The interior of the vehicle still held a suspended air, almost transparent. The white energy of the core had faded, leaving behind a ghostly glow on the panels. Nothing moved. Only the sounds of the forest on the other side of the metal began to reassemble reality: a distant chirp, the damp brushing of the wind through leaves, a brief crack that could have been a branch or an insect pushing its way through the grass. The world breathed again, and that slow breath seemed to reach inside, like a natural pulse replacing the cadence of the machines.

Selena had not changed her position since the previous night. She remained in front of the powered-off console, hands resting on her knees and her head slightly tilted toward the floor. The darkness around her seemed to accompany her like an extension of her thoughts. For the first time in a long time, she wasn't analyzing, classifying, correcting. There was silence inside her too, but not the silence of control: the silence left behind by fatigue when calculation can no longer make sense of what hurts.

Her open eyes weren't looking at anything; they were remembering.

The succession of images —Sebastián's bond, the faces she had seen through his energy, the scars, the devoured childhood— passed through her without resistance. She had thought many times that her own story wasn't harsh. His, on the other hand, wasn't a story: it was a wound in motion. She understood it now with a clarity that didn't make her proud, but drained her. Her mind had always had room for data, but not for what the body feels when truth can no longer be measured.

She inhaled slowly. The air entering her lungs had a different taste: humidity, earth, cold. It was the first time the smell of something alive distracted her from the sound of her own thoughts.

Fatigue began to climb up from her arms, passing through her shoulders, reaching her nape. It was a tension she didn't know how to recognize. It wasn't physical pain, nor functional exhaustion. It was something her system couldn't interpret: fatigue of the soul.

Sebastián was beside her, seated, his gaze fixed on the glow of dawn beginning to filter through the slits in the armor. He didn't speak, didn't think of doing so. His stillness wasn't passivity, but presence: a way of being that held without touching. There were no remnants of the previous night left in him. His strength wasn't agitation, but contained existence.

Selena, without thinking, turned her head just slightly. Her eyelids were heavier than the rest of her body. The exhaustion pushed her gently to the left. The movement was involuntary, exact as if sleep had precise coordinates. Her forehead brushed Sebastián's shoulder.

He didn't move.

Not a single muscle shifted.

He only breathed, allowing the light weight of her head to settle.

Outside, the forest continued its resurgence.

The birds changed the rhythm of their song; a constant murmur accompanied the birth of the light.

The brightness entered slowly, extending golden lines over the gray surfaces of the vehicle.

Each beam found dust suspended in the air, illuminating it as if the metal had its own internal dawn.

Selena did not wake up. Her body, always programmed for vigilance, had yielded to rest with a naturalness no system could predict.

For the first time, she slept without closing processes, without recording data, without monitoring memory.

Her breathing synchronized with the outside rhythm, with the birds' song, with the new pulse of the forest.

Sebastián watched her for a few seconds. Not with tenderness, nor with judgment.

Simply with acknowledgment.

There was something inevitable in that gesture too: the body allowing itself to rest, the mind stopping its resistance.

He didn't know whether to call it humanity. He didn't need to name it.

The air inside the vehicle warmed with the light of dawn.

The metal, once cold, seemed to breathe heat.

A drop of condensation fell from the ceiling, sliding down until it disappeared between the floor joints.

Sebastián followed its path with his eyes, without moving the shoulder that supported Selena's light weight.

Every movement outside felt exact, measured, alive.

Outside, the trees began to shine with dew.

The sound of small creatures —wings, paws, vibrations— filled the silence in a way that wasn't noise, but balance.

The forest wasn't watching them; it simply existed, like Sebastián.

And in the midst of that naturalness, Selena slept: a figure of precision finally surrendered to the rhythm of the world.

The dawn advanced without haste, extending its brightness over the sleeping machine and over the two of them.

There was no dialogue, no thought.

Only the intertwining of one human breath and another contained, the murmur of the forest, and the glow that turned every metallic surface into a reflection of life.

Nothing moved for a long while.

Time lost its shape, consciousness dissolved among the birds' song.

And in that brief space, where day and night still touched, something invisible shifted:

Selena had found rest.

And Sebastián, without intending to, had become support again.

Dawn kept growing, stretching its light over the damp earth, and the entire forest exhaled a single constant note: the echo of life in its simplest form.

Dawn advanced slowly, extending its clarity over the sleeping machine and over two beings who, without seeking it, shared for the first time the same form of silence.

Dawn moved forward without noise, expanding like a slow breath learning to occupy every corner of the forest. The brightness began to filter through the high leaves, and the uneven glow fell over the exterior of the vehicle like fragments of a truth illuminated for the first time after the night. The moisture that covered the surroundings receded with patience, leaving in the air an aroma that mixed earth, sap, and a warm trace that announced the beginning of the day. The light did not burst in; it advanced. It slid across the metallic surfaces, the irregularities of the armor, the hardened edges where the dew evaporated without hurry. The sounds of the forest grew in layers: new trills, the buzzing of tiny wings, the vibration of the wind striking old wood. Everything seemed to reorganize under a different law, the silent law of the morning that places order again where the chaos of the night had stretched its shadow.

Inside the vehicle, time seemed to have slowed until nearly stopping. The air held the residual warmth of the light entering in thin lines through the half-open hatch. The suspended dust floated in a gentle cycle, as if responding to the faint rhythm of a distant call. There were no abrupt movements, only small variations in the illumination marking the sun's advance. The inner stillness wasn't static; it was contained balance. The dormant energy of the machines had withdrawn completely, leaving behind a void in which only the life outside —that vast life of the forest— seemed to be breathed.

Sebastián remained where he had been since the end of the night. His figure conveyed neither fatigue nor tension; he was a firm and silent presence, sustained by a physical structure that surpassed ordinary human need. The Indomitable Body, at its current level, reduced the necessity of rest until turning it into an option. His breathing was an almost imperceptible movement, a constant flow that did not vary even as the light changed. His pulse was a quiet line, a note that existed without seeking attention. Every fiber of his body remained in a state of natural equilibrium. There was no resistance because there was no wear; there was no weakness because his strength remained always at an exact level, polished by years of discipline and pain.

He didn't sleep because he didn't need to. He was awake not out of a pretense of control, but from the naturalness of a body that had learned to sustain itself without interruption. His mind was neither a whirlwind nor a labyrinth; it was a silent space where observation replaced unnecessary thoughts. He watched the dawn without interpreting it, without searching for meaning within it. He saw it unfold with the same calm with which he accepted each breath his body produced. In him, stillness was not absence: it was form.

Beside him, Selena remained asleep. Her head still rested on his shoulder, held with the stability that Sebastián himself provided unintentionally. Sleep had erased the tension that always clung to her face; the rigidity that usually shaped her expression had disappeared, revealing a softness that needed no permission to exist. Her eyelids showed a slight tremor, like the echo of a dream sliding through some corner of her mind. Her breathing had changed as well. It was deeper, slower, as if the forest itself were teaching her to move in another way.

The light entering through the hatch brushed the surface of her neck, revealing a faint glow on her skin. The moisture that had covered her the night before had vanished completely. Her gray pants and dark blue denim shirt —now dry— seemed to have absorbed some of the dawn's warmth. The clean sneakers, though marked by the previous night, blended without disruption into the calm scene inside the vehicle. Selena's body, always contained within a strict discipline, now showed the unconscious vulnerability of someone who sleeps without immediate fear.

Sebastián watched her for a few seconds, but not from curiosity or tenderness. He looked at her with the same stillness with which he observed the movement of a leaf or the advance of light. It was a gaze that neither invaded nor sought hidden meanings. It simply acknowledged what was before him: a body that had yielded, a mind that for the first time had let its structure of control fall in order to surrender to genuine rest. Without protocols, without methods, without orders.

The thought came to him the way a change of wind arrives, without violence and without weight. He understood, without needing to analyze it, something essential: even someone like Selena, so exact, so impossible to break, carried a void. But that void was not his. His own, Sebastián's void, was a space that opened to be filled, transformed, molded. It was the Void he had learned to reconstruct, to carry within him as a living extension of his nature. In him, the void did not destroy: it created. It was origin. It was potential matter. It was the foundation of his existence, the formless substance waiting to be shaped by his will or by his instinct.

But Selena's void was different. It was a closed space, a contained architecture. She did not use it to create, nor to transform. She used it to avoid feeling what she could not organize. To hold herself together without fragmenting. To keep her mind bound to a logic without cracks. She did not fear the void, but she did not explore it either. She administered it. She kept it encapsulated as if it were a dangerous equation that should not overflow. That difference was clear, natural, inevitable. Both lived within different voids, but only one of them had learned to shape it without disappearing inside it.

The dawn light began to fill the entire interior of the vehicle, intensifying until the silvery glow turned into a golden tone spreading across the gray panels. The air gained a warm, almost living texture. Outside, the forest fully opened itself to the day. The sounds increased, diversified, and interwove like multiple layers forming a single constant pulse. The birdsong grew in rhythm, and the branches stirred by the breeze let fall fragments of light that seemed to vibrate before touching the ground.

A leaf fell right in front of the hatch. Its descent was slow, almost deliberate. Sebastián followed it with his eyes, tracing the exact path it made until touching the damp earth. That simple gesture carried within it a principle he knew without naming it: fall, impact, transformation, rest. Nothing ceased to exist; everything changed form. Even the void obeyed that sequence. Even wounds.

Selena breathed more deeply. The soft sound of that movement echoed inside the vehicle with a new clarity. Her body no longer slept with the rigidity of someone afraid to lose control, but with the involuntary peace of one who has found a pause without seeking it. Her face, still resting on Sebastián's shoulder, revealed the human fragility she always hid behind procedures and precision. Her rest was an involuntary act, but a true one.

Sebastián did not move. His body could hold that posture for hours without altering. He let time continue, let the clarity settle, let life follow its course inside and outside the vehicle. He thought, with that kind of thought that is neither spoken nor requires an answer: perhaps she too will manage to shape her void someday. Not like him, not as a tool, but as a space that can stop pressing down.

The sun continued rising, bathing the forest in a radiance that expanded over every living surface. The interior silence wasn't an absence of sound, but the purest form of accompaniment. It wasn't the silence of analysis or the silence of method. It was a silence shared between two existences that, without intending it, had found for a moment the same rhythm to breathe. The day grew without hurry, and in the midst of its light, two different voids learned to breathe in the same cadence.

The morning had settled completely like a warm blanket over the forest, spreading its clarity in increasingly dense layers. The interior of the vehicle absorbed that golden light that hurried nothing, that simply let itself fall like fine dust over the edges of the metal. The air, now without traces of moisture, held a living stillness, a silence that breathed with the calm of an animal newly awakened but not yet ready to move. Everything around seemed to have found a momentary balance: a pause between the night that had been and the day that opened without resistance.

Sebastián remained in the same posture, without shifting even a centimeter of his body. His breathing formed an almost imperceptible rhythm, a constant note that blended with the faint vibration of the forest beyond the armor. The light traced lines over his dark skin, outlining the firmness of a body that needed no rest to sustain itself. There was no tension in him, no urge to move. He was pure presence, contained, exact. His gaze remained fixed on the outside, observing the advance of the morning without demanding meaning from it.

Selena was still asleep, her head resting on his shoulder, her breathing deep and steady. The rigidity that usually governed her features had almost completely vanished. It was strange to see her like this: a face without calculation, without precision, without the tense lines that normally marked her thoughts. Her lips rested naturally, without that subtle pressure that always hinted at a mental process unfolding beneath. She slept honestly, openly, without any defensive mechanisms active. Her body had yielded to a need that even her controlling mind could not delay.

The dawn had turned that rest into something almost sacred within the silent atmosphere of the vehicle. Nothing seemed willing to interrupt it. The dust floated in the beam of light entering through the hatch, moving with a slowness that didn't obey the wind but the simple passage of time. Sebastián kept his shoulder steady beneath Selena's light weight, doing nothing to emphasize or avoid that contact. It was a fact, another part of the environment, as natural as the birdsong rising from the outer branches.

But even the most stable silences have a limit. And the morning, already mature, allowed a sound from outside—almost imperceptible—to pierce through the forest's breath and slip into the interior of the vehicle. First came a crack, the subtle breaking of a dry branch under a controlled weight. Then a shift of leaves that didn't follow the rhythm of the wind, but that of a human step. And finally a shadow projected within the frame of the hatch, a sharp, firm shadow without hesitation.

It was Helena.

Her presence didn't arrive wrapped in drama. She didn't need to announce herself nor seek to be received. She was simply there, like a straight line cutting through the continuity of a drawing without breaking it. Her figure remained for a few seconds in silence beneath the threshold of light, as if evaluating the density of the environment before entering. There was no surprise on her face, but neither was there indifference. It was that expression of hers, so characteristic, so tired of the world and so functional at the same time: a gaze that saw without involving itself, that analyzed without feeling any need to modify anything.

She entered with the precise step that characterized her. She made no sound beyond what was necessary. She did not move the air more than required. She interrupted nothing more than what was essential. Her eyes moved first toward Sebastián. They scanned him without emotional judgment, without unease, without haste. She observed the rhythm of his breathing, the way he held his body without exhaustion, the stability present in his posture. For her, that analysis was as natural as breathing. It was her method, her way of being in the world: to understand the state of things without embellishing them.

Then her eyes slid toward Selena. She remained silent for a few seconds, registering the way she slept, the position of her head, the total relaxation of muscles that were normally tense under the discipline of her mind. Helena didn't furrow her brow or show discomfort. There was no judgment in her gaze at the closeness between them. Only data. Facts. Information to interpret.

A brief analysis surfaced in her mind, clear and direct: Selena had reached a point of exhaustion deep enough to collapse her control mechanisms. Her sleep wasn't carelessness—it was necessity. A pause forced by a body that, after holding too much for too long, simply demanded rest. Helena understood it without words. And she also understood that Sebastián, in his stillness, had allowed that rest without intervening or analyzing it.

She didn't speak for a long moment. The forest continued its song behind her, and even then, inside the vehicle, her presence shifted the atmosphere just enough for the day to stop feeling suspended. Reality began to take shape again.

Finally, she spoke.

"Are you stable?"

Her voice was flat—no hardness, no softness, no emotional intention. Just a functional question meant to confirm relevant information. She didn't ask "how are you." She didn't ask "what happened." It wasn't her way of communicating, nor did it make sense to her. Her pragmatism didn't need adornment.

Sebastián responded only by shifting his eyes slightly toward her, without moving the rest of his body. His voice came out low, steady, unchanged.

"Yes."

Helena nodded once, with a movement so small it almost blended with her own breathing. Her gaze returned to Selena, assessing one last time the depth of her rest.

"Don't wake her." It wasn't an order or a request; it was a conclusion spoken aloud.

Sebastián didn't answer. He didn't need to. He had no intention of breaking the pause the dawn had given them.

Helena stepped one pace further into the vehicle, positioning herself where the light from outside outlined her figure without softening it. Her eyes moved through the interior, recognizing the state of the space, measuring silences, calculating time. She seemed to reconstruct mentally the before and after of the rest. She showed no urgency, but she did show absolute focus on what needed to be evaluated.

When she finished analyzing what was necessary, she spoke again, with the same simplicity with which a fact is stated:

"The day has already begun. When she wakes up, we'll continue."

She added nothing else. Asked nothing else. She neither approached nor backed away. She simply gave the information she considered relevant and then allowed silence to reclaim the space, as if her presence had been only a reminder that the world kept moving.

The forest continued vibrating behind the open door, extending its natural music without interruption. The light entering wrapped Helena as she stepped just slightly aside from the hatch's threshold, allowing the air to circulate without obstruction. Her figure remained there, firm, patient, yielding to no emotional impulse.

Sebastián maintained his posture, not moving the shoulder where Selena rested. The dawn continued growing around the three of them. In that stillness, in that transition between the intimate and the functional, the day advanced with the quiet certainty that nothing could alter its rhythm.

The balance did not break. It only changed form. And within that new form, Helena observed, Sebastián remained, and Selena slept for the first time without fear of not waking as herself.

The morning light had finally settled inside the vehicle like still water that, after finding its bowl, refuses to move. There was no trace left of the faint glow of dawn; now it was full golden clarity, filtering through the plates of the armor and spreading over their bodies like a warm varnish. The air had lost its humidity and was beginning to gain that peculiar mildness that only appears when the forest is fully awake. Outside, the birds had changed their rhythm, no longer with the uncertain chirping of dawn, but with the steady song of the day. The branches shook with a more decisive movement, and the buzzing of insects formed a constant murmur that wrapped everything.

Inside, Selena was still asleep. Her breathing remained in that deep rhythm that did not belong to physical fatigue, but to the exhaustion that accumulates in the mind. Her head continued resting on Sebastián's shoulder, and her body, for the first time in so long, showed not a single line of tension. Her face held that fragile but genuine serenity, a serenity not achieved by will, but because the body finally finds the void in which it can collapse.

Sebastián remained silent. He had not changed his posture since before Helena arrived. He was an unmoving figure, a quiet axis around which the light moved without altering anything. His red eyes stayed fixed on the outside of the vehicle, not out of vigilance, but because his mind simply breathed with the rhythm of the environment. He had no rush to move nor any reason to do so. The stillness around him was not a barrier: it was the natural extension of his existence.

Helena remained there, a few steps inside the vehicle, observing everything with that lucid weariness that defined her way of being in the world. She had finished delivering the information she considered necessary, but she had not left yet. Her presence was not intrusive, but neither was it relaxed; it was as if she were part of the air, a stroke that did not need to move to be functional. Her deep-blue eyes continued analyzing the interior of the vehicle and Sebastián's state, not from emotional concern but from the responsibility she had assumed without asking anyone's permission.

It was Sebastián who broke the silence first, with a low voice that seemed to come from a place that did not need words, but offered them if necessary.

"Valentina…" —his tone was almost a whisper, steady, without urgency— "Is she alright?"

Helena did not turn her head immediately. She finished evaluating a detail on the vehicle's side plate before answering. For her, every action had a logical order.

"She's been awake for a while," she finally said. "She's with Virka, with Narka, and with Kael. They're having breakfast. Oatmeal, toast, fruit, simple sandwiches."

Helena's tone was exactly the same as always: direct, without embellishment, without added emotion. She informed because it was necessary. Nothing more.

"She ate without any problem," she added after a brief silence. "Even spoke a little. Not much. Enough."

That "enough" was Helena's way of acknowledging that Valentina, even in her fragility, was holding herself together.

Sebastián didn't move his face, but there was a slight decrease in the invisible tension surrounding his body. Impossible to notice for anyone who hadn't lived beside him, but Helena perceived it. Not as emotion, but as data.

"After they finished," she continued, "I came to find you."

The forest light fell across Helena's face, marking the shadows beneath her eyes. Her expression didn't change, but there was a clarity in it that revealed the logic behind every movement.

"You missed classes," she said, without any inflection. "But it isn't a problem."

Helena's voice remained flat, as if she were simply reading a report.

"The cleaning plan inside the institute isn't affected." She paused minimally. "Last night's operation was more productive than anything you would've done at school."

Sebastián didn't respond. He had no reason to. The truth of what had happened still lived in the air. The weight of the night, though dissipated, lingered like a faint yet persistent shadow.

Helena walked a few steps deeper into the vehicle. Her gait was precise, measured, almost silent. She passed a hand near one of the cracks in the metal wall, but didn't touch it. She simply measured the damage with her eyes.

"The module needs repairs," she said calmly. "And it will have them. The parts are already on the way. They'll reinforce it. The work will take two days at most."

She stopped.

"It's best that you stay here in the meantime," she added. "It's safer. More logical."

Sebastián inclined his head just slightly.

"Yes," he replied.

That yes carried more than acceptance: it carried the idea that staying there was not only appropriate for him, but for Valentina. Helena, who never sought to read emotions, understood enough regardless because she knew Sebastián's patterns.

"She should spend more time with Kael," Helena said, resuming her report. "It's necessary. They're beginning to build something like a bond. Narka also facilitates that process. And Virka…"

She didn't finish the sentence. Not because she hesitated, but because there was no need to explain her. For Helena, what wasn't said was also structured information.

Sebastián directed his eyes toward the interior of the vehicle, toward a point where the light formed a reflection on the metal wall. He didn't think about the answer; he simply spoke it.

"It's the best."

Helena nodded once. Then, after a functional silence, she added:

"Do you want to know how everything will continue?"

Sebastián looked at her without moving the rest of his body.

"Yes."

Helena didn't take long to organize her analysis. Her thoughts were straight lines, without deviations.

"According to the data," she began, "the safest approach is to remain within the normal profile of students. Nothing unexpected. Nothing that draws attention. Virka must integrate into her classes like any other student. The same goes for you."

She stepped closer, until she was aligned with the shadow cast by the upper edge of the vehicle.

"But the main point," she said, "is that you must integrate into the sports classes directed by Rakzar."

The name fell into the air like a solid object. It wasn't a threat or a warning; it was precision.

"It's the best way to study the technology used by the smiths," she continued. "That physical module… it's connected. Not completely. But enough for observing it to give you information. He is the gateway. The most accessible one we have now."

Sebastián kept his gaze fixed on her, and behind him, the forest continued moving in bursts of light and shadow.

"Virka will also attend," Helena added. "Her perception is different from yours. It will be useful."

A line of light glided along the edge of Helena's gaze. Her expression didn't change. It didn't need to.

"There won't be any suspicion," she said, "if you integrate as normal students. And at the same time, you'll be able to observe how the internal structure of the sports module works."

The air moved again inside the vehicle, as if the forest were exhaling inward.

"Do you have objections?" she asked.

"No," Sebastián replied.

Another silence settled, one that required nothing more.

Helena slid her gaze toward Selena. Not to evaluate her again, but to confirm she was still sleeping without disturbance.

"She'll wake up soon," she said. "She won't be disoriented. The rest was necessary."

She turned toward the exit of the vehicle.

"When she wakes, eat breakfast. There's enough food," she added in her usual tone. "Kael wants to see you afterward."

She didn't explain why. She didn't consider it necessary.

Helena left the vehicle with the same precision with which she had entered: without altering anything more than what was indispensable.

Outside, the forest received her as if it had already expected her. And inside the vehicle, silence fell again—not like a shadow, but like a space where time breathed slowly.

Selena still did not move. Her rest remained intact.

Sebastián observed the interior of the day through the light entering the hatch.

And the world continued.

_________________________________________________________

END OF CHAPTER 51

The path continues…

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