Chapter 103: Chapter 101 The Three Variants of the Hammer
The clash finished happening. There was no transition nor space for the Veil to breathe between one charge and the other. Narka and the blond met in the highest part of that alien sky, and the impact turned the distance between them into a living fracture. The five gravitational circles that spun around Narka struck against the prismatic figure wrapped in red-black fire, and for a minimal fraction everything seemed to remain still, compressed into a point where neither of the two forces accepted retreating.
Then, the Veil split into two colors. On one side, Narka’s Qi expanded like an immense mineral mass, brown tones pierced by light orange flashes, compact earth and gravity mixed until forming a pressure capable of sinking the sky. On the other, the blond’s energy burned in dark red with blackish edges, a geometric and sharp flame that did not seek to burn without direction, but to cut, penetrate and force its way through that which tried to crush it. Both forces collided without separating. They pushed each other. They bit each other. They rejected each other with such closed violence that the space between them began to twist, as if it were being squeezed by two incompatible wills.
Narka did not yield. Neither did the blond. The energy of both spread through the Veil like two opposing halves, filling the sky, covering the reflection of the sea and casting violent shadows over the lower immensity. Narka’s gravity pulled the enemy technique toward its center to crush it, while the blond’s red-black fire responded by tearing the edges of the mineral Qi, leaving cracks of dark heat over the brown and orange pressure. Neither managed to completely devour the other. Neither found definitive dominion. And precisely because of that the clash became more dangerous. It was not victory. It was failed containment.
The pressure reached its limit, and everything was released at once. The explosion was not clean. It was a brutal mixture of earth, fire, gravity and prismatic energy breaking in every direction. The sky of the Veil filled with a dirty light, split between incandescent brown and blackened red, and the wave that came out of that point descended with the violence of a poorly contained judgment. First it touched the reflection of the sea. Then it lifted it.
The water of the Veil opened in enormous circles, not like a natural tide, but like a surface torn upward from below. Great stretches evaporated upon contact with the mixed energy, leaving dark voids where there had once been waves. The pressure swept away entire layers of reflected water, disintegrated columns of foam and exposed deep zones that should never have been seen from the sky. There, for an instant, sunken forms appeared: remains of marine creatures of the Veil, enormous and ancient bodies, silhouettes of monsters that had remained hidden beneath that immensity. The wave dragged them without stopping, lifting them barely amid vapor and fragments before swallowing them again into the chaos.
On the other side, the force fell upon the reflected land. What remained of coast, roads, distant structures and fragments of city within the Veil was swept away in a single expansion. The wave advanced several kilometers, breaking the ground into enormous plates, ripping reflected towers from the base and reducing entire avenues to deformed lines. There was no common fire. There was pressure. There was matter bending under gravity and heat. Lifeless buildings twisted, sank and disappeared among clouds of dark dust, while the energy kept running until it lost strength in the distance, leaving behind an open, mutilated and silent landscape.
Then the explosion began to rise. The vapor, the dust and the remnants of energy ascended in disorderly layers, as if the Veil were trying to expel from itself the damage received. For a few seconds nothing could be seen clearly. Only brown currents, orange flashes, red embers and black strokes floating among cracks of space. Then the cloud opened.
Narka was still in motion. His colossal body crossed the upper zone of the explosion without losing height, spinning with an impossible speed for such a large mass. The black and gray plates of his shell shone among residues of energy, and the incandescent red veins seemed to respond to the damage of the surroundings with a calm older than the disaster. He was not advancing in a straight line. He moved with heavy and precise changes, cutting through the air of the Veil while the blond’s attacks fell upon him from different angles.
The Prismatic Vertices had separated again. They were no longer a single spear. They were burning blades scattered around Narka, each one covered by that concentrated red flame that blackened their edges and left dark furrows as it passed. They attacked at hypersonic speed, appearing and disappearing among the remnants of the explosion, searching for the joints of the shell, the flanks, the head, the colossal legs, any point where the mineral defense could be forced. They did not strike at random. The blond directed them with cold precision, trying to turn the breadth of Narka’s body into a disadvantage.
It did not work immediately. Narka tilted his mass to one side and the first vertex passed grazing a dark quartz spine, cutting only the trail of energy that surrounded it. Another descended from above, straight toward his head, but a brief sphere of gravitational Qi emerged before his golden eyes and pushed it off trajectory before the impact. A third crossed the air from below, seeking an opening between his legs, and Narka spun with all the weight of his body, letting the attack pass through the void while a current of gravity diverted it toward the destroyed sea.
The blond appeared in the distance, suspended over the zone where the sky still preserved recent cracks. His white suit remained intact, but the calm of his face was no longer the same as in the apartment nor that of the infiltration. He was still controlled, yes, but his green eyes were tenser, more alert, forced to follow each correction of Narka with a concentration that could no longer be disguised as superiority. From his position, he moved the Vertices with minimal gestures of his fingers, as if each triangle responded to an exact order before even being completely thought.
Narka saw him. He did not need to turn his head fully. His golden eyes found him through the dust and residual energy, and for an instant the blond felt that immense pressure fall over him again, not as a direct technique, but as simple recognition. A gaze that weighed. A gaze that did not seek to intimidate because it did not need to. A gaze that said, without words, that within the Veil height did not belong to the one who flew, but to the one who could hold the world beneath his own presence.
The Vertices launched themselves again. Narka advanced toward them. The reflected sea was still evaporating below in great open zones. The destroyed land remained far away, turned into an extended ruin. Between both, in the broken sky of the Veil, the fight stopped seeming like a first exchange and began to take its true form: a brutal pursuit between the precision of the Hammer and the ancient weight of the Guardian.
The five Vertices closed the distance. For a minimal fraction they seemed inevitable: five burning, red-black blades, launched from different angles against Narka’s colossal mass. The Veil still trembled from the previous destruction, the reflected sea continued evaporating below in great open wounds and the distant ruin of the land remained like a dark edge on the horizon. But the blond no longer looked at the damage. He looked at Narka.
And smiled.
Not with broad arrogance, but with a small, precise, prepared cruelty. His fingers barely moved. Then the Vertices disappeared. They did not go out. They did not retreat. They left no trail. They simply ceased to exist before sight, as if the attack had never been there.
For anyone else, that void would have been enough. For Narka, no. His golden eyes shone with an ancient intensity, and from his body a wave of spiritual Qi was released, deep and dry, spreading in every direction like an invisible seismic jolt. It did not destroy the air. It did not move the sea. It did not seek to crush matter. It ran through the Veil beneath appearance, touching what remained hidden, reading presence, trajectory and intention.
The wave crossed the empty space before him and, as it did, five figures were marked within the nothingness. The Vertices were still there. They were coming head-on. Hidden. Sharp. Too close.
Narka disappeared before they could close over him. His colossal mass erased itself from the point where it had been with an impossible abruptness for a body six and a half meters long, leaving behind only a sinking of pressure and a brief distortion in the air. The five Vertices crossed the empty place where they should have found his head, his flanks and his legs, cutting only the residue of Qi that remained in the trajectory.
Microseconds later, Narka reappeared above the blond.
Falling.
He was not descending like a creature losing height. He was descending like a mountain thrown from the sky with its own will. His black and gray shell, crossed by incandescent red veins, suddenly occupied the blond’s upper vision, and the gravitational Qi closed around his body to increase the weight of the fall. The Veil sank beneath that pressure even before the impact. The air became stone. The distance between them was reduced to a sentence.
The blond did not retreat. The smile disappeared, but not the calculation. Above him appeared two new Vertices, different from the previous ones. They did not have the red-black fire nor the prismatic texture opened in multiple colors. Their surface was greenish, deep, crossed by electric pulses that seemed like thunder trapped inside a too-perfect geometry. Each point was sharp. Not only the front one. All of them. Top, bottom, sides, minor edges: every angle of those two triangles was made to cut, but the true threat was not in the edge, but in the waves they emitted.
Green, circular, rhythmic waves, like vibrations of silent thunder expanding from the core of each Vertex.
Narka impacted against them. The clash did not have the same nature as the previous ones. It was not earth against fire nor gravity against flame. It was weight against interference. Narka’s mass descended with a violence capable of crushing the sky, but the two greenish Vertices received the impact by releasing waves in every direction, concentric circles that expanded through the Veil and pierced the spiritual pressure that still emanated from the Guardian. The first wave trembled against his Qi. The second opened it into filaments. The third scattered it to the sides like invisible dust shaken by an impossible vibration.
Narka’s spiritual Qi did not disappear, but it was spread apart. The reading that had revealed the hidden Vertices fractured for an instant, interrupted by that greenish resonance that did not seek to destroy his body, but to contaminate the sense with which he perceived the hidden. Narka felt the interference pierce his spiritual pressure like a brief, uncomfortable, exact crack. It did not hurt like a wound. It bothered like an invasion. As if something alien had touched a part of his perception that should not be touched.
The blond lifted his gaze from below. For the first time since the combat began, his green eyes showed a truer satisfaction. Not for having won. Not yet. But for having confirmed that even a presence like Narka could be forced to adjust his reading. The two greenish Vertices continued holding the fall for one more instant, vibrating beneath the pressure of the colossal shell, releasing waves that expanded in ever wider rings.
Narka increased the weight.
The gravity around his body became denser. The Vertices creaked within their own green light, not like metal breaking, but like geometry subjected to a pressure for which it had been prepared, though not without cost. The waves became more violent. The space between them began to deform, trapped between the Guardian’s fall and the Hammer’s resonant defense. Below, the reflected sea opened again in circles, responding to the echo of the clash as if something enormous had struck its surface from the sky.
The blond extended one hand. The five hidden Vertices, already revealed by the previous spiritual wave, reappeared behind Narka, still wrapped in red-black fire. They did not attack immediately. They remained suspended, ready, surrounding his back and his flanks like blades awaiting an order.
Narka understood it. The golden eyes descended toward the blond with a fierce calm. That was not an exchange of force against force. The Hammer was changing the nature of each piece. Fire to pierce. Green to interfere. Invisibility to deceive sight. Geometry to divide space. Each Vertex was not only a shape, but a different property placed at the service of the same intention.
The blond remained beneath him, supported by his two greenish triangles, with his face cold, his white suit still intact and his hand extended toward the five blades that waited behind the Guardian. Narka remained above him, immense, heavy, with gravity accumulating around his shell. Between them, the green waves continued dispersing remnants of spiritual Qi in circles that grew weaker and weaker, while the red-black Vertices awaited the order to close in from behind.
The two greenish Vertices continued holding Narka’s fall for one more instant, trapped between the pressure of his colossal body and the resonance that they themselves released in ever wider circles. The blond did not try to escape immediately. He kept his hand extended, his gaze fixed upward and his shoulders firm beneath the white suit, as if every second of that pressure were being counted inside his head with cold precision. Narka’s gravity increased over him, heavy, ancient, almost absolute, and even so the blond’s expression did not fully break. He no longer smiled. He no longer pretended lightness. He only calculated.
Then he closed his fingers.
The green waves stopped expanding. For a minimal fraction, the entire vibratory field that the two Vertices had been releasing withdrew toward them with an inverse violence. The rings of energy, which before opened to disperse Narka’s spiritual Qi, returned upon themselves in microseconds, absorbed by the triangular structures like thunders forced to return to the point where they had been born. The space between Narka and the blond compressed. The greenish light became more intense, denser, more dangerous. The two Vertices creaked within their own geometry, not from weakness, but from accumulation.
The blond barely lifted his chin. The energy was released upward. It did not come out as an open explosion, but as a force of pure opposition, a vertical discharge that struck against Narka’s weight and pushed him from below with a dry brutality. The descending gravity and the ascending resonance collided at the same point, and for the first time since the Guardian had fallen upon him, Narka’s colossal mass was displaced. Not defeated. Not broken. Displaced. The greenish wave burst into a brief column that split the air of the Veil and sent the Guardian upward and backward with supersonic violence.
Narka was sent flying. His body spun over its own weight, enormous, mineral, monstrously heavy even while being launched. The black and gray plates of his shell cut through the spectral light of the Veil while the incandescent red veins left brief traces in the air. He did not lose control. The force had torn him from his trajectory, but not from himself. He spun once, twice, and in the midst of that rotation his earth and gravity Qi closed around his body again, correcting the displacement, braking the inertia, forcing the enemy impulse to die before turning it into a disorderly fall.
The blond moved at the same time. He did not wait for Narka to finish stabilizing. He advanced through the air with clean speed, placing himself in front of the Guardian’s trajectory before the space between them recovered calm. The two greenish Vertices separated from the impact zone and reintegrated behind him along with the other five. In a blink, the seven were aligned at his back, one beside the other, all in their base prismatic form, shining with that multiple and sharp texture that seemed to cut the light even when they remained motionless.
Narka finished stopping in front of him. For a few seconds, they were face to face again. The reflected sea remained open below in great dark wounds. Far away, the destroyed land of the Veil preserved the broken shape of the previous explosion. Between them, the air still trembled from the green discharge, from the interrupted gravity and from the pressure that Narka continued emanating without visible effort. The blond breathed once. He did not seem tired, but the tension in his green eyes was clearer now. He had forced the Guardian to retreat. That did not mean dominion. It only meant that he still had enough resources not to be crushed immediately.
—He really is strong —he said at last, with cold tranquility, without open mockery, without familiarity, without granting him human respect, but recognizing the fact with uncomfortable precision—. Enough to force me to use my seven Vertices.
The triangles behind him responded to the phrase with a slight pulse, as if the declaration were not ornament, but activation.
—And not only that —he continued, while his voice remained low, controlled, cutting—. I have also had to release three variants of them.
Narka did not respond. His golden eyes remained fixed on him, ancient, heavy, crossing the distance as if the blond’s words were barely noise before the next pressure. That seemed to be enough for the Hammer. His expression hardened by one degree, and the calm on his face stopped seeming like courtesy and became a sentence.
—But this ends here.
The seven Vertices moved. First, all of them maintained their base prismatic form for an instant, aligned behind the blond like a geometric crown. Then two of them moved slightly forward and began to change. The multicolored texture went out from the center toward the edges, devoured by a thick purple that did not shine like common energy, but rose inside the triangular structure like vertical smoke trapped in a perfect form. It was not fire. It was not thunder. It was a dark and silent density, a substance of vaporous appearance that ascended inside each Vertex without overflowing, as if the smoke had learned to obey angles.
The two purple Vertices trembled. Then they opened.
The triangular form came undone inward, not breaking, but folding over itself until it became a human silhouette. The purple smoke compacted into arms, torso, legs, face, hair and clothing. In a matter of seconds, where two triangles had floated before, two exact copies of the blond appeared. Same golden hair. Same green eyes. Same ivory-white suit. Same straight, elegant and cold posture. There was no visible difference between them and the original, neither in height, nor in expression, nor in contained presence. The copies placed themselves on both sides of the blond, one to the right and one to the left, like reflections torn from a mirror that no longer needed a surface.
The other five Vertices changed as well, but not toward human form. They recovered the red-black variant, covering themselves with compressed fire until their edges darkened and their points once again seemed like blades destined to pierce. They remained behind the three identical bodies, distributed like waiting knives, moving barely within the air of the Veil with patient precision.
Narka observed the complete formation. Three blonds at the front. Five burning Vertices behind. A geometry of deception, cutting and multiplication placed before him like a more elaborate response than the previous ones. The Hammer did not seek only to attack him. It sought to divide his reading, force him to decide what was body, what was technique, what was intention and what was trap. It was a form of combat built to turn the enemy’s perception into a field of error.
Then Narka began to release more Qi.
It was not a sudden discharge. It was a tide. From the cracks of his shell, from the incandescent red veins, from the mineral depth of his entire body, the Qi of earth and gravity began to flow with a density that made the air around him small. Brown tones crossed by light orange flashes first extended like a pressure close to his body, then like a rising storm. The Veil responded. The reflected sea below sank in circles. The distant cracks of space vibrated. The distant ruin trembled as if an underground force were awakening beneath something that had already been destroyed.
The Qi continued rising. Around Narka, the energy grew until it seemed like an endless column, a vertical storm that ascended toward the sky of the Veil and touched it without asking permission. It did not have the blond’s technical elegance. It did not try to deceive, multiply or hide its nature. It was ancient, direct, immense power. A presence that did not need to divide itself into variants because its mere expansion already deformed the entire field.
The three blonds remained before him. The five red-black Vertices floated behind, ready. And Narka, wrapped in a storm of Qi that seemed to have no end, raised his pressure over the Veil as if he had just decided that the next exchange would not be a response, but a sinking.
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END OF Chapter 101
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