sun and moon

Sue was frustrated.

No, it wasn't an accurate enough word to describe what she was feeling. An ordinary human being would say "fear." A soldier would say "exhaustion." But she knew that specific feeling: the bitter irritation of seeing something appear, once again, that was not meant to exist.

The monster before her was big. Very big.

Sue raised her head, yet it took her eyes a second to find the end of that figure. Not because it was hidden, but because her brain was reluctant to accept such an absurd scale. More than a hundred meters. A height that turned everything else - trees, ruins, even the Gifted - into mere details.

The creature was an accumulation. An assemblage. A misguided answer to the question "how many corpses can you stack before it's no longer a corpse?"

Countless skeletons had merged and overlapped, as if a patient hand had sought stability where there was only horror. Ribs embedded in other people's pelvises, skulls used as hinges, spinal columns repeated over and over again, forming a structure that, by sheer logic, would have to collapse.

But it did not collapse.

The bones squeezed together with little creaks, minimal adjustments, like a castle "breathing" to maintain its shape. And that was the worst part: it wasn't a sculpture. It was something that held itself up because it wanted to.

Bones interlocked at impossible angles, ribs jutting out like twisted branches, skulls embedded in what appeared to be torsos, limbs dangling for no apparent purpose. Sue tried to count how many bodies made up the abomination. 100,000 corpses, she thought at first. But as soon as the number crossed her mind, she instinctively knew she was wrong. There were more. Many more.

-I was planning to kill them quickly and use their bodies as new weapons for my army, but... it would be more fun to leave them alive, and let them suffer slowly.

He spoke in a disgusting voice; each word crackled and twisted as it came out. It provoked a mixture of disgust and terror at the implications of his threat, but he forced himself to resist. He had to hold on. He had to be brave.

He had almost no energy left, which made any fight difficult, but he still had to win somehow.

Looking where her other self was, Chia saw that she was also exhausted, she looked at Arcadius and he was also tired.

She would never give up, but she had to accept reality. They gave their all in the last fight but still couldn't defeat the whistler, the mere fact of knowing that frustrated and infuriated her like never before.

Then what Sue least wanted to hear happened: a voice.

-That's enough!

It was so thin that for a second Sue thought imagination was playing tricks on her, but no. Esmeralda was there. She had taken a step forward, just one, and yet that "just" was crazy.

Her hands and legs were shaking; the courage wasn't coming out of her because she was strong, but because she had no other choice. Sue opened her mouth. Don't. The phrase stuck in her throat because, if she said it, it would become an order... and Esmeralda was already obeying something more dangerous than any scream: her own desperation.

-Stop bothering them

Esmeralda said.

Her voice cracked, but she didn't back down.

-Stop bothering Sue and Chia.

But... wait a minute. Sue blinked, and for an instant the horror was replaced by something worse: confusion. How...? Esmeralda shouldn't be there. It was impossible for her to be there. Chia had left her on the outskirts of town, protected by a double barrier: Sue's fire forming a burning perimeter. Both measures designed specifically to keep her away from all this. To keep her safe. So how had she gotten here?

The Whistler bowed his head. There was a pause, as if reality awaited a verdict. And then it laughed. Not a laugh: a sound that was clearly intended to humiliate.

-You?

The Whistler's gaze riveted on her with an almost... childlike curiosity. Like someone deciding whether to squash an ant with his finger or his sole.

-How adorable.

Esmeralda gulped; her eyes were shining. Sue could see the fear there, and yet Esmeralda held her gaze. The Whistler took a step and the air grew heavy, as if the words were going to weigh.

-I will devour you

Said

-like I did your brother.

It was worse than a blow. Esmeralda froze. Sue felt an icy emptiness in her stomach.

-Esmeralda...!

Too late?

No.

The Whistler activated his authority. The Law of Distance. It was a cold, mathematical process: the elimination of the spatial coordinates between the bone tentacle and Esmeralda's heart. Distance equal to zero. No travel time. No physical warning.

But Chia was already moving.

It was not an act of speed, but of tactical prediction. She had read the fluctuation in the monster's aura, after fighting it for so long. Chia stepped into the trajectory - or rather, the end point of the trajectory - just as space collapsed.

-I will protect you emerald!

A dark, silver-colored barrier, dense and heavy, materialized in front of her.

CRAAAAACK!

The tentacle impacted against the barrier not with a bang, but with a logical contradiction. The Law of the Whistle dictated that the tentacle should be there, piercing the girl, but Chia's shield denied that space. Reality screeched.

The barrier began to fracture. Cracks of violet light ran across the black surface.

Chia gritted her teeth, her boots sliding back from the conceptual pressure. Her mental energy reserve was plummeting. 15%... 10%...

-Chia!

Esmeralda sobbed behind her, her eyes watering with tears, the terror of a child who understands she is the target of a god.

Sue saw that Chia could not resist for long. She raised her hands, unfolding multiple layers of solid light. Ten hexagonal barriers formed in perfect sequence.

But the tentacle ignored them. It passed through them as if they were holograms. The light broke apart into harmless particles on contact. They were not conceptually dense enough to stop a Law.

-Shit!

Arcadius shouted from a distance.

The air howled around him. Arcadius launched a sphere of compressed wind, a defense that could have stopped an armored truck. But against the Whistler's spatial distortion, the wind simply scattered, losing its force vector.

Chia's barrier emitted a horrible sound, like glass being ground.

-I... will... not... hold on...

gasped Chia. Blood dripped from her nose from the psychic effort.

The tentacle was inches away from breaking through the last layer.

Sue landed next to Chia. There was no panic on her face, just a frantic calculation of variables.

If the external defenses failed, and the sum of their individual forces was insufficient, the only remaining variable was transmission efficiency.

-I have a theory

Sue said, her voice cutting over the din.

-What?

Chia shouted, knees buckling.

-We are the same entity. Different instances of the same "I".

Sue reached out to Chia.

-There should be no resistance loss in the energy transfer. Direct synchronization.

Sue grabbed Chia's free hand.

It was not a gentle touch. It was a violent connection, like connecting two high-voltage wires.

Chia felt Sue's energy flow stabilizing her, but still the question haunted her. Her voice cracking with the effort, she managed to articulate:

-Why...why don't we...why don't we move her? Why don't we move Esmeralda away from here?

The question had a desperate logic to it. If the tentacle was directed at a specific point, wouldn't it be enough to get the girl away from that point?

-Don't move her!

shouted Arcadius

-If we move her, he'll just change the distance to his new position! We can't be faster than an attack that doesn't travel!

It was the perfect trap of the Law of Distance. Running away was useless when the enemy could erase the space between predator and prey at will. All that was left was to resist. To stand and bear the weight of the world.

Sue's energy flooded Chia. It was warm, burning, almost painful, but vital.

Meanwhile, Arcadio roared, throwing walls of compressed wind one after another. He knew they were useless against the spatial distortion, but he wasn't looking to stop it; he was looking to annoy. A distraction. A flicker. Anything that would divert the monster's attention for even a millisecond.

-Look at me, you damned sack of bones!

Arcadius shouted, his voice cracking with the effort, as his storms melted away like smoke before the authority of the Whistler.

But the pressure was still building. The bone tentacle crunched against Chia's shield, pushing millimeter by millimeter toward Esmeralda's chest. The cracks in the black barrier widened again, devouring Sue's extra energy as fast as it came.

She's going to break, Chia thought, panic chilling her blood. Despite Sue's energy... it's not enough. My concept is too weak in the face of her Law.

Her gaze, clouded by tears and agonizing effort, drifted upward, desperately searching for a way out, an answer...something.

And then he saw it.

The moon.

It was there, high, pale and sovereign, hanging just behind the grotesque silhouette of the Whistler. Unmoving. Eternal. Indifferent to the horror below.

She had always believed that her power, her Origin, came from the "night". From the darkness that hides and protects. That the surge of power she felt under the night sky was from the shadows. But as she looked at that white orb, Chia felt a jolt in her core, stronger than fear, deeper than magic.

It's not the darkness, she suddenly understood, and the thought was like a silent lightning bolt in her mind. The darkness is only the canvas. My power is not the absence of light.....

It is the reflection.

It is the lonely guard in the empty sky.

His Origin was not the Night.

My Origin is the Moon.

The world seemed to stop. The sound of battle died away. Chia felt Sue's energy flow change inside her; it was no longer just burning fuel, it felt... right.

-Moonlight

Chia whispered.

It wasn't a scream. It was a declaration of existence.

The black shield protecting Esmeralda changed. The darkness condensed, became silvery, solid, absolute. The cracks closed instantly, not repaired, but erased from existence.

CLANG.

The sound was crisp, metallic and pure, like a divine bell.

The tentacle of the Whistle, that limb forged with the authority of a Law capable of ignoring space, bounced. It did not pass through. It did not break. It was repelled with a calm and majestic force.

The monster retreated a step, its bone structure creaking in confusion for the first time.

In front of Esmeralda, a perfect barrier now hovered. A circle of silver light, impenetrable, cold and beautiful.

The Perfect Shield had been born.

-I understand now, Sue

Chia said, her voice ringing with a strange, almost alien authority.

-It's not the darkness. It never was. My Origin... is the moon itself.

The moment the words left her lips, reality seemed to fold around her. It was not a conventional mana recharge. It was as if a cosmic floodgate had opened within her. A cold, silvery, infinite energy began to flood her body, overflowing, saturating the air with a silent but crushing pressure. The silver shield glowed brighter, becoming an absolute mirror.

Sue watched the transformation with wide eyes. Her mind, she analyzed the information.

Premise 1: Chia and I are two halves of the same existence.

Premise 2: Chia has awakened her Origin by connecting it with a celestial body: the Moon.

Premise 3: Dual systems in nature tend to symmetry. Light and dark. Day and night.

The conclusion struck Sue with the force of an inescapable mathematical revelation.

If Chia was the pale satellite reigning in the night...then she was not simply "fire" or "light." Those were incomplete definitions, mere by-products of her true nature.

My Origin... is the Sun.

Sue looked up at the night sky. There was no sun. Her star was hidden on the other side of the world. There was no sudden burst of infinite energy as with Chia; the night denied her that "plus" of direct power.

However, something changed.

As she understood her true nature, the limits she had unconsciously imposed on herself were shattered. Her fire did not have to be only combustion. Her light did not have to be just photons. She felt her core burning with a new density, a gravity of its own. Even if the sun wasn't visible, his concept was there.

It could do more. Much more than before.

But Chia did not stop in her own ascent. Her eyes, now two pools of liquid mercury, rested on Sue. She immediately noticed the disparity: while she was overflowing with power, Sue was still operating on empty reserves, sustained only by the new conceptual density of her Origin.

-It's my turn

Chia said, softly.

She did not ask permission. She squeezed Sue's hand, which she still held, and reversed the flow.

If Sue's had been an emergency battery, Chia's was a dam breaking. Pure lunar energy, cold and revitalizing, rushed into Sue's core. It wasn't fire, but it fed fire. It was the reflection feeding the source. In seconds, Sue's exhaustion evaporated. Her surface wounds closed. Her golden aura burst with renewed fury, stabilized by the silvery calm of her counterpart.

Both breathed in unison, the air trembling around them.

The Whistling was still there, a mountain of death and broken laws, but for the first time, it seemed... manageable.

Sue and Chia turned slowly. They didn't look at the monster. They looked back to where Esmeralda was still trembling under the perfect shield, and to Arcadio, who was panting on his knees, his face pale but his eyes fixed on them.

They both smiled. It was an identical smile, synchronized, blending the warmth of the sun and the mystery of the moon. A smile that did not belong on a battlefield.

-Do you want to have a fun adventure?

they asked at the same time.

Arcadio blinked, dazed, his mouth half open. Esmeralda wiped away a tear, confused by the sudden change of atmosphere.

-What...?

stammered Arcadio.

There was no verbal response. Just a burst of light.

Sue and Chia disappeared.

They didn't run. They did not fly. Simply, the light and the reflection changed places.

They were in front of the Whistler.

-Now, Arcadio!

Sue shouted, her fist wrapped in a miniature solar corona.

Take a good look!