---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The exchange of blows was fierce.
Fenra attacked with murderous precision, her body advancing like a dart guided by instinct—but her mind... her mind was chaos. Doubts seethed beneath the surface of the coldness she maintained. Her movements were those of an experienced warrior, shaped by years of combat and countless deaths, but her heart... her heart hesitated.
Vernasha smiled amidst the chaos. She dodged with near-artistic elegance, as if dancing with shadows in a war-room. Her golden eyes never lost track of Fenra. Every time they collided, it was as if worlds touched and immediately repelled each other, sparks of energy and tension tearing the air.
They separated after another violent collision.
— It's captivating... — Vernasha said, her voice laden with a gentle mockery — how, even lost, you still try to win.
Her smile grew, poisonous.
— The Abyss... must have reached a good stage of presence by now. Enough for him... to recover much of the power he once had.
Fenra fixed her eyes on her, her face stone-like, but the tension in her voice was clear.
— What are you talking about?
Her mind raced in all directions. Abyss? Presence? Recovering power...?
And why say this now? Why mention this in the middle of a fight? And strangest of all— Why mention only Tekio before? As if Akira and Aisha... were no longer in the equation.
The question sent a sudden chill through her.
"As if they were already... dead."
Vernasha laughed, a low, almost childish sound.
— Ahhh... so curiosity has opened again? Good. Let's kill some time.
She spun her body, relaxed, as if they were having a casual conversation.
— Put that brain of yours to work. You have that whole look of an intelligent, decisive... serious woman. Go on, think with me. Entertain me a little.
Fenra did not respond. But she thought. And while blood pumped through her muscles, prepared to kill, her mind scoured memories, fragments, questions.
Vernasha watched her with incandescent golden eyes, like one who plays a valuable piece on the board and awaits the counterattack with pleasure. The smirk on her face seemed the prelude to a revelation that would shatter certainties.
— Right after Dante's fall... ancient faces returned. Which would be impossible — she tilted her head, as if confiding something — if they were human, of course.
The words entered like cold blades. Fenra blinked. Breathed.
Beings from another tier...?
— This body — Vernasha continued, taking two steps with feline lightness — according to myself, is not the old one. Meaning, a transfer is possible... a replica... a new habitation.
She raised her hands as if drawing ideas in the air.
— Which of these do you think is more viable?
Fenra did not answer.
— Thinking a lot, huh...? — Vernasha teased, amused.
— Can you manipulate essences? — Fenra fired, the question coming out before she even realized it.
Vernasha guffawed as if hearing a delicious joke.
— A shot in the dark... coming from your accelerated reasoning. Perhaps I can, perhaps I can't.
She circled Fenra like a serpent. The air around them seemed denser.
— But you know, if I could manipulate a pure essence, one of those ancestral ones... ah... everything would have been different from the start, don't you think?
Then, she took a step forward. Her tone changed. Became more... sinister.
— But perhaps... I don't need to manipulate an already-made essence.
Perhaps... I can create one.
Create essences?
Fenra's mind plunged into the idea with a knot in her chest.
Does that mean... someone was created precisely for this moment? A being made to order...
The main suspects would be anyone there, but the people that came to mind as most likely were quick.
The vision of Aisha's face appeared. Then Akira's. Then... Tekio's.
It could be anyone, but judging by Vernasha's words and taunts, by her sadistic way, they were the most probable.
— No... — Fenra whispered, without realizing.
Vernasha smiled, still with that air of perverse purity.
— Finally thought of something decent, I suppose.
Her face said it all.
— Whatever your conclusion, I know it's not something you wanted to reach. But, dear Fenra... what will happen now is exactly what you fear most.
That smile... was angelic. But her eyes shone with the pleasure of a thousand demons.
Fenra gritted her teeth so hard she felt her jaw tense. She clenched her fists until her nails pierced her own flesh, and blood trickled from her palms.
— Your plan... was really well made. — she snarled. — I bet I'd lose half my life here if I heard your whole story.
She raised her eyes.
— You are not human. That much is clear. But you're also not from this world.
Vernasha didn't even blink.
— However.— Fenra continued. — This plan has a...
— Loophole... — Vernasha whispered, completing Fenra's sentence, as if invoking something. — Yes, that damned loophole named Fenra Senhir.
The warrior did not respond. She felt something moving, as if an invisible presence was approaching through the cracks of reality.
Vernasha leaned in slightly.
— I will take care of her. You'll see. You'll like it, little Fenra.
She took a step... her gaze inflamed with gold.
— When we become one.
(...)
The red aura kept pulsing around Tekio's body, shattering the air around him like invisible shards of glass. His body was still fallen, his arms trembling, his eyes fixed on the void where Mei had been swallowed.
She was no longer there.
Nothing but the darkness that had consumed her.
Nothing but the powerlessness.
The heat of his own energy seemed to collapse around his chest. As if his body was trying to explode outward—as if something inside him screamed for space.
— Mei… — he murmured through clenched teeth.
But his voice was drowned by the weight crushing him.
By the echo of that memory.
"There's something in you I never quite understood."
Yara's voice echoed like a whisper in his mind. An old memory, from when they were isolated among silent ruins after training.
"Something... quiet. Like a void waiting to be filled. I thought it was just your pain, Tekio. But it wasn't."
Yara, now, felt it.
Felt it again—but not like before.
That presence had awakened.
Cold, silent, motionless.
With no clear intentions.
Without color.
Without definition.
Something not-alive… and yet, alive.
And it was acting.
Not communicating.
Invading.
"It wasn't just you..."
Her voice broke in his mind, distant, like wind crossing worlds.
"I thought it was your loneliness, your rage... But it's as if that thing was waiting for this moment."
Tekio clenched his fists.
The ground trembled under his fingers.
His bones creaked.
His skin burned with the scarlet aura, like embers accumulating inside.
But he couldn't get up.
Because, deep inside, where no energy could reach, the voice that mattered most was screaming again.
Aisha's.
Her death.
The blood.
Dante's laugh.
And now… Mei.
"Again...!"
The scream didn't come out. It stuck in his throat, as if even that had been stolen from him.
"I am a burden..."
"I only watch..."
"They always protect me..."
"They always die..."
The presence, felt only by Yara, seemed to envelop the core of Tekio's soul with icy, infinite fingers. It didn't want to possess him.
It didn't want to save him.
It didn't want to destroy him.
It just wanted to be there.
Connected.
Pulsing in parallel to his pain.
As if that suffering were the melody it had been waiting to hear.
Yara was trapped inside him, watching.
She wanted to intervene.
She wanted to wake him.
But she too was silent.
Bound to whatever was there…
As if something older than her was whispering without words.
Tekio's red aura kept expanding, darker, more opaque… almost black at the edges.
It was rage.
It was hatred.
It was raw guilt.
And that presence—which was neither evil, nor good—only grew with it.
As if it were nourishing itself on Tekio's emotional ruin, awaiting the next note of this symphony of pain.
But he remained fallen.
Trembling.
Unable to move.
Because, in that moment, he still believed—deep in his chest—that everything was repeating.
And that he wasn't strong enough to stop it.
The dark veil where Mei was trapped wasn't just an absence of light; it was a devourer of meaning. Every fragment of reality seemed to have been swallowed and spat out as hot, oily smoke. Everything there was made of solidified anguish, as if space itself were an extension of pain.
The air was so dense her nostrils bled. Every breath was like inhaling live coals.
And she was alone. With the pain. And with him.
Dante.
His voice slid through the darkness like a cold razor.
— You are so silent, Mei.
Those words infiltrated her like parasites, stirring places where pride, strength, and purpose once resided.
And Akira's face—the beloved, destroyed face—appeared before her, now a puppet stitched together with Dante's hateful presence.
The gentle smile was there, yes.
But it was a lie. A smile that exuded sarcasm and carnage.
Eyes that once offered shelter now dumped her like garbage.
— Let's tear apart what you are... slowly. So you can see.
She tried to move. The thought was born. But her body… refused.
The effort to move a finger felt like climbing a mountain dragging chains bound to her bones.
That was when the first blow came.
The air split with a dry SNAP, and the impact on her thorax was so strong she thought her heart had been crushed right there. The pain arrived before comprehension.
Crack.
Bone.
Craaaaack.
Two more.
Blood, warm and viscous, rose up her throat and sprayed from her mouth, mixing with the taste of iron, bile, and powerlessness.
She tried to inhale, but the air entered like broken glass.
Her punctured lung whistled. Air and blood competing for space inside her.
Her clothes began to disintegrate, slowly burning against the living atmosphere of that place. The flames licked her skin, opening blisters, tearing flesh, transforming Mei's body into an altar of suffering.
— You are made of fire, aren't you? Let's see how far your flesh can endure.
A second explosion came before she could think.
A blade black as oil pierced through her face.
She didn't even see it—only felt it.
A hallucinatory heat, a cold immediately after. Then, the world was halved.
Her left eye. Destroyed.
She screamed—or tried to.
But the scream was trapped, like everything there.
Everything... trapped.
The darkness, the blood, the terror, the guilt. All pressing against her like an invisible wall.
Mei tried to move her arm, tried to react even through the pain, but seconds later, she felt her joint being torn by a blade, brutal and dry.
Half of her right arm was severed.
She bled from so many points her body seemed to weep from every pore.
— You look so beautiful like this.
So human. So... defeated.
Dante's voice had a sculptural calm. An artist analyzing the painting of pain with morbid reverence.
There was no hurry in him.
Destruction was an aesthetic experience.
Mei, sprawled, only moaned.
Her lips trembled, trying to form words, but no sound came out.
Only a guttural noise.
Hoarse. Animal. Mortal.
Her eyes—or what remained of them—were open. Pleading.
Not for mercy.
For meaning. For an explanation.
She thought of Aisha. The one she couldn't save.
She thought of Tekio, so lost, so full of rage—and now, without her.
She thought of Akira.
"Are you still in there... inside that...?"
She knew he was.
And that certainty tore her apart more than any blade.
The pain was real, she felt every gush of blood, it was horrible, brutal, surreal in its burning intensity, but...
"If you're seeing this... if you're feeling this... forgive me."
"I know it must hurt you more than it hurts me."
The next blade was direct.
Abdomen.
It pierced through with slow brutality.
Slowly enough for her to feel the heat of the black metal cooking her organs.
She gasped.
Her body trembled.
The blood gushed without stopping.
— Do you see, Mei?
— Even with all your power... you are just another name on my list. A page to be torn out. A myth to be burned.
No power surpasses a good strategy.
She wanted to say no.
She wanted to say she would fight.
She wanted...
But everything in her screamed that he was right.
"Leader?"
"Fraud."
"Elder?"
"Too late."
"The strongest woman in the world?"
"Useless at the decisive moment."
The ground beneath her seemed to pulse, sucking her blood as if the world were drinking her death.
"I... am sorry..."
Her thought came as a final thread, almost a whisper.
"Tekio... Stella... Aisha... Akira...Dan...Levi...Fenra... Mother, Father, Tenklyn..."
"I... failed."
She was made of fire.
But there, in that impossible reality, in that prison that was Dante, her fire did not blaze.
It only burned. Inward.
And she was dying.
Dying without glory.
Dying alone.
Dante rose slowly, his eyes fixed on Mei's shattered body. Her form, once a symbol of absolute strength, was now a map of deep cuts, blood flowing like dark ink over the torn pieces of her uniform. Her left arm hung almost by raw flesh, and the side of her face... was missing an eye, devoured by one of the black flames Dante had purposely let escape. She was on her knees. Not by choice. By exhaustion. By defeat.
Her golden eyes, once so full of fire and fury, now flickered like flames about to be extinguished.
Dante took a step, his feet sinking softly into that black veil, where reality was swallowed by shadows. He took a deep breath. Smiled.
— Another empress. — he murmured with poetic coldness, almost sad. — And they fall like houses of cards, one by one, from the inside... first.
He did not laugh. He didn't need to. In his mind danced the memory of the boy. The look in Tekio's eyes when he crushed him. When he made him scream, break. Now, to see another of his mentors like this, torn apart, one more burden on his fragile shoulders...
— Tekio... — Dante whispered, savoring the name. — How many times can a heart break before it stops beating?
But then...
Dante stopped.
A shiver. Not of fear. Nor of power.
Something... that shouldn't exist there.
The Veil, until then pulsating and controlled, seemed to shudder. Tremble in silence.
Dante looked at Mei. It wasn't from her. The presence didn't come from her. The Abyss knew her pain. This other presence... was a stranger. An invader.
And then...
He entered.
As if passing through a wall made of glass and hatred, Tekio appeared.
He did not walk. He did not speak.
His red eyes burned like live coals, each step reverberating through the world like muffled thunder.
The scars on his body were still fresh, but something—the residual energy of Mei, Yara's presence within him—kept him standing. More than that... propelled him.
The Veil, once Dante's absolute domain, groaned.
Like an old house about to collapse.
As if the very space refused to contain Tekio.
Dante raised his hand, conjuring the flames.
But time...
did not respond.
Tekio did not shout.
He did not demand.
He screamed inside.
He screamed for Aisha's death.
For the powerlessness.
For Mei.
For the empty gaze of the one woman he believed was unbreakable.
And inside him... it.
The silhouette of a woman with white hair, shrouded in nameless darkness.
Yara felt it, desperate, surprised, but unable to stop him.
She knew this thing had always been there.
But she never thought it would manifest like this.
Tekio, for a moment, reached out his hand to her.
And took it.
It was like lightning. A crimson comet.
This environment seemed unable to bear Tekio, or to process him as it processed others.
He was a flaw, an incalculable and incomprehensible existence.
"Not again, you brat..."
Dante tried to conjure the flames, but the heavens had already been torn.
The environment no longer served the king.
Tekio, who had been walking, now ran and in the blink of an eye, he vanished.
"This kid, it has to be a joke."
Dante thought, but he already knew, Tekio's fist was already upon him.
In Tekio's soul, in his core, he had accepted it, awakened something.
Something supreme.
— CRIMSON ECLIPSE!
The Crimson Eclipse was not just a blow.
It was a punishment for all impure beings.
Dante was thrown like a doll, his body cutting through the darkness and colliding with distant structures, as if he were just a disposable piece.
The Abyssal plane was undone, unable to process Tekio and to maintain itself with Dante being struck like that.
Tekio fell to his knees.
He breathed deeply.
But he wasn't looking at Dante.
He looked at Mei.
On her knees.
One arm missing.
Blood all over her face.
Chest caved in.
Face burned.
One eye pierced.
Clothes torn to shreds.
But worse...
the gaze.
Empty.
Soulless.
As if, in that moment, Mei Nuhay was already dead.
And Tekio...
broke inside.
As if his soul screamed without sound.
As if it were too late.
As if the world were collapsing on him again.
And yet, something burned within him.
More than hatred.
More than pain.
Something unknown.
But it was there.
And it had no intention of leaving anymore.
To be continued...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------