muscle. His black pupils, ringed by the perpetual red of his irises, seemed deeper, as though they had widened inward. He was not searching with sight. He was searching with something else, something that needed neither light nor sound to detect what didn't belong.

Then it arrived. Not at one point in space, but everywhere at once. The presence did not displace air or cast shadow. Its arrival was like a crack splitting through the moment: a second that would not continue, that fractured into a before and an after, leaving time dangling on a thread too thin.

At the far end of the room, by an open gap where a window should have been, vision itself warped. It was not a body appearing, but a fold closing in on itself, pushing outward an impossible fragment. The edge of a dark fabric jutted out like a cut in the night, and upon it, a surface engraved with symbols that seemed to move against the light. There was no glow… yet the eyes could see it.

Virka furrowed her brow. Not from fear, but from recognition that this was bound by no rules she knew. Narka tilted his head, and a glint crossed his eye, not from external light, but from the instinctive reaction of one who perceives a predator at the top of its chain.

Sebastián held his composure. His hands, resting on his knees, closed slightly, and tension rippled through his forearms like a mute echo. It was not a defensive stance, but an acceptance: if that thing chose to move toward him, there would be no warning.

The figure did not advance. It did not retreat. It did not breathe. The dark robe that protruded seemed suspended, and above it, two eyes like broken geometries, without pupil or emotion, pierced through the three without stopping at any of them. It was a gaze that did not settle: it registered, measured, and moved on.

Then, the image folded in on itself and vanished. It was not a gradual fading, nor a hesitant leap: it simply ceased to be, and with it, every trace of its passage. The air regained movement, the lines returned to straightness, the shadows reclaimed their meaning… but something remained crooked within each of them.

No one spoke. The mansion, empty once more, seemed larger, as though the absence had left a hollow impossible to fill. Narka turned his gaze toward the opposite wall, as if still expecting a second visit. Virka closed her eyes and rested her head against the column, not to rest, but to listen to what the silence was saying.

Sebastián remained as he had at the beginning. And though his lips did not move, his gaze said the same thing the other two were thinking: that had not been an encounter… it had been a warning. The air lingering in the mansion was no longer the same they had breathed minutes before. It didn't matter that the breeze had returned and the dust still floated in suspension: something in the invisible texture of the night had shifted. It was as if, beneath the sound of their own breathing, an echo still pulsed that none of them could erase.

Narka stayed on the plank, his golden gaze fixed on an empty point. There was no rigidity in his posture, but an inhuman stillness, that of a being that does not need to move to make clear it is processing every detail. His silence was not simple containment: it was the silence of an internal judgment, a comparison that made even his oldest memories tremble. When at last he spoke, his voice sounded like stone that has borne too much weight:

—There is no measure for what we just saw.

He turned his neck just enough for the gleam of his eye to catch a glimmer of light that did not exist.

—That being… is beyond me, beyond the Profane… beyond any entity that has set foot on this world. I do not believe there is anything here that can equal it. Not today, not in the centuries to come.

Virka lifted her head, her red eyes lit like embers in the gloom. There was no rage in her expression, but there was a discomfort that admitted no disguise.

—It wasn't strength I felt —she said in a tone that bordered on a sharp whisper—. Strength has limits, edges that can be measured, even feared. This… does not.

Her hands alternately tensed and relaxed upon her knees, as though her body sought to ready itself for a danger it could not describe.

—If it had wanted to, neither you, nor I, nor he —she nodded slightly toward Sebastián— would have had time to blink before disappearing.

Sebastián, seated with his elbows on his knees, did not move as he listened to them. His voice, when he spoke, was deep and precise, each word placed like a blade in its place.

—It did not come to attack. It did not come to warn. It simply… measured.

His eyes turned slowly toward the gap where the being had appeared.

—And yet, my instincts did not hesitate: to move, even a single step, would have been a declaration I could not afford to make.

Narka nodded once. Virka closed her eyes for a moment, as if she wanted to retain the exact shape of that sensation, to carve it into memory so she could recognize it if it came again.

The wind entered through the gaps in the walls, but the freshness it brought did not carry away the weight they felt. It was as though the presence had withdrawn from the place, but not from them. It still clung to their skin, their bones, the very core of their consciousness.

Sebastián lifted his chin and let the air fill his lungs again. It was not a gesture of relief, but of record: he wanted to imprint the absence just as he had imprinted the presence. Virka, unmoving, seemed to be listening to something beyond the mansion, as though she expected that inhuman attention to return at any moment.

Narka was the only one who looked upward again, toward the fragment of dark sky slipping through the opening. No stars were visible, but he spoke as if he were counting them.

—If it decides to return, it will not be to watch us.

No one replied. There was no answer that wouldn't sound hollow against what they had felt. The three of them knew there was no place to hide from something like that, and that if its shadow crossed their path again, the only choice would be to remain standing… or not remain at all.

The unfinished mansion breathed a different silence, one that did not belong to the place but to what had brushed its interior. The bare beams, the half-raised walls, and the gaps where windows would one day be seemed tilted toward them, as if they too were listening. The air hung heavy, clinging to the skin like a damp curtain that let neither light nor forgetfulness pass through.

Narka did not move his golden eye from the empty corner. There was no rigidity in him, but there was a stillness that weighed, like that of a sentinel watching a horizon where he knows something stirs, though he cannot see it. Virka kept her back against the column; her hands, however, opened and closed like claws that do not forget the direction of a blade. Sebastián remained leaning forward, elbows on his knees, gaze fixed on a point that was no longer there but whose echo was still anchored in his senses.

Minutes passed that were not counted in time, but in the pulse of a tension that would not yield. It was Narka who broke that stillness, his voice like stone sunk in dark water:

—We must not tempt it. What saw us… needs no reasons to return. But if it has them, it will not come to look: it will come to close.

Virka lifted her gaze just slightly, and her red eyes caught an invisible reflection.

—If it watches us, hiding will be useless.

—No —Narka replied, without removing his gaze from the void—, but we can move like those who walk on the edge of buried glass: never forgetting that one wrong step cuts.

Sebastián raised his head. The perpetual light of his eyes did not waver, but in his voice there was the weight of something decided, not negotiable:

—If it had wanted to erase us, it would not have shown anything. This was a measurement. And as long as it does not see us as a threat, we can continue… the same.

—The same —Virka repeated—, but alert.

—The same —Sebastián nodded—, but without turning attention into chains. If we let caution become fear, it will no longer watch us: it will possess us.

Narka's golden eye turned slowly toward him.

—Then a limit must be drawn. What we will do… and what we will not do.

Sebastián answered without pause:

—We do not seek it. We do not follow tracks that lead to it. We do not use power that twists the Veil enough for it to notice us. We do not open cracks we cannot close.

Virka turned toward the darkness beyond the walls.

—And if it returns anyway?

—Then —said Sebastián, with a calm that was not calm— it will mean it is no longer evaluating. And at that point… nothing we do will matter.

The agreement was etched into the air without need for more words. It was not submission, it was a pact of instinct: to move as before, but with every step heavy, every decision measured. Not to hide… but not to offer themselves either.

The wind slipped again through the gaps, but the freshness it carried did not wash away the invisible taste it had left on their tongues. Narka looked up to the sky fractured by the unfinished roof.

—We are already inside its gaze. And that does not erase. We only decide how long it takes before we become interest… or disappear.

Sebastián rose, his movement slow and precise, as if every muscle remembered it was being observed. Virka straightened her back, and in her silence there was acceptance and edge. None of them looked back. It was not necessary. The mark was already set, and they walked knowing that every shadow could be a door… and that if it opened, it would not be to converse.

The air still clung to the mansion like poorly adhered skin, soaked with an invisible dampness that did not come from the night, but from what had been there. Nothing dispelled it. Neither the silence, nor the wind that sometimes dared to pass through the half-built walls. Everything they breathed still tasted of a presence… but not one that could be named.

None of them had spoken since the dark sky had returned to show itself without interruption. And yet, everything felt narrower. As if reality itself had remembered it was not the only one occupying that space.

Sebastián had not moved for minutes. But his body did not rest: it compressed inward, in a kind of tension that did not use muscles, but will. Finally, he rose. Not in haste. Not in noise. He stood with that calm only possessed by those who have already decided before consulting.

—I want to test it —he said.

The words did not aim to shake anyone, yet the air seemed to contract around him. Narka did not turn. Virka, leaning against the column, opened her eyes slowly, as if expecting those syllables to confirm what her instinct had already marked as inevitable.

—It did not come to kill —Sebastián continued, his voice lower than the silence, as if speaking to something beyond the wall—. Not to judge, either. It only measured. It only held us in its gaze… and then it left.

Narka turned his golden eye toward him with mineral slowness, without judgment, without surprise. Only attention.

—And that is enough for you to invite it again —he murmured, without the phrase sounding like reproach. It was rather the statement of a cycle he had recognized long before the world had taken shape.

—I will not invite it —Sebastián corrected—. I will seek it without calling it. I want to know if it sees the invisible. If its judgment awakens even when we give no reason to provoke it.

Virka had already straightened. Not like one responding to danger, but like one aligning with the shadow that grows behind a decision. Her red pupils, still half-lit, fixed on him with dry clarity.

—That is not precaution —she said—. It is exposure. What we didn't do… may have been what saved us.

—Or what contained it —Sebastián replied—. That is why I do not want to repeat the mistake of remaining still. If it walks over us, I want to know whether it does so because it sees us… or because we let it.

Narka lowered his gaze for a moment. His golden eye darkened slightly, as if within it passed memories that did not need to be told to weigh heavy.

—Some presences do not cross the border out of hostility… but because one moves too close to the edge. Because one breathes wrong. Because one thinks out loud.

—Then —said Sebastián— we will not think. We will not emit. We will not shine. No Qi. No technique. Not a trace of power. Only the body. Only flesh walking among ruins. We will see if judgment also falls upon those who crawl.

Virka narrowed her eyes, her breathing steady, her back straight. She did not argue. She only measured.

—Where?

—To the city —he replied—. But not its center. Not its clean walls. To the cracks. To the dead veins that surround it. Places where the scent of life no longer serves as a guide. Where rot does not offend, because no one remains who knows how to recognize it.

—Dumps —said Narka, without judgment in the term—. Dry cement. Zones where not even scavengers dig.

—Exactly —Sebastián nodded—. If its attention is real, if it was not a shared delirium, then it still sees us. And if it sees us… we will know whether our footsteps matter.

The silence stretched one second more. But it was no longer the same. It was not oppression. It was not waiting. It was a form of agreement. Something that settled without ritual, without spoken pact. Only shared decision.

Virka turned her face toward the opening where the night began. The blackness beyond the mansion was not hostile, but neither was it passive. It was like a sleeping creature breathing slowly, waiting to see if someone made the mistake of drawing too close.

—Then we have set the margins —she said, her voice like bone scraping stone—. We do not act. We do not respond to stimuli. If something approaches, we move. But we do not strike.

—Not even if we recognize it —added Narka—. Because if we recognize… we have already broken the game. And if we break it, it is no longer a test. It is provocation.

—And if it provokes us first —asked Virka, without irony, without fear—. Then?

Sebastián looked at her. Not with harshness. With certainty.

—Then we will know we have already stopped observing. And whatever comes after will no longer be a response. It will be a decision.

Virka rose. Narka too. Neither with solemnity. Neither with lightness. Only with the acceptance of those who know that to move beneath certain gazes… is not to move, but to offer oneself.

Sebastián walked toward the opening without pause. Virka followed him. Their steps were so silent the dust seemed not to notice them. Narka descended with the calm of slumbering titans: without haste, without pause. The wind brushed the broken edges of the wall as if it did not dare to push them.

The night outside received them without surprise.

And somewhere beyond where eyes could reach, something… looked at them again.

The night opened before them like a wound still bleeding, but one no one dared to close. It was neither late nor early. It was that suspended hour caught in the throat of the world, where time neither advances nor recedes: it only watches. And they walked into it.

Sebastián adjusted the buckle of his belt with one hand, while with the other he lifted Virka, wrapping her in his arms with the naturalness of one who carries not a weight, but a part of himself. She did not protest. Her arms rested against his chest, her head turned to the side, eyes half-closed. She wore the black trench coat that had once been his, and beneath it, the shirt also his, a little looser than the outline of her body demanded. Her legs, long and bare down to the knees, were held by the shoes Draila had left her before departing. And yet, nothing in her posture was fragile.

On Sebastián's shoulder, Narka rested in silence, his reduced form perfectly balanced over the left trapezius. His claws did not press, they only leaned, like a mineral memory that never fades. The golden eye was closed, but not in rest. Rather because, in stillness, he could better perceive the fractures of the world.

Sebastián did not speak. Nor did he announce. He only lowered his gaze to the cracked asphalt of the main road, the one born like a scar between the remains of unfinished constructions and dead fields. Then he bent his legs. And ran.

The wind did not form immediately. It took a few seconds to react, as if the world did not expect a human body to move like that without the roar of an engine or the fury of an aura. But Sebastián did not need magic. His body was testimony. The speed settled between 400 and 450 kilometers per hour. Steady. Precise. The ground beneath his feet did not break, but it yielded. As if it recognized him.

Virka lay still in his arms. Her hair, loose beneath the trench coat, streamed with the wind like liquid shadow. Her face remained serene, but her eyes —half-closed— scanned the night around them, as if she could sense the hidden intent in every tree that flickered past like a ghost at the edge of vision. She did not speak, but she listened. To every gust. Every vibration. She knew that even the wind could betray if someone else was watching them.

Narka opened his eye on the third minute of running. He said nothing. But his golden pupil narrowed, as if the distance between his awareness and something far away had begun to shrink. He felt it. Not presence… but an echo. As though their movement had been registered by a consciousness wider than the sky.

Sebastián did not alter his rhythm. His boots, firm, did not slip. His legs, perfect in tension and looseness, absorbed the weight of both bodies as if they were nothing more than natural extensions of his own balance. His black shirt clung to his torso under the friction of the wind, and with each stride the air sculpted the contour of his muscles like a craftsman who works with breath and not with chisel.

The road opened like a black tongue, damp from past rains, flanked by soulless buildings, unlit posts, bus stops gnawed by abandonment. Ahead, the dead city awaited them. Not its center. Not its skin. But its rotten marrow: those places where no one walks by choice. Where even oblivion prefers to pass by.

Sebastián descended a slope, the rough asphalt splitting under his drive but never fully breaking. The distant lights were minimal, some flickering like defeated eyes. What lay ahead was not only shadow. It was resignation made structure. Streets that no longer served. Lives that no longer passed through there.

—It still sees us —Narka said quietly, not raising his voice above the wind.

—I don't care —Sebastián replied, without turning his head.

—Neither do I —whispered Virka, her voice fainter than the speed surrounding them.

None needed to say more.

They crossed a forgotten intersection, where a traffic light hung from a cable like a broken body. The red still worked, blinking into nothing, halting cars that no longer passed. Sebastián ran through it without slowing. The light reflected in his red eyes, but did not seep into his decision.

The dead zones grew closer. And with every meter, the world seemed to ask: how far can they go without awakening the one who measures?

Sebastián did not answer. But his silence was deeper than any word. Because every step he took… was a strike against the blade of judgment.

The city rose before them without warning, without welcome, without presence. It was not a marked threshold nor a recognizable frontier; the landscape simply became concrete, metal, and ordered ruin. Sebastián did not slow his pace. On the contrary, as the first structures began to carve the silhouette of the surroundings, he increased the force in every stride, and just before reaching the edge of a collapsed wall, he bent his body and leapt.

It was a perfect arc, a long jump that cut through the air without asking its permission. Eight strides hurled him more than eighty meters, his burdened body landing with precision atop the flat roof of a three-story building, a cracked slab that groaned under his boots but did not give way. Virka, still wrapped in his trench coat, did not react to the impact. Her eyes remained open, fixed on the way the world shifted beneath them, while her hair whipped in the invisible current the leap had left behind.

Sebastián did not stop. Without pause, he propelled himself toward the next building, one barely two meters lower than the last. Thus he advanced, moving like a shadow with direction, evading the lights, forgotten by the cameras, invisible among the rooftops of the sleeping city. There was no visible force in his movement. No explosions, no bursts of energy. Only a body too trained, too real, using the night as a road and the architecture as a bridge.

Virka turned her face slightly in his arms. Her gaze swept the darkened windows, the facades caked with grime, the rusted balconies, the crooked posts. From that height, the streets were nothing more than gray lines with dark stains, and the sound was fainter, more hidden. The world, seen from above, seemed less alive… but no less alien.

—This place… —she murmured— doesn't feel free. It's only better contained.

Narka slowly opened his eye from Sebastián's shoulder. He said nothing yet. Sebastián did not answer either. He kept running, leaping from slab to slab, adjusting his impulse to the space available, never missing a landing. But the weight of Virka's words had already begun to fall over the night.

—They build boxes for everything —she continued, her voice low, without judgment, as if speaking to the darkness itself—. Boxes to live, to eat, to think. Boxes to bury and boxes to dream. The whole city… is an enormous cage. One that smells of safety, but tastes of confinement. As if they wanted to tame what they don't understand. As if it pained them to remember they are animals. Don't you see, Sebastián? This world was made so they would forget their instinct. As if they were taught to lick their own bars.

The next jump was shorter. Sebastián landed without raising dust. For an instant, it seemed he would not reply, but his voice emerged at last, with that dry tone that didn't seek to confront, but to order the chaos.

—Yes. It is a prison. But they are not completely tamed. Not yet.

Virka only raised a brow.

—Because they believe they are free?

—Because they still fight —he said—. Even if it's within rules they didn't write. Even if they don't understand that the ground beneath them was chosen by someone else. As long as there are those who resist, who destroy themselves for something they still believe is theirs… they are not fully defeated. They are… caged, yes. But with teeth. And those who rule this city… know it.

Virka lowered her gaze for a moment, as if searching for the answer in the void between buildings. Narka shifted slightly on Sebastián's shoulder, his golden eye now fully open. He observed the streets from above. Nothing moved down there. Only a rat crossing between torn bags and a rusted container on the verge of collapse.

—She is right —the titan said softly, dragging each word as though it carried centuries—. This is a cage. A very well-built one. Not only by materials… but by what it represents. Refuge. Order. Comfort. Many beings accept confinement if it promises they will not be devoured. Even the most savage… find calm in a cell well-painted. It is not weakness. It is… nature. The need for a fixed point, something that does not change when everything else shatters.

—But that does not make it any less a cage —Virka replied.

—No —Narka admitted—. It is only a cage with its own name. Sometimes they call it city. Or family. Or salvation.

Sebastián said nothing more. He kept running. Kept leaping. The city unfolded beneath them like an old beast, without strength but heavy with history, and the air around them seemed ever denser. Not because anyone was watching… but because something, somewhere, was perhaps already measuring their steps.

And still, he went on.

Silent.

Alert.

Advancing through the cage.

Not pretending to break it.

Only to see if, by walking inside it, the eye that had marked them… would blink.

The city stretched like an old beast that had never fully died. Its cracked concrete skin was tattooed with soot, rust, and neglect. The advance across the rooftops grew more irregular, less symmetrical. The slabs lost their level, some split open by years, others littered with broken chairs and scraps of garbage betraying a life that had never fully taken root. Sebastián did not slow his speed, but his eyes no longer focused on the buildings, but on what spread beyond.

The air had changed. Not in temperature, but in smell. It was dense, loaded with sweat, urine, cheap smoke, stale alcohol, rancid grease, and recycled perfume. A rotten cocktail the night could not dissolve. Virka's breathing slowed. Not from exhaustion, but from instinctive alertness. Narka tilted his head without opening his eye, as if he already knew what was coming before it showed itself.

At the next street, Sebastián stopped. He landed on a concrete structure without paint, its roof scarred with cracks. He stood still, without releasing Virka, Narka still perched on his shoulder, and for the first time since leaving the unfinished mansion, he allowed himself not to move.

Before them stretched the dead district. It was not a dump. It was worse. It was a space where the remains still walked.

There were prostitutes on the corners, in clothes that were no longer clothes but disguises of necessity. Some stood, others sat on boxes or wrecked cars. They did not wait. They only existed, as part of the scenery of a hell whose door had long been shut. Further on, vagrants in groups and in solitude dragged themselves between black bags ripped open by rats that no longer fled. Some laughed toothlessly. Others spoke to themselves. One vomited on his own shoes.

A gang moved in the background, surrounding someone. No screams could be heard, but the blows were visible in the shadows. Behind them, a makeshift fire burned inside a barrel. Three men took turns with a syringe under the orange glow of a broken lamp post.

It was the beauty of absolute degradation: nothing in that place asked for help, because no one remembered that once, the possibility had existed.

Sebastián lowered his gaze slightly. His face unmoving. The tension in his arm was not from Virka's weight, but from the mute comprehension of what lay before him. Then he spoke, without raising his voice.

—How about here?

His tone was not ironic, nor casual. It was direct. Concrete. Like someone pointing to the exact spot where a stone should fall. Narka opened his eye. He kept it fixed on the district without moving. Virka turned her face slowly, letting the trench coat cling tighter to her body in the wind. She observed without blinking. Prostitutes. Addicts. Shadows of what had once been humanity. The lights trembled. The air was still. No figure raised their gaze toward the roof where they stood. No one saw them. But they saw everything.

—This is not a dump —said Virka, without emotion—. Trash is thrown away. Taken out. Cleaned. But this… this is left where it lies. It is not hidden. Only accepted. As if they were saying: "we can't change it, so let it rot where it doesn't get in the way."

Narka barely nodded, his golden eye glowing like a buried beacon.

—It is not neglect. It is institutionalized resignation. They don't kill them. They don't save them. They only file them away. Like errors that keep breathing.

—This place —added Virka, her voice low, slow— is not abandoned for lack of resources. It is abandoned by decision. By hierarchy. By convenience. The world chose where to place its gaze. And this… this lies outside the frame.

Sebastián did not speak immediately. His eyes traced the streets, the twisted movements, the bodies that spoke without needing words. Each carried its story without writing it. Every gesture was a confession. Every step, an unacknowledged defeat. And yet, there was no shame. Only persistence.

—Here —he said at last—. Here it will be. If the eye that watches us distinguishes between movement and threat… then this place will be its scale. Where everything already weighs more than it can bear.

Virka closed her eyes for a few seconds. The air struck her face, but she did not retreat. Narka tilted his head again, making no sound. Sebastián did not release Virka. He did not lower Narka. He simply stood there, upon the roof, as if his very body were the standard of a will that had reached the heart of decay to see if rot itself could provoke the impossible.

And the world, below, kept burning in silence.

Unaware that above its habitual misery, three presences were using it as a mirror.

To measure what still has no shape.

To call without shouting.

To test the limits of what watches… without moving.

They descended without making a sound. Sebastián chose the rear of the building, a slight slope of battered concrete that connected to a rusted overhang. It was not a planned descent, but neither did they need it to be. Their bodies knew how to move without asking permission from gravity.

Virka remained in his arms, her face half-hidden beneath the trench coat, her eyes open and sharp like blades barely sheathed. Narka stayed firm on his shoulder, his golden eye half-closed, as if measuring each step before it happened. They did not speak. They did not need to. Silence was part of the camouflage.

They touched the ground of that nameless street like one treads a desecrated temple. The lights hanging from broken poles barely flickered, casting shadows filthier than the grime on the asphalt. Shattered glass, rusted cans, dry syringes, used diapers, dried blood stuck to a wall. Everything lay where it had fallen. No one cleaned. No one hid. That place had no intention of pretending otherwise. It was the exposed stomach of a city that still tried to smile in its clean zones.

They walked.

They did so among puddles without reflection, among old graffiti and the dead eyes of boarded windows. They were three shadows that did not fear the dark, but wore it like a cloak. And yet, even among urban phantoms, they were strangers. The stares began to turn. First the vagrants: gray eyes, lashless, accustomed to seeing without hope. Then the addicts: swaying heads, dry mouths, bleeding noses. And finally the prostitutes: women who were neither old nor young, with bodies marked not by years but by the constant wear of use without desire. All raised their gaze as they passed. And something in those broken eyes ignited, as if their instinct recognized the contrast. Clean clothes. Firm boots. Hair in order. Skin that still held strength. Sebastián advanced with Virka in his arms, and that alone was enough for the directionless bodies to see in him more than a figure: a possibility.

The first approached without words. Perhaps by reflex. Perhaps by hunger. Her mouth opened in a crooked smile, teeth stained with nicotine, eyes clouded by some half-digested chemical. Her fingers lifted toward Sebastián, but never reached him. A kick caught her square in the abdomen, launching her backward without warning. It was not an explosion, nor a theatrical blow. Just a dry, precise movement, with the edge of a beast that does not strike out of impulse, but from the instinct of repulsion.

Virka said nothing. She only let her leg return to position while the woman writhed on the ground, a thin line of blood spilling from her mouth, a mix of splintered ribs and compressed organs.

The group of prostitutes around her did not scream. There were no insults, no threats. Only a collective reflex of survival. In seconds, all vanished in different directions. Some slipped into dark doorways. Others turned down corners. One climbed through a broken window with the agility of someone who has learned to flee without looking back.

Sebastián sighed, without slowing his pace.

—At least —he murmured, more to himself than to them— there's no problem if you defend yourself against ordinary humans. As long as you don't use power.

—I used nothing —Virka replied, without emotion—. It was only a reaction. Like brushing off an insect.

Narka said nothing. He didn't need to. His gaze locked onto the hunched figure of the wounded woman, still gasping on the pavement with her hands over her abdomen. Not out of pity. But because he understood the language of gestures that did not beg for mercy.

They kept walking.

Each step drew them deeper into the rotten core of the district. The air thickened. Not from heat, but from saturation. It was a dense mixture: fermented alcohol, stagnant fluids, dried blood, smoke from flameless burns, cheap perfume mixed with despair. It was the absolute stench of prostitution, drugs, violence, and loss. A smell that did not cling to the skin, because it already lived in the walls.

None of the three flinched.

To them, this was just another hell. A lesser one. A clouded reflection of the true pits into which they had fallen. The difference between this neighborhood and the real abysses was not the smell or the blood. It was the lack of will. Here, no one fought for anything. They only survived. And that, to them, was less dangerous than true fire.

The stares kept fastening onto them. But no one approached.

The three of them kept walking through the shadow.

And even though they used no power… the world knew they did not belong to it.

The street resembled a split femur, splintered by the weight of a story no one wanted to tell. The walls on either side were dead skin, graffiti bled out by time and by hands that only knew how to claw at existence. A vile wind —not even wind, but the breath of a social corpse— pushed mixed odors of old prostitution, half-cooked crack, dried blood, and sweats that were never desired.

Sebastián walked through it all without lowering his gaze. Not out of arrogance. But because he had already seen hells where the sky burned from within. Virka walked at his side, her stride firm, her stare anchored, barefoot among the glass shards without one daring to cut her. She wore her trench coat, open as if the city itself didn't deserve to see it closed. Within it pulsed the shadow dressed in wild desire, eyes lit, scanning not the men… but the echoes of what those men had let die.

Narka said nothing. He didn't need to. On Sebastián's shoulder, his silence weighed more than the gunshots that, in another district, celebrated death as if it were carnival.

And then the door opened.

It wasn't a sound. Not even a creak. It was a groan that seemed to come from the rotten soul of the house, as if the trash heap called home had grown sick of its own contents. From that crack of misery emerged a figure: small, filthy, trembling. A girl. Barely five years old, though the face aged by hunger and fear had stolen even chronology from her. Tangled white hair, brown strands that couldn't tell if they were inheritance or grime. One brown eye visible, dry, with no tears left to spend. The other, hidden beneath a fringe that was neither style nor defiance, but a shield. Her body, more bone than flesh, more silence than voice, more bruise than play. Behind her, a roar —a man who was no longer a man, but alcohol's vomit made father.

The girl did not scream. She ran.

And in doing so, she saw them. The three. The ones who did not fit. The ones who were different even in the middle of the mire.

Virka turned first, the movement slight, as if she had felt a dry branch snap in the distance. Her crimson eyes landed on the child. There was no compassion. Only reading. Sebastián noticed her as well, but he did not change his pace. She was another leaf the wind dragged, another insect lost in the urban abyss. Narka tilted his head slightly, his golden gaze without judgment, as if he already knew what would happen.

The girl took another step toward them, hesitant, seeking a crack in reality where she might slip through. Virka, without breaking stride, turned. Her feet barely touched the ground as she stepped forward twice. It was not a blow. Not a threat. Just a raised arm, a palm extended like an invisible wall.

—Don't come —she said.

Her voice was not harsh. It was firm. As though speaking to a wild animal that still remembered the instinct to flee.

The girl stopped. Not from fear. But because something in that woman told her this was not her path, that road was for beasts and not for her.

She turned back. She left.

And she vanished again into the trash.

Sebastián sighed. Not because it affected him. But because human reactions still stirred echoes in him he did not know were memory or sentence.

—We continue —he murmured.

And the trio pressed deeper into the bleeding city. The entity, if it still watched, did not stop them. The trial remained. The rules still stood. And the darkness had yet to bare its teeth.

The street panted beneath its own scabs. The concrete, cracked and hostile, seemed to ooze the sins of a city that no longer pretended at redemption. The houses —if they could still be called that— were upright tombs, rotting inside, covered with mold, dried urine, and dreams that had never been born. From one of those pits disguised as homes came a harsh crash: a bottle thrown, a beast's hunger-scream, the crack of a chair shattering against a wall as if it too wanted to escape.

And out of that rot, she emerged.

Small. Fragile. Her hair white, as though fear itself had bleached it from the root. Among the strands fell timid brown streaks, survivors of a childhood that had never truly been. Her right eye, a dull brown, looked without asking for anything. The left, hidden beneath the curtain of her own hair, as if it knew that to see with both was too much. She was barefoot. The soles of her feet did not bleed because they could no longer do so—too accustomed to the edge of glass, to the burn of pavement, to the bite of nights without shelter. Her clothes were not clothes. They were rags glued to her skin by the grease of abandonment.

Behind her, the cursed shadow of her father staggered like a faceless monster. He did not walk: he spat steps. Alcohol stole his balance, but not his fury. And in his hand he carried a belt, not as garment, but as whip—one that sometimes struck the air by mistake… but almost always found flesh.

The girl ran. Not toward somewhere. Only away. Like frightened dogs that do not know if behind the next corner there will be a car or a chance.

And then she stopped.

Not by will. By horror.

There, among burst garbage bags, forgotten syringes, and rags stiff with dried blood, a Profane hunched over a body. None of it was human. Not entirely. It was larger, more skeletal, with limbs badly fitted into its flesh, as though something had grafted them from another dimension. Its eyes were not eyes: they were cracks in the dark. And its mouth… its mouth was a fissure that devoured.

The corpse beneath it was a woman. Or had been. A prostitute of the district, recognizable only by the broken heels and the skirt hiked to her waist. But her belly… her belly was opened like a book of flesh. The entrails hung like dead serpents. The Profane plunged its hands in, pulled out warm pieces, crushed them against its jagged teeth and chewed with the serenity of someone dining at home.

The girl trembled. She did not scream. She could not. Fear did not close her throat: it tore her soul out.

Instinct. Only that.

She crawled. Like a rat. Like someone who had learned that to survive is to slip where no one wants to look. She saw a garbage bag, black, immense, torn at the side. She pushed in her feet first, then her body, then her face. The stench was unbearable. Liquid rot. Leftovers mixed with excrement, foreign sweat, and worms. But fear was worse.

And then her father arrived.

—Valentina! —he screamed.

It was not a call. It was a spit. As though he cursed the very name he had given her.

The Profane lifted its head. Not in surprise. In annoyance. They had interrupted it.

It turned.

The father, drunk, faced it. He frowned, raising the belt as if it were a king's sword.

—Get out, bastard!

The Profane did not speak. They never spoke. It only walked. One step. Two. Three. And when it stood before him, it raised a hand with fingers longer than they should be… and pierced him.

It was not a strike. It was an act. Like slipping a key into a lock. The arm of the Profane went through the man's chest and out his back, carrying with it bone, blood, and the last scraps of humanity.

The father fell. He did not scream. He only fell.

And the girl saw it all.

From the bag. From the stench. From her pit of death.

She held back her tears. Not because she was strong. But because she no longer knew how to cry.

And the Profane bent down again.

It began to eat once more.

First from the man. Then… perhaps from her.

But it did not smell her. It did not see her.

She did not exist.

The darkness wrapped her. And there, in the midst of the trash, Valentina knew she had been born to hide.

____________________________

END OF CHAPTER 31

Author's Note

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.

If this abyss resonated with you,

Save it in your collection

and leave a mark: a comment, a question, an echo.

Your presence keeps alive the flame that shapes this world.

Thank you for walking by my side.

If this story resonated with you, perhaps we have already crossed paths in another corner of the digital world. Over there they know me as Goru SLG.