A Death Knight's blade whispered past her head as Tenza rolled forward, her body moving on instinct honed by tireless practice. In that split second, muscle memory unlocked a new purpose in this digital realm. The creature's guard dropped ever so slightly, and she remembered Firelez's voice, echoing in her mind:
"MMO monsters have patterns—just like real fighters. But unlike humans, they never learn. Their weaknesses are eternal."
With that memory driving her, Tenza launched upward, transforming her kyokushin techniques into arcs of impossible motion. The Death Knight staggered, its programming faltering against a fighting style it was never meant to counter.
"Look for the gap between expectation and execution," Firelez's words urged, "Inaction predates action."
Her combo flowed—three strikes where the game expected one—and the knight's health bar fell precipitously. Yet its counter-attack caught her off-guard, sending her sprawling across the virtual stones.
"Will you laugh, Bairon, if you see me fall?" she whispered with a bitter smile as she forced herself back to her feet. How many times had she stumbled in the dojo, in the game, in life? Each time, she had risen. For Camilla. For herself. For the future they had all once dreamed of.
The Death Knight charged again, its programmed aggression a relentless force. But now, Tenza saw beyond mere patterns—she saw opportunity. The same kind of opportunity that Bairon had sought in that final, fatal heist, but tempered by the lessons she had learned from his mistakes, from Firelez, and from the wisdom of her senseis. Sometimes victory wasn't about a perfect attack; it was about knowing precisely when to strike and when to wait.
Her fists blurred into motion, each strike landing with the measured precision that Sensei Leonardo had instilled in her. The Death Knight's form began to pixelate and fracture, dissolving into streams of data that scattered like digital ghosts. In the disintegration of its armor, she caught a fleeting glimpse of her own reflection—not as the wide-eyed newcomer who had once entered this game with dreams of escape and glory, but as a warrior tempered by loss and guided by the quiet strength of her ancestors.
Tenza stood alone in the silence of the Necrohova's halls. She opened her interface and checked her level—70—finally enough to enter the World vs. World arena. Far away in Oaxaca City, her game friends would be facing battles of their own—not against digital phantoms, but against the very limits of flesh and bone.
The kitchen clock showed 9:47 PM when Sky's hologram finally flickered out, leaving the Ramírez family in a silence heavy with possibility and fear. The tablet on their modest dining table still displayed the simulation results: 51% success rate, glowing with cold precision against the warm wood grain their grandmother had once polished every Sunday.
"Fifty one percent," Gustavo's father repeated, as if saying it again might change the number. His weathered hands, calloused from thirty years of construction work, gripped the edge of the table. "Mijo…"
Fernanda watched her brother's face, recognizing that fierce determination which had seen him through impossible odds—when he fought Ardor, when he soared mentally despite his body's confinement. Yet, this was no game. This was Tavo's life, balanced on the edge of a coin flip between hope and despair.
"I've read about your friend, Sky," their mother said, her voice steady despite her trembling hands. "About the Vatican, the angels. But this... this is different, Gustavo. This isn't just fighting cosmic monsters or playing a game. This is changing what you are."
"What I am?" Tavo's laugh was sharp, brittle. "What I am is tired, mom. Tired of watching life through a window while my muscles betray me piece by piece. If this is what humanity was meant to be—what we could be again…"
Fernanda wanted to speak, to add her voice to this moment that would reshape their family forever. But the words stuck in her throat, trapped behind years of watching her brother's slow decline, behind memories of pushing his chair through narrow doorways and pretending not to notice his frustration.
"We should sleep on it," their father finally said, though everyone knew sleep would be impossible tonight. "Tomorrow—"
"Tomorrow will be the same as today," Tavo cut in. "And the day after. Until one day, it won't be, because I won't…" He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to.
The whir of his chair's motor seemed louder than usual in the kitchen's silence. Fernanda watched as he navigated toward his room, the chair catching on the slightly raised door frame as it always did. She heard him struggle, curse softly, then finally break through.
When the sound of fist meeting flesh echoed from his room, followed by a raw, wounded sound that was more growl than cry, Fernanda closed her eyes. She remembered all the times they'd raided together, how in the game his character would leap and soar, unleashing spells with graceful precision. How many times had he dreamed of moving like that in the real world?
In his room, Tavo's hands struck his useless legs again and again, each impact a rebellion against the prison of his own body. Tomorrow, he would compose himself, put on the brave face he'd worn for years. But tonight, in the darkness, he allowed himself to rage against the unfairness of it all. Fifty-one percent. A coin flip between transformation and oblivion.
The choice, he knew, had already been made.
The virtual dojo materialized around Fiona, its minimalist architecture stark and deliberate, a sanctuary of discipline amid the digital chaos of Eschenfrau. The polished wooden floor reflected the soft glow of candlelight, the air still with the weight of unseen battles. Sensei Leonardo and Sensei Kishikawa stood before her, their presence filling the space more completely than any movement could.
"You believe you are ready," Sensei Leonardo said—not as a question, but as a statement that settled between them like a drawn line in the sand.
Fiona's stance tightened. "I've trained. I've fought. The World vs. World event is—"
"Preparation is not readiness," Sensei Kishikawa interrupted, his voice slicing cleanly through her words like a blade through silence. "You mistake knowledge for understanding."
Her fingers unconsciously traced the outline of the gauntlet hidden beneath her training gi. This was more than a competition—it was a statement, a rebellion, a chance to prove that a woman from the Latin American server, fighting with borrowed technology and unborrowed spirit, could stand against those who believed victory could be purchased.
"This isn't just about winning," Sensei Kishikawa continued, his gaze piercing through the storm of emotions behind her eyes. "This is about Camilla seeing her mother as something more than the world has taught her she can be."
The words struck deeper than any physical blow. Fiona had spent years feeling broken, uncertain, trapped between survival and dreams. Now, she stood at the threshold of proving she could be more—more than the past, more than circumstance, more than what others believed possible.
Sensei Leonardo untied his black belt, letting the fabric flow like liquid silk between his fingers before holding it out to her. "Shodan," he said simply. "A black belt does not mean mastery. It means beginning. I have only just started. What makes you think you are any different?"
Fiona's fingers brushed the white belt at her waist—a symbol of innocence, of unshaped potential. The challenge burned in her eyes. "If your teachings don't make me ready, then what do they make me?"
"Prepared," Sensei Kishikawa answered, stepping forward with measured calm. His movements, as always, carried no wasted energy, only absolute intent. "But readiness is something else entirely."
His hand gestured to the open space around them, a metaphor as much as a reality. "Mushin—the flow state. Imagine a mind so focused that fear, anger, hesitation become mere whispers. You do not stop feeling them. You simply stop letting them control you."
The silence stretched, weighted with meaning. Then, Sensei Leonardo spoke. "Fudoshin—the immovable mind. Sky embodies this more completely than both of us combined. It is the shield against the four mental afflictions: anger, hesitation, fear, incredulity."
Sensei Kishikawa's voice softened, but the intensity behind it remained. "In the World vs. World event, your greatest opponent will not be the players from the North American server. It will be the chaos within your own mind."
The portal shimmered behind her, the boundary between training and battle beginning to dissolve. Fiona could feel the pull of it—the anticipation, the excitement coursing through her like an electric current. She felt ready. Prepared.
The senseis saw only preparation.
As the portal's glow intensified, Sensei Leonardo imparted his final lesson. "Zanshin—awareness. In kumite, scoring a point is nothing. If you celebrate prematurely, your victory becomes your defeat. Your attention must remain on the opponent, even after you strike."
Fiona barely heard him. The pull of battle was too strong, the thrill of the challenge drowning out the final words of caution.
The portal consumed her, leaving behind only the echo of unspoken wisdom.
The island existed in a liminal space where nature's raw beauty collided with technological precision. Towering cliffs met the restless sea, and dense jungles pulsed with digital life, their artificial winds carrying the scent of something that wasn't real—but felt real enough. Here, at the crossroads of reality and simulation, Sky's absence loomed. Not as an emptiness, but as a presence unspoken, a charged potential hanging in the air like the moment before lightning strikes.
Fiona materialized at the island's edge, her boots sinking slightly into the damp, pixel-perfect earth. Her interface flickered, the chat an unrelenting hurricane of messages—preparation, panic, defiance. The Latin American players—scattered, outnumbered, under-equipped—were bracing for what might be their final stand. No champion. No singular hero. Just a stubborn refusal to go quietly.
The countdown pulsed with cruel precision.
1:05 remaining.
A cold pressure coiled in Fiona's chest. Will Camilla be watching?
The thought struck like a blow to the ribs, sending ripples of doubt through her already strained focus. She could almost see her daughter's eyes—hopeful, but judging more than the fragments she'd known before. A mother of half-measures, of survival alone, but searching for something greater.
Sensei Kishikawa's words whispered through her mind.
Breathe.
The technique was a rope thrown into the storm, anchoring her.
Inhale. The frantic noise of the chat dulled, the anxiety loosened its grip.
Exhale. The landscape sharpened, each detail crystallizing—the sway of the jungle canopy, the shifting light on the ocean's surface, the silent hum of unseen drones patrolling overhead.
She understood now what her senseis must have felt. What Sky might have experienced standing alone against something unfathomable. This wasn't just nerves. This was the moment before transformation, the narrowing of the world into a single, unavoidable point.
1:00 remaining.
The game's announcement cut through the tension, its voice emotionless and final.
"One minute before the last World vs. World event for the Latin American server."
The universe, in all its vast indifference, had spoken.
Fiona stood on the edge of battle, prepared.
Not ready.
But she didn't yet understand the difference.
The Antillia instance materialized—a warzone rendered in brutal geometry and merciless precision. Seven special locations shimmered like cursed beacons on the map, each corresponding to a techcrystal coordinate. Salvation or annihilation. The battlefield's rules were simple: reach the dungeons, claim the techarmors, or be erased.
Marcus's voice cut through the chat, edged with tension.
"Do not engage. Get to your dungeons. If confronted, prioritize helping others reach their coordinates. Remember: if even one of us acquires a techarmor, we survive the server merge."
His eyes flicked to the incoming formations. This wasn't just an enemy force—it was a weaponized digital empire. The North American players moved with terrifying precision, not like gamers, but like a polished war machine. They were world challengers, the best of the best, each clad in a techarmor that represented more than just power.
They were a technological aristocracy.
The Latin American players? Digital peasants facing royal knights.
And in that moment, Marcus understood—this wasn't a competition. This was an erasure. A systematic, calculated deletion of everything they had built. The techarmors weren't just equipment; they were symbolic chains, a digital manifestation of the same inequality that had always existed beyond the screen. Every precise movement of the North American players spoke of resources, infrastructure, training—privilege. They played a different game.
But dignity isn't measured by victory.
His hands tightened over his weapons.
"Coordinate survival," he published in chat, his words a rebellion against inevitability. "If we lose everything, we lose nothing. Our dignity survives in how we fall."
It wasn't a strategy. It was a manifesto—a last stand written in the language of a dying server.
Fiona scanned her interface.
Her coordinates pulsed. South. Far from the center. Far from the war.
While the other Latin American players gathered—digital refugees preparing for an impossible exodus—her marker stood isolated.
Anomaly.
Not a path of least resistance, but a path of unpredictability.
On the battlefield, the North American players marched in perfect synchronization, their techarmors gleaming like a metallic legion. A thousand impervious titans, wielding the kind of coordination, efficiency, and sheer dominance that could only come from generations of winning.
They weren't players.
They were the system itself.
Tenza let out a slow breath. Her marker pulsed. South. Isolated. Overlooked.
Her senseis' lessons burned in her mind.
Zanshin—total awareness. Never let your focus waver. Always watch forward and behind.
But overconfidence whispered its sweet poison: You're prepared. You know what to do.
The moment her focus slipped—a single flicker of hesitation—would become the crucible of her journey.
And as the event triggered, Antillia became hell.
The decimation was methodical—surgical in its cruelty.
Marcus watched as hope unraveled, pixel by pixel, replaced by the cold efficiency of eradication. The Latin American players weren't just losing. They were being erased, their dreams dissolving into a soundscape of dying avatars and collective despair.
A thousand players had entered Antillia. Barely a handful remained.
From the carnage, Chulo's voice cut through the chaos, detached, clinical.
"Latin America is a place for despair," he observed. "And despair always consumes them."
Marcus lunged, his body moving before his mind could fully register his own futility. His blade flashed—one last act of defiance against the weight of inevitability.
Chulo didn't step back. He didn't dodge. He dismantled Marcus' resistance with a single, effortless kick.
A metallic crack echoed across the battlefield—Marcus's sword shattered. The pieces scattered, disintegrating before they could even hit the ground.
And in that moment, Marcus understood.
This wasn't a battle.
This was a lesson.
The weapons they wielded—their tactics, their struggles, their refusal to accept inferiority—meant nothing against a system that had already decided their fate.
As Antillia burned, Tenza ran.
She wasn't just running from the slaughter. She was running toward something.
Her coordinate pulsed—a lone beacon in the ruins of their shattered server.
When she crossed the threshold, the world shifted.
The tambo materialized around her—an ancient sanctuary of stone and intent, untouched by the carnage beyond its walls.
Here, the world didn't scream. It whispered.
The air held a reverence, an ancestral gravity.
Walls of hewn stone bore the stories of a people who had endured conquest, war, and erasure—yet survived. Intricate carvings of Zue and Chía adorned the walls, the celestial deities gazing down, silent witnesses to yet another struggle for survival.
For a moment, Tenza forgot the game.
Forgot the war.
She felt something ancient stir beneath the code.
Then she saw him.
Akkan stood waiting.
Not with arrogance.
Not with malice.
But with absolute, unshakable certainty.
A world challenger from Jamaica, he carried himself with a presence that transcended mere digital skill. He was more than a champion—he was a living culmination of mastery, discipline, and the brutal reality of global competition.
He studied her—not with contempt, nor amusement, but measured precision.
"A beautiful woman from Colombia," he said, his deep, resonant voice like the low hum of an unsheathed blade. "Paid me a hefty amount to wait for you here."
Tenza's heart tightened.
Mrs. Puyana.
She felt the trap snapping shut around her.
Akkan continued, voice steady.
"She said the Latin American challenger would come to claim her techarmor. But all I see..." He stepped forward, closing the distance between them, his movements measured and absolute. "...is the last place on the global leaderboard.
Not a challenger."
The words landed like a judgment—not cruel, not mocking, but undeniably true.
Tenza's hands clenched into fists.
This was her moment.
And she was already losing.
The moment the duel begins, the tambo ceased to exist.
For Tenza, the world contracts into a singularity—one in which Akkan is the sole gravitational force.
Her senses stretch to their limits, searching for weaknesses, for patterns. Yet what she finds is a void of possibility, an opponent whose presence is as constant as the sun and as untouchable as light itself.
Akkan doesn't move like a warrior. He moves like a law of nature.
Tenza attacks. A textbook-perfect kyokushin strike. Her body rotates with flawless biomechanics, her fists aimed at the very center of mass—exactly where a human should be.
But Akkan is no longer there.
His evasion isn't a dodge. It's a displacement of inevitability.
Her strike lands in empty space, but the punishment arrives all the same.
A single counter. Not a full force attack, not even a warning strike. A mere brush of his open palm against her side, yet her body reels—not from pain, but from the sheer disparity of their existence.
"You fight with hope," Akkan says, his voice carrying neither scorn nor mercy. "Hope is beautiful. But hope is slow."
Tenza lunges again, refusing to acknowledge the abyss opening beneath her feet. For Camilla. For herself. For the future she refuses to abandon.
She launches a combination faster than she's ever executed—a feint to the ribs, a leg sweep, and an aerial hammer strike meant to shatter guards. A perfect sequence. A sequence designed for victory.
Akkan does not block.
He does not counter.
He simply exists beyond it.
One moment he is before her. The next, he is behind her.
A sudden, paralyzing impact—his fist tapping the base of her spine, sending a wave of static through her system. The game barely registers his movements. A mere tap. A touch. And yet, her entire interface glitches for a fraction of a second, a stutter in the virtual code that mimics the body's natural shutdown response.
She collapses to one knee.
And Akkan does nothing but watch.
The defeat is complete.
Her mind races. No, not yet, please.
She's trained for this. She's fought through pain, through loss, through doubt. She has survived the harshness of reality. She is prepared.
So why—why does it feel like she is fighting something beyond the limits of comprehension?
"You still fight to survive," Akkan repeats, stepping forward.
The words hit deeper than any strike.
Tenza's fists tremble. Not from exhaustion. Not from fear.
From the unbearable weight of realization.
She will never win.
Not like this.
Not here.
Not yet.
But then, something happens.
The storm of self-doubt breaks.
Something inside snaps open—not in surrender, but in transformation.
She exhales. And lets go.
For a fraction of a second, the battle shifts.
Not in the outcome. Not in power.
But in understanding.
Tenza stops fighting against him.
She moves with him.
And in that fleeting instant—she touches his speed.
Akkan's eyes flicker, the subtlest nod of approval.
"Good," he says. "You finally see it."
And then—the real attack comes.
A single strike.
Clean. Precise. Unstoppable.
It is not meant to harm.
It is meant to end.
Her system registers the impact before she can even comprehend it.
A critical hit.
She falls.
The dream shatters—not violently, but with the cold precision of a truth she was never ready to face.
Above her, Akkan does not celebrate. He does not gloat.
"Now you understand."
Tenza stares at his hand, her body broken, her spirit burning.
The match is over.
Tenza lay motionless, her breath uneven, her thoughts fragmented between denial and brutal clarity.
Her body—no, her character—felt weightless, the artificial physics of the game engine struggling to simulate the depth of what had just occurred.
She had touched it. For a second, she had matched Akkan's speed.
Her lips parted, and she brought herself to say it.
"I matched your speed."
Akkan, standing above her, eyes unreadable, answered with a deep sight, with the might and weight of Olympus itself.
"I had to lower my speed to match yours, Tenza."
The words sliced deeper than any attack he had landed.
"You were never even close."
The finality in his voice was absolute.
Not cruel. Not mocking.
Just the truth, painful and unfiltered.
The ground beneath her blurred. The game's UI flickered, and a cold mechanical voice filled the air:
"World vs World event complete. Winner: North American Server."
A system-wide announcement flashed across every player's interface.
"The Latin American server will start the merge process while it restarts. We thank players for engaging in the event. See you soon on the new server."
Everything around her dissolved.
The Muisca tambo, the battlefield, the digital ruins of what should have been her triumph—all turned to black.
A void deeper than mere darkness, a space where even despair had been stripped away.
There was no consolation. No rematch.
Just the simple, inescapable fact—
She had lost.
A new voice, sterile and synthetic, broke through the abyss:
"Engaging emergence sequence."
"Preparing to wake up the patient."
Tenza's pulse surged.
Her mind, still tethered to the battlefield, scrambled for meaning.
Her body—her real body—responded before her thoughts could catch up.
A deep, visceral instinct coiled in her stomach.
"Whatever happens, survive."
Sky's words.
A warning. A promise. A prophecy.
A distant sound—a crumbling building, the groan of metal under stress, the smell of dust and something burning.
She was waking up.
But where?
Her final thought before the darkness truly gave way:
This isn't Eschenfrau, the Atlantic Accelerator or even Bucaramanga anymore.
The crumbling ruin around her wasn't just abandoned—it had been left behind by history itself. The walls whispered of old battles, of lives wagered and lost in the shadows of conflicts no one remembered. The air was thick with the ghosts of decisions made long before she arrived.
Fiona stood barefoot, the cold bite of the concrete shocking her into full consciousness. Something was different. Her body felt… complete. The scars she had carried for years, reminders of a life clawed through hardship, were gone. Her skin grafts—more than mere replacements—responded to the environment with a sensitivity she hadn't known before. She felt everything. The dust against her soles, the distant tremors of impacts miles away, the subtle, electric tension in the air before devastation arrived.
She stepped toward the shattered window.
And the sky broke.
The first strike carved a wound into the world, not like an explosion, but like a cosmic equation being solved in real time. A hypersonic cascade of tungsten rods, moving faster than sound, rewrote the land before she even heard them.
The earth didn't just shake—it changed.
A distant ridgeline liquefied under the kinetic force, melted into glass, then reformed into jagged crystalline wreckage in the time it took her to inhale. The air itself seemed to distort, as if the fabric of reality couldn't keep up with the precision of the violence unfolding before her.
Her breath caught in her throat.
She had seen this before. On WeTube. In the news. But those had been screens. Filters. Commentary. A removed, intellectualized experience.
This was real.
This was too real.
The ground quivered beneath her feet, as if trying to warn her: You don't belong here.
Her legs trembled, instincts screaming for movement, but the weight of realization crushed her still.
This wasn't a game.
This wasn't Eschenfrau.
This wasn't home.
Fiona Maia Vega Valencia, Tenza in the magnificent world of Eschenfrau, had stepped into hell, and she had no idea how to survive it.