On the Path of Eternal Strength.

Chapter 109 - 107 Before Traveling Together

The room facing the sea fell silent after Luciana’s departure. It was not an empty silence. It was one of those that appear when a decision still has no papers, stamps, or permits, but has already begun to occupy a real place within those who made it. The afternoon was almost ending. The light entering through the giant windows no longer had the clear gold of before; now it was becoming lower, redder, trapped at the edge of the horizon and spread over the refined wooden floor like one last layer of warmth before night. Behind the reinforced glass, the sea moved with a calm breadth, dark in its deep areas, bright where the sun was dying on the surface.Valentina was still near the glass, with the backpack on her back and her hands already free from Sebastián’s and Virka’s. She did not touch the window. She only looked. To her, that room seemed too large, too clean, too beautiful to belong to someone like a normal object. The sea on the other side was not just scenery. It was distance. It was a path. It was a promise she still did not know how to name completely, but that made her remain still, with her eyes open and her breath held. Inside the backpack, Narka remained reduced and silent, but his presence was a calm weight against the girl’s back, an ancient shadow kept beneath school fabric.

Sebastián stood a few steps behind her, watching her without saying anything. Virka remained to one side, closer to the door, although her attention always returned to the girl. Óscar leaned beside a table, with his arms crossed and a relaxed expression that did not quite become carelessness. None of them seemed to want to break the scene immediately. They had come there because of a room for a club, because of a request, and because of a school excuse. But now, facing the sea, that idea seemed larger than any of them would have admitted out loud.

Valentina was the one who spoke first.

—Dad... Mom...

The way she called them made Sebastián and Virka turn their gaze toward her at the same time. Valentina did not turn around immediately. She kept looking at the sea for a few more seconds, as if she needed to ask that distance first before she could look at those who held her.

—Why do you want us all to travel together?

The question did not come out sad. Nor distrustful. It came out small, serious, filled with a curiosity that did not belong only to the happiness of the moment. Valentina was happy, yes. She liked the room, she liked the idea of the club, she liked thinking about maps and new places. But she was not a girl unable to notice that adults, or those who occupied that place for her, never did anything without a deeper reason. Sebastián and Virka had chosen to survive too many times to move only on a whim. She did not understand all their motives, but she was beginning to feel that they existed.

At last, she turned toward them. Her white and brown hair fell a little over her face, and her different eyes reflected the final light of the sunset.

—I would like to spend time with you... —she said, lower—. But I want to know why.

Sebastián and Virka remained silent for an instant. Óscar did not make any comment. This time he had the good judgment to stay still, because even he understood that some questions did not need a joke on top of them.

The answer came almost at the same time.

—So you can make more maps —Sebastián and Virka said.

Valentina blinked. The coincidence of both voices seemed to surprise her more than the answer itself. Sebastián barely shifted his gaze toward Virka, and Virka did the same toward him for a brief fraction, as if neither of them had expected the other to choose exactly the same first reason. Afterward, Sebastián looked back at the girl with that calm hardness that, in him, worked as a clumsy form of care.

—And to become stronger —he added.

Virka took a step closer to Valentina and lowered her gaze toward her.

—To keep being together.

There was no long promise. There was no complete explanation. But those three parts were enough to give shape to something Valentina could understand. Maps. Strength. Staying united. To her, the words were not strategy or planning. They were an image: drawn paths, hands holding her, new places where maybe she would not always have to hide, and a strange family walking without letting go even if the world tried to put distance between them.

Valentina pressed her lips together for a moment, as if she were keeping the answer inside herself. Then she nodded with a seriousness enormous for her age.

—Then I want to make many maps —she said—. So we can go together.

The phrase fell over them with a simplicity that needed no adornment. Virka passed a hand through her hair, carefully moving aside the locks that covered part of her left eye. Sebastián did not move, but his gaze lowered toward the girl with a stillness less closed off. Behind the windows, the sun finished sinking a little more, and the sea received the last light as if it too had heard the decision.

Óscar cleared his throat softly.

—Lovely family —he said, with a sideways smile, careful not to sound too sentimental—. I almost feel guilty interrupting. Almost.

Sebastián gave him a dry look.

Óscar raised his hands with immediate calm.

—I’m only remembering one important detail: I’m also going to travel with you. I wouldn’t want to be left out of the family picture after doing the most dangerous administrative work of the afternoon.

Virka looked at him from the corner of her eye.

—Requesting a room?

—Exactly —Óscar replied—. You never know when a form might attack.

Valentina let out a small laugh. It was not loud, but it was enough to change the air in the room. The tension of the moment did not disappear completely, but it became kinder, more breathable. Óscar smiled when he saw her laugh, satisfied that he had interrupted without destroying. Sebastián did not respond to the joke. Neither did Virka. But neither of them truly corrected him, and for Óscar that seemed enough.

Night began to touch the glass from outside. The sea lost the last glow of the sun and became a dark expanse beneath the sky that changed color. The room still did not belong to them. There was no official confirmation, no written name, no signed permission. However, for the first time, Valentina did not look at it only as a pretty place. She looked at it as the beginning of a path she could draw with her own hands.

Sebastián, Virka, Óscar, and Narka remained with her in front of the sea. None of them said that it was a promise. There was no need. In the silence that remained afterward, with the afternoon dying and the night drawing closer, the promise was already there.

The institute was left behind little by little, not like an abandoned structure, but like a light that was closing behind them. The afternoon had already given way almost completely, and the first shade of night began to spread over the outer paths, over the waiting areas, and over the tall glass panes that still reflected the last remains of the day. After leaving the room facing the sea, the group walked through the hallways with fewer words than before. Valentina walked between Sebastián and Virka, with the backpack on her back and a different calm on her face. She no longer looked at everything with the same open surprise, but she still kept in her eyes the image of the sea behind the glass, as if that room had left a small door inside her.

Óscar accompanied them to the transportation area. He did not do it solemnly. He walked with his hands near his pockets, his dark-brown bun somewhat messy and the relaxed expression of someone who knew how to withdraw before making someone else’s moment uncomfortable. The stop was almost empty at that hour. A pair of white lights illuminated the ceiling, some metal benches remained unoccupied and, farther away, the street received the first shadows of night with the distant noise of vehicles. The air carried the smell of cold pavement, distant humidity, and salt hidden from the back part of the institute.

The public transport arrived with a low sound of brakes. Óscar looked at Sebastián, then at Virka, and finally at Valentina, who was still holding the straps of her backpack with both hands.

—Tomorrow we’ll see how dangerous an official form can be —he said with a sideways smile—. For now, I’ll try to survive the trip back.

Valentina looked at him seriously.

—Are you also going to come tomorrow?

—That’s the idea —Óscar replied—. I’ve already invested too much effort in this club to abandon it before it exists.

The transport door opened. Óscar got on without adding a long farewell. From inside, he raised one hand naturally, and the vehicle started moving shortly after, carrying his figure toward the city illuminated by the early night. Sebastián did not follow him with his gaze more than necessary. Virka did watch the transport until it moved far enough away. Valentina remained still between them, and inside the backpack, Narka did not move until the sound of the vehicle no longer felt close.

Then he spoke.

—Let us not return by the common path.

Narka’s voice came from the backpack with contained depth, low, enough for the three of them and for no one else. The stop remained empty. The ceiling lights barely buzzed above them. Valentina turned her head a little, but she did not seem frightened. She already knew that voice. Sebastián lowered his gaze toward the backpack. Virka did too.

—What happened? —Sebastián asked.

There was a minimal pause.

—I will explain it in the Veil —Narka replied—. There will be no foreign ears there.

There was no need to argue. Sebastián nodded once. Virka brought a hand closer to Valentina, not to stop her, but to make sure she was ready. The girl looked at both of them and then hugged the backpack straps a little more.

—All right —she said.

Narka came out.

His reduced form left the backpack with a compact and silent movement, falling onto the floor of the stop like a small and ancient shadow. As soon as he touched the surface, he released a layer of Qi in brown tones crossed by light orange flashes. The energy did not expand aggressively; it first surrounded Valentina with care, like a protective covering that did not seek to crush or impose, but to isolate her from the change of plane. Virka let her aura escape from her feet, a firm, controlled pressure, ready to propel her without breaking the common ground. Sebastián released his crimson Qi in a low current around his body, not as an attack, but as an anchor.

The empty stop became more silent. The ordinary world folded. There was no explosion or visible rupture for someone who might have passed nearby. For them, instead, the air changed in density, the light of the lamps lost its naturalness, and reality withdrew like a surface that agreed to open only before those who knew how to touch it. The Veil received them with its dark reflection of the place: the stop colder, the street longer, the shadows deeper, the city turned into a strange version of itself, too close to the real world and, at the same time, separated from it by a distance that could not be measured in steps.

Narka recovered his full size. His body grew with a slow, mineral pressure, until the small reduced form gave way to the colossal turtle of the Veil. The black and gray shell, crossed by incandescent red veins, rose over the reflected stop like a living mountain. The dark quartz spines captured the spectral light of the plane, and his golden eyes, ancient and without pupils, looked at Valentina with a calm different from the one he had shown before Lucien. There was no threat in that gaze. Only care.

Narka’s Qi lifted Valentina gently. The girl let out a small sound of surprise, but not of fear. The energy held her beneath her feet and raised her until placing her on the shell with a delicacy impossible for something so large. Narka adjusted the pressure around her, securing her with an invisible protection so that no sudden movement could make her fall. The backpack remained fastened against her back. Valentina placed her hands on a plate of the shell and looked down, amazed.

Sebastián took position on one side. Virka on the other. Then they advanced.

Narka moved first, not running like a common animal, but sliding over his own Qi with a stable speed that soon reached an impossible rhythm for the ordinary world. The landscape of the Veil began to pass around Valentina at a speed close to two hundred kilometers per hour, but the field of Qi protecting her softened the wind and turned the vertigo into a controlled current. The reflected lights of the city stretched into dark lines. The paths opened before them like empty veins. Valentina watched everything with wide-open eyes, holding onto the shell while the night of the Veil ran on both sides.

Virka advanced with impulses of aura in her feet, explosive and precise. Each of her steps touched the ground only as much as necessary before launching her forward again, like a beast contained within human form. Sebastián ran without depending on Qi; his body sustained the speed with a brutal, firm naturalness, following Narka with long steps that struck the reflection of the path without losing rhythm. The crimson Qi around him barely vibrated, but it was his body that carried the run.

As they moved, Narka spoke in their minds.

He did not use audible words. His voice came through Qi, grave, ancient, direct. He did not narrate every blow. He did not repeat the battle as if he needed to relive it. He gave them what was necessary: the invisible presence that had arrived at the institute, the name of Lucien Valcrest, Second of the Nine Hammers, the way in which he had found Sebastián and Virka, the entrance into the Veil, the Prismatic Vertices, the variants of fire, thunder, and smoke, the calculated retreat, and the most important conclusion: it was not an impulsive enemy, but someone who had measured, learned, and decided to return prepared.

Sebastián listened without reducing his speed. His red eyes hardened. Virka did not stop either. The aura beneath her feet became denser for an instant, as if Lucien’s name had touched a violent part of her instinct. Valentina did not understand all the details, but she did understand the essential thing. Someone had observed them. Narka had fought. That someone could return. Even so, on the Guardian’s shell, surrounded by Qi and with Sebastián and Virka running on both sides, she did not feel the same kind of fear as before. The world was still dangerous. That had not changed. But now danger had names, and she was no longer alone before them.

The path toward the mansion opened in the distance of the Veil. Narka continued advancing with Valentina on his shell, protected by his own Qi. Virka drove her aura against the ground again. Sebastián maintained the run with the strength of his body. And as the nocturnal landscape passed at great speed, the promise made before the sea began to take another form: not only traveling together someday, but learning to move as one before the enemies found them again.

The path through the Veil ended when the silhouette of the mansion appeared among the reflected darkness, firm, wide, surrounded by a stillness that seemed different from that of the common world. Narka slowed down before arriving, not out of necessity, but out of care. The field of Qi that protected Valentina became softer, the pressure around his shell descended little by little, and the landscape that until then had passed like a nocturnal current began to recover its shape. The girl was still sitting on him, with her hands resting on one of the mineral plates, her eyes open from the memory of the journey and her hair moved slightly by the air that Narka’s protection allowed through.

Upon arriving in front of the mansion, Narka lifted her with his Qi and placed her on the ground with a delicacy that did not belong to his size. Valentina touched the firm surface with both feet and looked up just as the Guardian’s colossal body began to shrink. The black and gray plates compressed, the red veins faded until they were contained in a small scale, and the dark quartz spines lost size without losing presence. In a few seconds, Narka returned to his reduced form, silent, compact, as if the living mountain that had just carried her over the Veil could hide once again inside a domestic shadow.

Virka stopped releasing aura. The pressure around her feet went out first, and afterward the air rested again where before it had vibrated with each explosive impulse. Sebastián did the same with his crimson Qi; the low current that surrounded his body sank back into him, contained, obedient, although his red eyes preserved the hardness of what he had heard during the journey. None of them spoke about Lucien when crossing the threshold of the mansion. Not yet. The night was already complete, and before any training, before any preparation, there was something more immediate to attend to.

Valentina was sleepy.

They took her directly to her room. The place received them with that small calm that only belonged to things prepared for a girl: the bed arranged, the objects in their place, the soft light turned on so as not to hurt the eyes, and a stillness different from that of the hallways. Valentina set the backpack aside carefully, and Narka settled nearby without taking his attention away from her. Virka took the pink bunny pajamas and approached the girl naturally, while Sebastián went to the bed and moved the blankets aside to leave it ready.

There was no hurry. Nor unnecessary words. Virka helped Valentina put on the pajamas with practical and careful movements, adjusting the sleeves, checking that the fabric was not twisted, and moving the hair away from her face when the white and brown locks crossed over her eyes. Sebastián finished preparing the bed, shook the pillow once, and left the sheets open. For anyone, it would have been a common scene. For them, no. In that room, after names like Lucien Valcrest, Blacksmiths, Veil, and enemies who would return better prepared, the simple act of putting Valentina to bed carried the weight of a silent resistance.

When Virka finished, she lifted the girl carefully and left her on the bed. Sebastián brought the blanket closer. Virka tucked her in up to the chest, adjusting the edges with an instinctive attention, almost fierce in its softness. Valentina already had heavy eyelids, but she still did not want to sleep completely. She looked first at Virka, then at Sebastián, then at Narka, who remained nearby like a small ancient presence at the foot of the bed.

—Good night, Mom —she murmured.

Virka did not answer immediately. She passed a hand through her hair and lowered her gaze toward her.

—Good night.

Valentina barely turned her face toward Sebastián.

—Good night, Dad.

Sebastián held her gaze for a second. His expression did not change too much, but something in his stillness became less hard.

—Good night, Valentina.

The girl smiled faintly, already defeated by exhaustion, and searched for Narka with her eyes.

—Good night, Uncle Narka.

Narka tilted his head a little.

—Sleep well, little one.

After that, none of them moved. The three remained beside the bed while Valentina’s breathing became slower. Virka kept stroking her hair with silent patience. Sebastián remained standing, watching over the room as if even sleep needed defense. Narka did not close his eyes, but his presence became stiller, lower, more like a rock guarding the entrance of a refuge. Little by little, Valentina sank into a deep sleep. Her face lost the tension of the day. Her hands relaxed over the blanket. The night, at last, took her without demanding fear from her.

Only then did Virka break the silence.

—Narka.

The Guardian turned his golden eyes toward her.

Virka was not looking at the girl now, but at the dark space beyond the bed. Her voice came out low so as not to wake her, but not weak.

—Help me train my martial arts. I need to strengthen myself. Prepare myself to fight against those enemies.

Sebastián turned his gaze toward her. He did not interrupt her. The request did not sound impulsive. It came from what Narka had told them, from Lucien’s pressure, from the certainty that the enemies moving around the institute were no longer distant shadows. Virka was not asking for training out of pride. She asked for it because she had understood that protecting Valentina required growing before the threat returned.

Narka nodded calmly.

—No problem. We will train.

Sebastián spoke afterward, still with his voice low.

—While you train, I will begin absorbing the energy of one of the Mother Cores of Qi.

Virka looked at him.

—Now?

—Yes —Sebastián replied—. I need to advance to the next cultivator realm.

There was no discussion. The night did not offer them true rest, only a pause to decide how to use the hours before the next blow. Virka looked at Valentina one last time. Narka did too. Sebastián approached the bed, checked that the blanket was still properly placed, and then moved away.

The three left the room in silence. The door remained half-open, leaving a soft line of light on the floor. Behind it, Valentina slept deeply, unaware for a few hours of the weight of the names that were beginning to surround her life. On the other side, Sebastián, Virka, and Narka began to descend toward the basement. Each step took them away from the warm room and brought them closer to the hardest part of the night: training, cultivation, preparation. The family that had promised to travel together before the sea could not limit itself to dreaming of paths. It had to become strong enough to survive them.

________________________________________

END OF Chapter 107

The path continues...

New Chapters are revealed every

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