The silence after the collapse of the Profane still weighed in the air, a dense silence, broken only by Sebastián's harsh breathing. He remained standing, though every fiber of his body demanded otherwise. Blood ran down his torso and arms like a dark river, sticking in irregular scabs upon the skin, marking the map of the wounds that had pierced him. His indomitable body had not abandoned him, but regeneration was still an incomplete process: what first gushed now thickened. The perforations in his abdomen and side were forced shut by the very blood itself, which, coagulated into dense blocks, sealed the openings like improvised walls. It was not a cure, it was a brutal containment: to stop the outflow so as not to empty himself from within.

Each inhalation hurt as if he were breathing in hot iron. The indomitable body tensed the fibers, forced the torn muscles to contract, to realign once more under an implacable order, but there was still no scarring. It was fast, yes, but not fast enough. Sebastián knew it; it was not enough to endure, he also had to govern the poison that still burned in his blood like black embers.

He closed his eyes for an instant and directed the flow of his Qi. He felt the current of toxin spread through his body: a bitter cold, a vibration that pricked the nerves and burned the inner vessels. With iron will, he pushed that corrupt presence, dragging it as if bending the rivers within, leading it into a single channel. The poison obeyed the force of his control, compressed toward the chest, each vein conducting it to the center where the Inverted Origin Core throbbed in shadow.

Soon he had it gathered. And the image in his mind was clear: a dark mass, as large as a human heart, pulsing with diseased energy. The indomitable body had purged much during the battle, he knew, but even so what remained was too much: a heart of poison beating in the very space where life was meant to be sustained.

The Core recognized it as nourishment. From its depths emerged the inverted voracity, and it enveloped the toxic mass with a faceless hunger. In a matter of minutes, what had been a poison capable of annihilating a man was reduced to nothing, devoured like smoke dragged by a whirlwind. Sebastián felt the immediate relief: his breathing no longer tore like glass in the throat, his pulse found a steadier rhythm, and the heaviness in his muscles loosened just a degree.

The price and the gain were measured at once. His Qi rose again within him, though incomplete. It did not return in full, only to half of what he had held before the battle. It was enough: enough not to collapse, enough so that the Core did not devour him instead, enough to sustain the machinery of his indomitable body while it continued the slow task of regenerating.

Within him, the muscles stitched themselves once more, like steel fibers threaded under fire. The tendons pulled at the bones, relocating under the discipline he had imposed upon his flesh since childhood. But the pain did not withdraw; every seam was a sting, every closure a stab that kept him awake in his misery

Sebastián remained like that, breathing with controlled force, knowing there was no victory nor truce, only this precarious balance. His body stood because he forced it, sealed by hardened blood, stabilized by a Core that devoured what tried to kill him, and sustained by a will that refused to break.

It was not recovery. It was barely the beginning of healing. A brief truce between wound and regeneration. An instant stolen at the edge of collapse.

And Sebastián, still upright, accepted that instant as enough.

The instant of truce that Sebastián had stolen in the midst of collapse dissolved like ash in the wind. There was no rest for him: what remained of his breath pushed him forward, and the Veil, with its empty corridors, still claimed his presence.

The mirrored hallway of the clinic received him in gloom. The walls were shadows with the scent of disinfectant, empty chairs, abandoned stretchers, as if the reflection of the place dragged the memory of the real through a broken lens. Sebastián advanced, each step sustained more by will than by flesh, dry blood marking his trail in that space where nothing should leave a trace.

He stopped before the translucent door that imitated the operating room. The air there was different, denser, as if it awaited him. He crossed the threshold and the scene unfolded: Valentina rested on the stretcher of her reflection, surrounded by presences that were anchor in the penumbra. Virka was at her side, leaning, attentive to every minimal movement, guarding her like a treasure that could not be lost again. Narka remained farther back, his massive, mineral figure outlined against the wall, in a silence that was not empty, but the weight of mountains waiting to speak. At the opposite end, Helena and Selena watched, their glacial gazes piercing through every breath.

Sebastián drew a deep breath, allowed the flow of Qi to descend until extinguished. The Veil reacted at once: the walls vibrated, the mirrors splintered inward, and the entire reflection collapsed like glass shattered under water. The penumbra folded in on itself, and in a blink the real world emerged.

The cold air of the real room struck him harshly. Sebastián appeared physically in the middle of the space, standing before the stretcher where Valentina rested. The contrast was violent: the white lights of the operating room bathed him, revealing the state of his bloodied body, his clothes torn to rags, the skin still regenerating in a slow struggle.

Valentina remained asleep, her chest rising in a weak but steady rhythm. On the verge of waking, her fragility filled the room with a different tension: no longer was it threat that weighed there, but the edge of restrained hope. Virka did not take her eyes off her, as if every breath of the girl were her own. Her fingers tensed on the edge of the stretcher, ready to hold her even if she fell in dreams. Narka, motionless, watched without a sound, golden eyes reflecting what others could not say. Helena and Selena, several steps away, kept their supervision with distant calm, the discipline of control that grants no truces.

protective edge:

—Have you already eliminated the Profane?

Sebastián held her gaze, steady in the midst of his wounds. His voice came out deep, but clear:

—Yes. It's already eliminated. —He paused briefly, breathing deeply before adding—. It was stronger than I expected.

The hardness of the truth lingered in the air for a moment. Sebastián lowered his eyes toward Valentina and continued:

—But now nothing remains that would keep her from waking safely.

Narka was the next to speak, his grave tone resounding like stones shifting beneath the earth:

—Tell me… did it activate its spiritual form?

Sebastián nodded. The memory of that vision still haunted his blood.

—Yes. It took on a gigantic form, a squid of condensed energy. It wasn't a physical body… it was something else, something that didn't entirely belong to this plane.

Narka closed his eyelids for a second, as if confirming something he had expected to hear.

—That is the true form of the Profane. Malignant spirits that hide their essence until despair forces them to reveal it. —He opened his eyes, fixed on Sebastián—. Absorbing that kind of energy will serve you in the future. Spiritual power is not a poison: it can also be cultivation.

The words hung in the room like an omen.

It was then that Selena rose, the sound of her chair against the floor tightening the air. Her metallic gray eyes pierced Sebastián with coldness, devoid of any emotion.

—The time that passed was long —she said—. When you entered the Veil it was dawn. Now it is midmorning. Nine… perhaps ten. The fight lasted hours. Far too prolonged.

The statement was not reproach, but verification. Helena intervened next, her reserved voice as clear as the edge of a scalpel:

—Are you truly well?

Sebastián did not hesitate.

—I am exhausted, but I will survive. What matters is that Valentina is stable. —His gaze returned to the girl for an instant, before adding with practical bluntness—. I need new clothes. Mine didn't endure.

The remark was no triviality. The evidence was before them all: the black military-cut pants, torn by multiple perforations, the fitted shirt shredded in irregular lines, still stuck to the skin damp with blood. The material Draila had granted them was more resistant than common fabric, but it was not armor. It had reached its limit. Sebastián remained standing, covered by those tattered garments, and beneath them his body still showed how the muscle fibers were slowly closing, how the skin stretched in living patches.

Selena pulled out her phone with a controlled movement, and without changing her tone ordered that new clothes be brought. Then she looked at him again, firm:

—You will remain here at rest.

Helena nodded in silence, while both directed their gaze toward him, watching how the Indomitable Body continued working. Muscles stitched themselves in tense threads, veins sealed under invisible pulses, skin restructured itself centimeter by centimeter, in a process that seemed as cruel as it was inevitable.

The room was wrapped in a heavy silence. The focus of all was Sebastián, standing in the center, holding himself in precarious yet stable balance. Valentina breathed, on the verge of waking. Virka did not let go of her, absolute guardian in fragility. Narka provided the silent key regarding the spiritual. Selena and Helena maintained control.

The atmosphere was dark, dense, as if the battle had not entirely ended. Victory was there, yes, but its echoes still pulsed in flesh, in breath, in the very room where tension had not dissipated.

And in the midst of it all, Sebastián remained upright, with the weight still marked on his skin, but with the certainty that the most important thing had endured: the girl still lived, and he, though broken, remained standing.

The silence thickened in the room. Every breath of Valentina became the center of the scene, a fragile rhythm that kept everyone in balance. Virka leaned toward her, red eyes fixed on the barely perceptible rise of her chest, as if with her gaze she could force the air to keep entering those tiny lungs. Narka, motionless, seemed carved in stone, though his golden eyes watched without blinking. Helena maintained her composure, arms crossed in the farthest corner, and Selena stepped forward, as if the calm she had sustained until then had only been a prelude to the inevitable.

Valentina slept, unaware of it all, but her stillness was the center of a tension none could ignore. The battle outside had ended, but within the room another was about to begin, less visible and no less dangerous.

Selena stopped beside the stretcher. Her eyes, cold, scanned Valentina and then settled on Virka, without a glimmer of softness, only the certainty that the time had come to speak. Her voice cut the air with surgical precision:

—You have already decided to adopt her. Good. Then tell me, Virka… how do you plan to care for her?

It was not a question to open debate. It was a direct strike, a demand disguised as simple curiosity.

Virka lifted her head slowly. Her lips curved just slightly in a gesture that was not a smile, but a warning. The beast's gaze shone with intensity.

—I will care for her with my life. —Each word fell like a stone into dark water—. Nothing will touch her while I breathe.

The answer was pure instinct, possession, a promise of steel and blood. But Selena's voice did not tremble when she returned the blow:

—That is instinct. Not a plan. A daughter needs more than a beast willing to bite.

The silence that followed was cut by Virka's half-dark smile, where fangs seemed to show with every unspoken syllable.

—Instinct is the only thing that never fails. —Her red eyes looked like embers burning in the gloom—. When everyone flees, I will remain here.

The clash was not shouted, but its weight was physical, like two forces pushing without moving an inch. Sebastián, exhausted, barely turned his face to observe them: he knew he should not intervene. This duel was not fought with weapons or techniques, but with what defined each of them.

Selena tilted her head, barely a gesture, and her tone grew even more cutting:

—And when the Profanes return? When the danger is not an isolated attack, but days of stalking? Do you think growling and resisting will be enough?

Virka did not back down. The answer came loaded with fierce bluntness:

—If I resist, she lives. I need nothing more.

Narka blinked slowly, as one who measures the density of each word, but remained silent. Helena pressed her lips together, evaluating, without taking sides. In the middle of the room, the air vibrated with a tension that did not need shouting to be unbearable.

Selena took another step toward Virka. The difference between them was brutal: one cold as a sheet of glass, the other burning like a cornered animal. The first with words that dissected, the second with instinct that roared in every glance.

—You will protect her as a beast protects its young —Selena said, in a dry, almost whispered voice—, but that guarantees nothing. Instinct can break too.

Virka leaned forward, her face inches from hers, with that ferocity that did not need to raise its voice:

—Instinct has been enough until now. She survived because she resisted. And she will resist with me.

Valentina's breathing marked the rhythm of the tension. The slight movement of her chest seemed ridiculous in the face of the magnitude of the clash, but it was the reason for everything.

Selena held Virka's gaze a few seconds longer, without blinking, before closing the conversation with a frigid sentence:

—Then you better hope your instinct never fails. Because if it does, she dies.

There was no reply. Virka simply let her blazing gaze speak: promise, threat, truth. In her eyes burned something that needed no words, enough to fill the room with contained danger.

Silence thickened once more. Narka watched calmly, Helena remained distant, Sebastián endured in silence the weight of his own body. And in the midst of them all, Valentina kept sleeping, breathing slowly, unaware of the edge of that dispute that had already divided the forces around her life.

The entire room became an invisible frontier: on one side, cold calculation; on the other, bestial instinct. And the girl, in the center, marking with every breath the rhythm of that silent war that was only beginning.

The air remained heavy, motionless, as if even the electric lights feared to flicker. Sebastián, his skin still open in fissures slowly stitching under the pulse of his Indomitable Body, stayed upright, anchored in his resistance. The metallic smell of fresh blood mixed with the sterile disinfectant of the clinic, a contrast that made every second feel unreal. Narka, as immovable as a forgotten colossus, let his shadow fall over the corner he occupied. Helena, arms crossed, kept her eyes fixed on the center of the scene, calculating and distant. Virka, by contrast, leaned toward the stretcher, every fiber of her body tense, as if her mere nearness could hold the girl on that thin thread between life and nothingness.

It was then that the thread trembled.

Valentina's breathing changed. Just a broken gasp, a slight disruption in the rhythm they had all heard as constant until that instant. An invisible flicker stirred her closed eyelids, and the small muscles of her face contracted as if answering a distant echo. That minimal tremor made the entire room lean forward, not with bodies, but with attention.

The girl's eyes began to open with painful slowness. The white light of the operating room, raw, inhuman, pierced into them like blades. She blinked, confused, breathing with difficulty. The world she found was not hers. She recognized nothing; there was no home in those cold walls nor safety in the figures surrounding her. Panic appeared at once, like a reflex memory of all the blows, the screams, the escapes. Her instinct commanded her to flee, but her body did not respond: she was too weak, too broken.

The blurred vision began to capture faces. The first, Sebastián, standing before her: a bloodied giant, skin scarred, muscles tense beneath the tatters of black clothing. To a child's eyes, he was no savior, but a monster freshly emerged from an impossible war. The second shadow was Narka: a mineral mass, golden eyes unblinking, a mountain's presence seeming to watch her from centuries away. Then Helena and Selena, in the background: icy silhouettes, without tenderness, with the sharp calm of those who evaluate everything, even the life of a child, as part of a calculation.

Terror took hold of Valentina. She shrank weakly on the stretcher, breath ragged, gaze darting from face to face without finding refuge. For a second, she believed this could not be real. That she had died under the violence of the Profane, and what she now saw was only a confused dream after death.

But among that sea of hostile figures, her gaze stopped.

Virka was there, leaning toward her, red eyes glowing in the half-light. They were not human eyes, they did not offer the sweetness a child seeks, but in that gaze there was no contempt. No rejection. It was not the cold gesture of someone who judges or casts aside. Deep in her memory, a recollection lit up: that night when, fleeing, she crossed paths with Virka, and she had not been expelled by hatred, but stopped without words, steered away from danger without being treated as garbage. That imprint, invisible yet indelible, now returned with force.

Valentina's breathing faltered. Her eyes filled with tears she did not know were of fear or relief. With impossible effort for such a fragile body, she lifted her hand. The arm trembled, every centimeter an unbearable weight. The small fingers opened as if they were made of glass, reaching toward the only presence that did not feel like an enemy.

The whole room held its breath.

The trembling hand reached Virka's face and touched it. It was a minimal brush, barely a contact on the skin, but the gesture was so real it tore through the tension of all.

Virka froze. The beast breathing within her, always ready to roar or tear, went mute. The red eyes, accustomed to radiating threat, burned with a different intensity: she did not know whether to pull the hand away, roar, cry, or simply stay still. The skin where the girl touched her burned as if that fragile contact were fire.

Sebastián watched, grave, the gesture. He said nothing, but deep within he recognized the weight of that instant: no blow, no technique, no victory was as brutal as the trembling trust of that hand. Helena and Selena exchanged a quick glance. There was no tenderness in them: what they saw was a bond sealed in a second, a tie that could be as powerful as it was dangerous. Narka did not move a muscle, but in his heavy silence it was evident he understood: he had just witnessed the birth of something irrevocable.

The girl, with trembling lips, barely opened her mouth. Her voice came out like a broken thread:

—Is… this a dream?

The words were so fragile they seemed to dissolve in the air. Yet they resounded like tolling bells.

Valentina's arm fell, exhausted, onto the sheet. Her eyes remained open, fixed on Virka, as if only in her lay the possibility of an answer. Virka did not speak. She did not know how. Her gaze burned, and in the silence of her trembling breath there was a promise: she would never let that contact break.

The atmosphere of the room transformed. Valentina was awake, but beyond that, she had marked the destiny of those around her. She had touched a face and in doing so had broken the frontier that kept her alone.

The child's breathing remained weak, yet steady. The entire room stayed expectant, as though the whole world waited for the answer to that whisper. No one spoke. No one moved. The newborn bond weighed heavier than any word.

And so, amid cold lights, dried blood, and exhausted bodies, the first gesture of belonging Valentina had ever known was silently sealed. A brush of a hand, a whispered doubt, and a destiny that could no longer turn back.

The room remained suspended in a silence that was not stillness, but weight. The cold lights quivered faintly over the bodies, as if they too feared to illuminate what was happening there. The air carried the tension of all that was left unsaid: open wounds, unspoken promises, doubts in the eyes of all present.

Valentina lay on the stretcher, so small she seemed lost among the sheets. Her breathing was weak, broken, as if each inhalation were a battle against her own body. Her eyes, still wet and trembling, wandered across the room. Sebastián stood before her, a colossus marked by blood, with shreds of cloth clinging to his skin like fresh scars. To the girl, that figure was no refuge, but threat. To her left, Narka loomed in silence, stone-like, golden eyes watching without blinking: too vast, too inhuman for her childish mind to grasp. Farther back, Helena and Selena waited immovable, rigid figures of distant authority, whose eyes judged without offering warmth.

Everything was foreign. Everything was hostile.

Only one face, leaning near, held her to the present. Virka. Her red eyes burned with an intensity that could not be mistaken for sweetness, yet neither for hatred. There was no human tenderness in her expression, but neither was there rejection. She was fire that did not burn, danger that did not cast away. In that gaze, Valentina found something different: a crack in the wall of the world.

Her throat burned. Her lips trembled before forming the question that escaped in a thread of voice, almost inaudible:

—Why… are you here?

It was more than a question. It was the summary of her entire life: the bewilderment of someone used to being left behind.

The answer came without hesitation. Virka did not avert her gaze, did not soften her tone, did not try to convince her. Her words came out dry, heavy, charged with instinct:

—I was looking for you.

There was no falter. Every syllable rang like iron striking stone. It was not comfort, it was a sentence.

Valentina blinked, disbelieving. The air weighed on her. Her body trembled under the simple burden of those words. No one had ever said anything like it. Before she could grasp it, Virka spoke again, with the same edge:

—I will never cast you out again. You will stay with me.

The girl felt a knot in her chest. Her eyes filled with tears without understanding why. She stammered another word, weak, with a broken voice:

—Always…?

That always fractured in the air, small, fragile, yet heavy with the weight of an entire life of abandonment. It was the plea of one who had never known permanence.

Virka did not answer with another phrase. The intensity of her eyes said everything. Burning red, unbreakable. The silence was an oath.

The effect reached everyone. Sebastián did not intervene: he understood that instant did not belong to him, and his silence was acknowledgment. Helena watched with her distant clarity, knowing this marked a course impossible to erase. Selena, severe, showed no visible reaction, but in her mind she had already registered the fact as an inevitable calculation: that girl was bound to Virka, and nothing would change it. Narka, still, with his golden eyes, seemed to accept what had happened as one contemplates the birth of something as inevitable as the tide.

Valentina closed her eyes for a few seconds, afraid everything would unravel. When she opened them, Virka was still there. The girl raised a weak hand, just a clumsy movement over the sheet, seeking to confirm that this presence would not vanish. She did not reach to touch her, but the gesture was enough.

Virka remained leaning, unmoving, like a wall that does not yield.

The room changed. The tension was no longer that of battle nor of the earlier confrontation. It was something else: the birth of a bond none of those present could deny. A silent pact, without ceremony or tender words, forged in the clash between the absolute fragility of a broken child and the wild determination of a beast.

Valentina breathed with difficulty, but the air had a different rhythm. The fear did not vanish, but over it something new began to grow: the first seed of trust, as fragile as it was impossible to tear away.

No one spoke. No one dared interrupt. Because they all knew that in that instant something greater than their wills had been sealed.

A broken girl had found someone who would not let her go.

And a beast had spoken, without tenderness but with truth, the first oath impossible to break.

The silence that followed was not relief, but weight. It seemed as though the room itself had held its breath along with them. The faint hum of the lights, the almost imperceptible vibration of the machine still marking the ambient temperature, the smell of disinfectant—all of it was there, but beneath, as in a background the body ignored to hear something else. The only thing audible was the girl's breathing, that fragile rhythm that, for the first time, was not alone.

Valentina touched Virka's skin again as if repeating a password. This time it was no accidental brush: she opened her fingers and laid them on the back of Virka's hand, feeling the warmth, the tension, the firmness of a muscle that did not belong to an ordinary human. The surface was soft, but beneath it vibrated something animal, a watchful stillness. The girl guided those trembling fingers to the lines of the knuckles and stopped there, with a concentration that held nothing of play: she traced them millimeter by millimeter, as if counting scars that were not hers and, in counting them, made them less sharp.

Virka did not move. The ancient impulse to pull away, to protect with her teeth, tightened like a cord in her gut and stayed there, halted. She drew a slow breath and let that weight of instinct turn into stillness. If the girl needed to touch, then let her touch. If she needed to confirm with her fingers what the world had denied her with words, then let her confirm it. Her red eyes, so prone to announcing danger, stayed fixed on hers without shining with threat. She did not know how to put tenderness into her mouth, but her body knew how to hold without harming.

The small hand slipped to the pulse. Valentina pressed there with a timidity that hurt, as if measuring a heartbeat to understand if time would continue. When she felt Virka's pulse steady and firm, she exhaled for the first time less brokenly. She allowed herself another gesture: she slid her palm to the inside of the beast's hand and held it. It was a clumsy grip, fingers without strength, but behind that weakness was a clear command: don't leave.

The rest of the room—Sebastián, still standing like a fierce, badly stitched column; Narka, stone breathing; Helena and Selena, sheathed knives—remained at the edge of the frame. There was no need for movement. In that stillness, each understood there was no ritual greater than that of an accepted hand.

—Who are you? —Valentina asked at last, without averting her eyes from Virka's. Her voice came out in tatters, frayed at the edges, but held by the thread of air she could gather—. Why… did you look for me?

Virka did not need to think about her answer. Words, when true, demanded no adornment. She lowered her chin just enough so the girl would not have to lift her eyes so high, and spoke.

—My name is Virka —she said, without ceremony—. I looked for you because we wanted a daughter.

The word daughter seemed too large for that room. It bounced off the walls as if unsure where to settle and ended up resting on the girl's chest, which received it like a blow and a balm at once. Valentina blinked, bewildered. No one had ever called her daughter. No one had ever wanted that word attached to her fragile body.

—I didn't look for you because you were easy —Virka went on, in the same flat voice—. I looked for you because you were broken and still breathing. Because you hid when the world demanded you die, and you did not obey. Because you are like me: you don't give up.

The girl didn't know what to do with that comparison. She didn't feel like anyone; she felt less, she felt leftover. She swallowed, opened her mouth and closed it again, unable to form another why. Instead, she clumsily squeezed Virka's fingers, as if there, in that grip, lay the answer to everything.

—And because I wanted to find you —Virka added after a pause that was a blade—. I will not let you go.

Valentina nodded without knowing she nodded. Her eyes filled with water with a speed that surprised her. She let it fall without a sound, as if shame were too tired to arrive. Her breathing became short, trembling, but not from panic: it was the body learning another rhythm.

Virka raised the girl's hand a few centimeters, carefully, and nodded with her chin forward, where the bloodied colossus remained almost motionless.

—He —she said, and her voice became a stroke—. He is Sebastián.

The girl turned her face. Fear bit her throat immediately. Sebastián was not a kindly figure in his state: skin still open in fissures tightened by the discipline of the Indomitable Body; threads of dried blood stuck to the folds; the shirt shredded like a confession; eyes lit with fatigue and something older, something that beat dark and had no name. Valentina wanted to hide in the sheet, as if that could erase him.

—He is my companion —Virka said, without metaphors—. He fought so that we could be here. He saw you when I saw you. He also looked for you. He wanted to find you.

Sebastián did not take a step. He did not speak. He did nothing that could increase that fear. He only lowered his gaze a fraction, as if depositing his strength on the floor so as not to overwhelm the air. In his silence there was a taut promise: to wait as long as necessary so as not to seem a monster before such small eyes.

—I am afraid —Valentina whispered, without entirely averting her gaze.

—It's okay —Virka replied—. You may be. I will bear yours and mine.

The words were not consolation; they were ground. The girl leaned her back a little more on the stretcher, finding a place where fear could settle without pushing her into the void.

—And he —Virka continued, indicating with a minimal gesture toward the mountain-shadow—, is Narka.

Valentina looked at the mass. The room seemed to grow smaller around that presence. If Sebastián was a weapon wrapped in flesh, Narka was the memory of a rock that had learned to watch. The golden eyes, without an evident pupil, regarded her with a stillness that was not indifference. The girl shrank even more, but her fingers did not release Virka's.

—He is family —Virka said—. He does not speak much. But if someone tries to touch you, he will sink the earth to swallow them.

Narka did not change his expression. He only inclined his head just enough for the golden gleam to draw a warmer stroke across the shadow. In his way, it was a bow to a new life.

Valentina breathed through her mouth, short and shallow. She wanted to ask something but didn't know what. Instead of words, she reached with her free hand for Virka's wrist and held it, higher than the pulse, like someone climbing a tree who needs to feel the branch will not give way.

The movement dragged her gaze toward the back of the room, where two figures still gathered light at their edges. Something in the girl, perhaps that curiosity that survives hunger, peeked out.

—And them? —she asked in a thread of voice—. Who are they?

Virka took a second before answering. It was a brief second, but enough for a blade-shadow to cross her face: a flash of jealousy, of that unease that made her tense when the world placed her people in others' hands. Then she spoke, with the same frankness.

—Their names are Helena and Selena —she said, without softening—. They're not mine. I don't like them. But they protected you. —She breathed—. While I couldn't and Sebastián was fighting, they kept you alive. That's why you're here.

The girl looked at them as one looks at things not yet understood. Helena held that look with surgical neutrality; Selena, with the metal of someone who permits no cracks. There were no smiles. None were needed. The truth had already been spoken: those two figures, so alien to Virka's instinct, had held the girl's thread of life when no one else could reach.

—Are they family too? —Valentina pressed, as if she needed to arrange the world in concentric circles.

—No —said Virka, and the word fell clean—. But they're on this side now. They helped bring you here. That's enough.

There was no sweetness in the acknowledgment, but it existed: a stone-hard acceptance, another line in the map of those who would not be enemies for now. Selena did not respond. Helena did not either. It was enough for the air to register that new geometry.

The girl, exhausted, rested her forehead against the fingers still holding Virka's hand. She passed her fingertip over the palm, as if she wanted to memorize it. The beast, who did not know how to mother, understood the gesture with the precision of a law: it was the way a living being clung to another not to sink.

—You're not alone —Virka said then, bending just enough for her voice to reach the child's skin—. Now you have a family. —She added the pieces without drama—. I am yours. Sebastián too. Narka too. They protected you because they understood you belong here.

The word belong opened a door in the girl's chest. It was not large, but it let air through. Valentina felt it as one feels a weak sun on the back after a night far too long.

—Did you really… want a daughter? —she asked, and had to swallow hard so the phrase wouldn't fade away.

—Yes —Virka replied—. And we chose you.

The girl closed her eyes for a moment. In that brief darkness, the world did not strike her. When she opened them, Virka was still there. She had not vanished. She was no mirage. Then the beast asked, because the time had come to no longer circle around the center.

—Do you want to stay with us? —she said without adornment—. Do you want to be our daughter?

The phrase hung suspended like a rope stretched over an abyss. Silence became dense again, but it was no longer the silence of fear; it was that of decision. Valentina's breathing became visible, a minimal rise and fall in the fabric that covered her. Her lips parted, her eyes moved toward Sebastián, then toward Narka, then toward the background. They returned to Virka. Each trajectory said the same thing: really?

The whole room leaned its attention toward that point. Sebastián, even with pain bristling in his fibers, held back the impulse to approach. He knew his figure could weigh too much in that second. Narka did not move; his stillness was a way of not intruding. Helena and Selena, distant, seemed photographed by a light that does not forgive. Everything was ready for a small word that, nevertheless, would split the girl's world in two.

Then a phone rang.

It was not a shrill sound —Selena would not tolerate shrillness— but clean, precise, a ring that sliced the membrane of that instant like a scalpel. She brought a hand to her pocket with a naturalness that did not break her posture. She answered without fully taking her eyes off the scene.

—Speak —she said. She listened. She added no questions. She ended the call.

The metal of her voice approached Sebastián with measured steps. She stopped at a distance that did not intrude and communicated, without superfluous inflections:

—Your clothes have arrived. —Brief pause—. If you want to change, now is the moment. It will be better for the girl.

It was not an order. It was logistics. But it was the kind of logistics that held up the world when decisions stretched it tight. Sebastián looked at her for a heartbeat and nodded. He understood. Not out of vanity —his body knew shame too well to pretend—, but because presenting himself to Valentina without blood or rips was a gesture toward her, a way of telling her: not all giants are monsters.

Before moving, he took a slow step toward the cot. He did not raise his voice. He did not seek to earn a glance. He stopped at Virka's side and spoke from that tenuous edge where a colossus asks for permission.

—I'll change —he said, and his deep voice did not scrape the air—. I'll be back in a moment. —He added, so the girl would hear without fear pushing her further—: We're not leaving. I'm just stepping out for a moment.

Valentina glanced at him only sideways, still locked on the edge of her own fear. She said nothing. Her hand gripped Virka's with the minimal strength she had. The beast inclined her head slightly toward Sebastián, simple acceptance.

—Go —Virka said—. I'll hold her here.

There was no shadow of doubt in that phrase. It was a license given by one who understands that to hold is not a soft verb. Helena blinked without asking to speak; she understood it wasn't her place to intervene. Selena had already turned toward the door, the phone once again in her pocket, her body aligned with the decision.

Sebastián walked beside her. Each step was measured by the pain of muscles still stitching themselves beneath the skin, but he did not allow that clumsiness to show too much. He wasn't going to gift the girl any more fear. The door opened with a contained whisper. Before crossing it, he turned his face a fraction. His eyes, without igniting, sought Valentina's not to demand, but to promise something simple: I'll be back.

The door closed behind their backs. The sound was small, but in the room it seemed to expand like a gentle wave. And then, without the colossus and without Selena's metal, the air changed texture. Virka and the girl remained at the center of the frame, a wall and a new branch. Narka, like a guardian in the half-light. Helena, silent witness to a bond she would not dissect. And the question, still floating, asking for an answer that—now without interruptions—might find its form.

Valentina did not speak at once. Words, when they are necessary, refuse to come out in haste. Instead, she returned to the first gesture. With her index finger, she drew a line on Virka's palm, slowly, as if writing her name without knowing letters. Then she touched the base of the thumb, paused, returned to the knuckles. That tiny journey was a map. At the end, she pressed her open hand against the beast's and nudged it slightly toward her face, as if seeking for the world to stick to her skin so she wouldn't get lost.

—I won't disappear —Virka said, guessing the exact fear—. Even if you close your eyes.

The girl obeyed that unspoken instruction: she closed them. The hand against her cheek burned just enough to be life. When she opened them again, the red of Virka's eyes was still there, just as unmoving, just as dangerous to anyone who wasn't her. And for the first time since she had awakened, Valentina let out a breath that wasn't escape.

—Can I… touch your hair? —she asked suddenly, with the disordered and exact logic of children who recognize in fragments.

The question unsettled Virka for a fraction of a second. Not from modesty. From surprise. She nodded. The girl raised her hand with effort and caught a dark lock. The texture calmed her in a mysterious way. It wasn't the softness itself; it was the permission. That chain of acts—hand, pulse, palm, hair—built a truth that no one would take from her with a scream.

—If you say you won't disappear… —murmured Valentina, still looking at that lock of hair as if it were a river—, then… maybe yes…

She didn't finish the sentence. She didn't need to. Virka understood that this fracture was also a "yes" searching for form. She did not rush. Oaths that matter are not pushed. She waited, with the tense stillness of one who has learned to be a wall instead of a blade.

In the corner, Narka finally shifted the weight of one leg. To anyone else it would have been imperceptible; to Virka, it was a low note saying: I'm here. Helena lowered her gaze so as not to overflow the frame any further. Selena, in the hallway, gave short instructions to the staff carrying the bag with clothes: black, size, clean, no factory smell, fast.

The room, stripped and heavy like that, became a strange place: an operating room where it wasn't flesh being operated on, but the right to belong. The girl, still with the question hanging, did not realize she had stopped trembling so much. The world, with its usual cruelty, waited behind the door. But right there, in that slice of air, life was doing something less brilliant and more important than conquering: it was binding.

—When I return —Virka said, not knowing why she used the future—, I'll tell you the same thing again. —And she repeated, so the world would have no excuses—: I'm not going to let you go.

Valentina closed her fingers around the beast's, a tiny bird's claw wrapping living metal. The hanging phrase —Do you want to stay with us?— remained there, suspended, but it no longer hurt as before. It had the shape of a home yet to be lived in.

________________________

END OF CHAPTER 39

The path continues…

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