A few minutes earlier.
The fight had dragged on, and Mei tried, thought, and searched.
But her opponent was the most malevolent and highly intelligent human in combat.
Dante.
And at an opportune moment.
The entire battlefield succumbed to the dominant presence of Dante, shrouded by the Veil like a lord of nightmares. The air was thick, the light suffocated. Even the fire refused to burn.
Mei was swallowed by the Veil.
The pulsating, devastating darkness consumed her.
A place without laws where one second equaled thirty in the real world.
Temporal nullification and power nullification.
Only one king ruled there.
And everyone already knew his name.
Trapped, Mei's body burned from within, every fiber throbbing with the will to rebel. But even breathing was a superhuman effort—every thought was a conduit for pain, every memory of Akira trembled like a flame about to be extinguished.
Even so, she rose.
Before the Veil closed completely, she gathered all her strength.
A remnant, a solitary spark—and with it, an impossibly fast strike. A thread of plasma, dense and thin as a tear of the sun.
An entire energy concentrated and compressed to a single point.
It tore through the Veil. It didn't destroy it, but pierced it.
It touched Dante's navel.
No damage. Nothing but a tremor in the Veil's fabric, as if a whisper called back the silence.
He laughed.
— What will your last words be? — He asked, his voice echoing in the void like metal grinding on glass.
Mei just stared at him. Eyes burning like dying stars.
"The Veil nullified my strike... I really have no guarantees here..."
The Empress thought.
Dante took a step. The Veil widened, swallowing part of the rubble, opening a path to pure void.
Inside the dark prison, he was god. Implacable.
He felt her body before him—fragile, but alive.
— Congratulations — he began, toying with a strand of shadow on his fingertip — for being strong, I admire that and I congratulate you. But you know how it is… a good strategy changes everything.
He smiled, a smile shattered with sadistic pleasure.
And he began.
The first cuts came silently, invisibly—blades of abstraction emerging from the darkness, sliding over her body, tearing out spiritual energy. She felt it, but couldn't react.
Then came the visceral blows—black flames aligned with real blades—tearing flesh, incinerating tendons, molding pain into an absolute language. Each attack was executed with artistic precision, measured to prolong the suffering.
Mei, cornered, watched herself disintegrate.
And Dante loved it.
Silence reigned under the Veil, except for the sounds of the cuts.
She tried to scream, to react, but the Veil denied any basic right; all that remained was to feel the pain and agonize in silence.
The Veil was an infinite sea of darkness.
And in it, Dante reigned.
The shadowy chains coiled around Mei's body like serpents made of night. Her body was no longer intact—deep cuts crossed muscles and bones, black burns tore her skin, and the heat of her own blood was the only reminder that she was still alive.
Dante approached, step by step, like someone visiting a work of art about to be finished. His voice cut the silence.
— There is nowhere to run, Mei. — The words echoed like a sentence. — Tekio is too busy to come save you. And here... — he raised his hand, showing the Veil pulsing behind him — ...not even the Empress is capable of giving orders.
She stared at him, her eyes burning. Blood streamed down her chin, but her gaze did not yield.
— You fought well… — he continued, almost with respect. — You led as best you could. You have a measure of my respect for that.
A pause, as if the recognition were crueler than any blow.
— But it's over, Mei Nuhay.
The darkness concentrated in his palm.
It was a final blow—raw, corrupt energy sufficient not only to erase Mei from existence but to absorb her forever into the womb of the Abyss.
He smiled.
— I wonder what your power will taste like, Mei?
But, the instant he looked into those golden eyes, something bothered him.
They weren't the same eyes as before, when she was caught off guard and accepted death.
There was something new there—an absurd belief, a conviction that made no sense.
She believed she was going to get out of there.
Dante thought about it… but did not hesitate. The blow was about to fall.
And then, everything changed.
The Abyssal energy shuddered.
Unstable waves cut through the Veil, as if an external force was switching off the darkness in pieces. Breaches of real light opened in the black horizon. The ground began to crack, and Dante felt his control slipping through his fingers.
"Akira...?" he thought for a second, suspecting an internal block. But he soon realized it wasn't that.
The blow dissolved.
He looked ahead.
Mei, motionless… moved.
And that spark of movement made his blood run cold.
"She moved? It doesn't matter, I wounded her in multiple ways, she would have to regenerate first... and I can finish her with a simple attack."
He tried to conjure… but spat blood. His ears burned, and red tears streamed from his eyes. His control over his own body and spiritual energy had vanished—yanked out like a rug.
Before him, she advanced.
Bloody. Red.
But smiling.
Like a red sun in human form, ready to kill you.
An impossible smile.
"How is this possible? She shouldn't be able to regenerate...?"
"Doesn't she feel pain? I severed tendon connections that hinder locomotion and cause intense pain"
Her movement was deliberate, precise. Energy rose through every inch of her body, intensifying, accumulating in all parts—except in her fist.
Dante noticed.
And took half a step back.
"She wouldn't do that... it's suicide. Spending energy at that level, in this state, means no regeneration. It's impossible to fight like that."
"Attacking and regenerating is impossible"
"What insanity..."
But Mei knew that.
And she didn't care.
Dante was vulnerable. And that was all she needed.
An all or nothing, a window of imbalance that would decide whether Mei would be executed within that Veil or not.
She advanced. Her body arched. Her fist drew back like an arrow.
In the instant before impact, the accumulated energy was released.
The world exploded.
The Veil shattered like glass, and beams of sunlight cut through the darkness.
The sound was of something impossible—reality itself being torn apart by the impact.
"This woman… is insane!" Dante thought, in the thousandth of a second before the blow landed.
Mei had contained the spiritual current throughout her body and hadn't let it invade her right fist. But moments before the strike, that changed.
The spiritual current, released instantaneously, multiplied the force and potency tenfold. The Rising Sun—amplified by 1000%—aimed at Dante's thorax.
The sound of the fracture echoed like thunder.
Ribs burst, organs ruptured, and Akira's flesh burned under the impact.
Dante flew.
His body spun dozens of times, hurled through walls and concrete columns until he was pinned against a building some meters away.
All of that from the pressure of the wind alone.
Mei stood still.
Breathing with difficulty.
Bleeding as if every drop were her last.
The Veil was dissolving around her, ethereal veils fell, and the sun gradually illuminated that dark hell called the Veil.
Wounded.
But standing.
She smiled, spitting blood on the ground.
— I told you… I had an idea.
Mei breathed with difficulty, each word coming out with the metallic taste of blood in her mouth. Even so, she did not stop smiling.
She felt he was coming, that Dante would rise again soon perhaps, she felt the energy from the portal gaining strength.
But at this point, Mei was unshakable.
Dante had hit the building with such force that he was stuck, but what tormented him wasn't his physical position, but what he had just witnessed.
"How was that possible?"
Was all that ran through the King's head.
The battlefield still vibrated with the residual waves of the last blow. Dante, his body marked and his breathing heavy, felt something different within him—a disturbance, a subtle but fatal flaw in his energy. His regeneration and balance had been cut and weakened. His eyes sought Mei, who watched him with the fierce calm of one who had issued an impossible challenge.
— At first, I didn't even know if it would really work. — Mei spoke, her voice hoarse, laden with determination. — Your Veil weakened my strike. I was truly afraid, but even so, I had no other choice but to believe.
Dante frowned, doubt infiltrating his thoughts.
"How did she do that? What did she believe in?"
— I studied your every move, every nuance of the Veil. — She spoke firmly as a storm. — The control and energetic stability required to raise the Veil are insane. So much so that a minimal interference with the portal blocked the Veil at that moment.
There, I understood.
The words echoed in Dante with a new weight.
— Akira's Veil is simple. Yours… is an abyss. — Mei continued, her voice cutting the air. — It's not just you maintaining it, but the Abyss itself that you channel. Maintaining that requires a balance that borders on the impossible.
Balancing natural energy with abyssal energy while channeling a technique is equivalent to fusing a sun and a water planet.
Dante felt the truth weighing on his chest. That was what kept the Veil intact—a dance of cosmic forces he mastered with skill.
— So I bet everything on that. — Mei took a deep breath, her eyes burning with a fire beyond the physical. — I created a ray of energy—thin, concentrated, almost infinite in intensity.
She smiled, a cold, calculating smile.
— Don't burn the skin. Strike the molecules. Strike the essence. A chain reaction. Like a cancer spreading from within.
Dante swallowed dryly. He felt the invisible impact of that microscopic wound, felt the imbalance growing inside him.
— I hit your navel, the point that connects your body and energy. And I destroyed your balance. — Mei paused, looking into his eyes — That's what destabilized your Veil. Exactly as I imagined.
Any interference is lethal.
You could have canceled it if you knew that attack would do that, but I knew you wouldn't think of it.
I bet your pride would be your ruin in that moment.
Dante's gaze changed. Admiration mixed with unease. For the first time, he saw not only her brutal strength, but her lethal intelligence.
Dante knew Mei was creative, but this was madness.
Creativity alone wouldn't suffice.
He already knew Mei was strong. Now he understood that her greatest weapon was her mind—sharp, relentless, capable of conceiving the impossible under the pressure of death.
— I would have pierced Akira's chest if I hadn't held the blow a few centimeters from his skin. — Mei said, her voice firm. — The pressure I exerted alone broke bones, caused damage that will keep him busy… while I recover.
Dante felt something new grow within him—respect mixed with dread. Mei Nuhay was not just an Empress of fire. She was a brilliant mind, a strategist who had planned and executed the impossible, at the extreme limit.
"I am" Mei thought...
"She is..." Dante thought...
A genius. That is what she is.
To be continued…