On the Path of Eternal Strength.

Where judgment ends… and nature begins to devour.

There were no farewells.

The Valley did not close. It did not roar. It did not curse them nor bless them. It simply stopped.

Like a witness who, after having seen enough, chooses to become shadow.

Like a crack that no longer needs to reflect, because it has fulfilled its purpose.

And they… simply kept walking. They did not run. They did not seek rest. They only advanced.

Like one who has been flayed from within and understands that to stop… would be to become flesh again for the echo.

The land began to change subtly. The dark roots gave way to drier soil, cracked, covered in coppery dust.

The oneiric forms were left behind, and the world defined itself again with clear lines… too clear.

There was no more distortion. Now everything was brutally real.

It was Virka who noticed first. Not with her eyes. With her body.

Her skin trembled in another way. Not from metamorphosis, but from alert.

The atmosphere no longer read them. It evaluated them.

Sebastián stopped at the edge of a hill. It was not high, but from there, the entire landscape opened like a canvas dyed red.

A prairie. Beautiful. Immense. Vast as an empty promise.

Grass up to the knees, swaying to the rhythm of a wind that did not whistle… but stalked.

Red. Everything was red. As if the blood that was not spilled in the Valley had been poured here.

—This place… looks alive —said Sebastián, with a neutral voice.

—It is —replied Narka, without turning his neck—. But not in the sense you wish.

They advanced. Little by little, the prairie swallowed them.

The ground was firm but uneven. Small mounds, hidden cracks, areas where the grass grew denser, almost solid.

And there, among the blades, eyes. They did not shine. They did not move. They only watched, waiting for the mistake to begin before the step.

They were not attacked. Because the danger in the prairie did not run.

It hunted with patience.

Days began to pass. There were no huts. There were no bonfires.

Only the grass as a bed, the naked sky as a roof, and instinct as a guide.

Sebastián spoke little. He observed.

Every night was different.

Every dawn brought a new creature lurking from afar. Never the same.

Some looked like flowers, until they closed like jaws.

Others imitated Narka's sound to lure them into natural traps.

The stones spoke. Not with voices. With position. Some were real, others, shells of slumbering creatures.

Everything was beautiful. Everything could kill.

And that… fascinated him.

It was not physical training. It was an adjustment of soul.

The body had already been broken.

Now it had to become tool. Precision. Routine. Response.

And in that prairie dyed red, Sebastián discovered something new:

it was not about being stronger.

It was about being more exact.

More patient. More aware of space, of time, of terrain.

More like the death that waits… than the fury that screams.

That night, the air changed temperature slowly.

The sun unraveled like an orange wound behind the bushes, and the breeze carried a sweet, floral, almost narcotic aroma.

Sebastián, seated on a petrified root, reviewed in his mind the movements of the creatures he had observed in the last two days.

He made a decision.

He rose without announcing it.

He adjusted the ribbon tying his hair, bound his feet with strips of cloth torn from his own shirt, and left carrying nothing but his body and his hunger.

He walked without looking back.

Narka did not move.

Virka only tilted her head.

There was no need for words.

He needed to understand. With the body. With mistake.

The first day, the world did not attack him. It observed him.

Sebastián measured every step.

He touched the leaves with the back of his hand, felt the pressure of the wind before stepping, recognized the zones where the ground sounded hollow when pressed.

Once, he crouched to study a bush that seemed to vibrate.

He discovered, beneath its leaves, a swarm of insects whose venom corroded rock on contact.

That day he did not eat. Nor drink water.

He found a thick-stemmed plant that expelled a thick, bitter liquid, but tolerable.

He licked it cautiously. It did not kill him.

It marked him on his tongue. He memorized it.

That sap would be his source of hydration.

He slept little.

Every time he closed his eyes, a different step resounded nearby.

The prairie had not yet accepted him.

The second day, Sebastián identified tracks.

Fine, repetitive footprints.

Dry excrement.

A creature with slender legs and fur white as ash.

Its movements were cyclical. Its route, constant.

He followed it without interrupting.

Memorizing its pattern took him nearly half a day.

When night fell, he chose his point of action.

He did not use tools.

His body was the trap.

He waited, lying on his belly, controlling his breathing.

He covered himself with red mud and dry leaves.

When the creature passed beside him, he turned only his torso and stretched his arm like a spear.

The impact was not clean.

There was struggle.

He received a slash. He dodged with his forearm and locked the animal's neck with his legs.

It took time to kill it. But he did it.

Without tools. Without help.

Only control of weight, rhythm, wait.

He did not celebrate. He carried it in silence.

On the third day, he found a clearing beneath a dead tree.

He skinned the animal with his hardened nails and teeth.

Separated tendons. Measured lengths.

He did not draw on stone.

He used his forearm as canvas.

The blood marked patterns he had visualized:

pushing force, muscle distribution, jump flexion.

Anatomical memory. Geometry of prey.

When finished, he did not meditate.

He breathed. Long. Deep.

Until every thought returned to its place.

Until every mistake was assumed without guilt.

He knew what had hurt him.

The environment.

The neglect.

The comfort.

And that would not happen again.

He returned at dawn on the fourth day.

His torso stained, skin tense, pupils steady.

He did not speak.

He placed the cleaned carcass before Narka.

He sat.

Crossed his legs.

Closed his eyes.

Not as one who returns.

As one who continues.

And the prairie… for the first time… seemed to incline, slightly, to the pace of his breath. The routine was not built with ideas.

It was forged with repetitions.

Sebastián did not decide a schedule.

It was his body that began to recognize the rhythms of the place: the way the wind blew denser before the appearance of certain creatures, how the song of an invisible species marked the change from one band of light to another.

He did not count days.

He counted patterns.

Before dawn he was already awake.

He did not stretch.

He rose immediately, as if the ground were fire.

He studied the air with his nose, crouched, in silence, analyzing whether anything in the fragrance of the environment had changed.

Then he moved close to the ground, without breaking the grass, marking routes with pressure barely visible:

not lines, not marks.

Only body memory.

Virka followed him from afar, without intervening.

She no longer protected him.

She observed him with the eyes of one who recognizes an animal building itself from the root.

Sebastián did not run. He walked slowly.

Each step was measured with the weight of the heel.

Each breath accompanied the rhythm of his displacement, as if rehearsing an invisible dance.

When he hunted, he did not pounce.

He approached like a shadow.

When he fought, he did not strike:

he let the enemy enter his space… and sealed it from within.

His muscles did not grow.

They refined.

At the hour when the sun burned strongest, he trained only with the wind.

He did not make forms.

He did not imitate styles.

He experimented.

He advanced, retreated, turned on a single foot, threw the weight of his torso forward and stopped it with a simple twist of the hip.

Sometimes he fell.

Sometimes he bled.

But he repeated.

He did not seek strength.

He sought exactness.

When he ate, he did so in silence.

He chewed slowly.

He analyzed the texture of each flesh, the reaction of his body to each type of fiber or light poison.

He began to identify which parts of the creatures gave him quick energy, which allowed him to endure longer without sleeping.

He did not only feed his body.

He calibrated it.

One night, as the mist descended like a sleeping hand over the prairie, Sebastián stopped beneath a group of twisted branches and began to move. Not fast.

Not fluid.

With intention. His arms traced closed arcs.

His legs spun over themselves without lifting dust.

Each time he completed a movement, he repeated it with variation:

at greater speed, at smaller opening, with hips lower, with the back inclined.

He corrected the center of gravity.

He compared.

Corrected again.

It was dance without music.

It was war without an enemy.

It was the birth of something that still had no name…

but already breathed.

When he finished, he did not rest.

He lay on his back, with his torso sweaty, his jaw marked by a new fall, and his eyes open to the starless sky.

And then he felt it.

Not a power.

Not an epiphany.

A silent certainty.

The body was no longer a tool.

It was a path.

And through that path…

the first seed of an art began to emerge.

Not made to teach.

But to survive.

That afternoon, the air smelled of rust.

The wind had changed.

It no longer carried dry dust, but something denser, heavier.

Sebastián noticed it before anyone.

He felt it in the way his muscles tensed without apparent reason.

In how the leaves crunched before something touched them.

It was not an ambush.

It was a warning.

He knew it the instant the shadow crossed his left flank, sliding beneath the grass.

He could not see it fully, but the pressure of the ground, the subtle scent brushing his throat, the irregular pattern of the grass…

all said the same:

He was being surrounded.

He did not move.

He crouched.

Breathed through his nose.

The creature made the first move to attack.

It did not leap.

It did not roar.

It emerged, like a knife that was already inside.

An elongated body, no visible legs, covered with bony plates, with a jaw divided into three segments, each vibrating like the wings of an insect.

Sebastián spun on his left ankle.

With his knee brushing the ground, he dodged the first strike.

The ground exploded behind him.

The second attack came without pause.

The animal sought his blind flank.

Sebastián leaned backward, sliding his weight onto his heels, and with a sharp movement of his hips, lifted his torso just as the jaw passed above.

The creature did not expect evasion without retreat.

Sebastián spun on himself and, with his forearm, struck the base of the jaw.

He did not do it with strength.

He did it with direction.

The impact was enough to make the plate vibrate.

The monster screeched.

It retreated.

And then he knew.

He had won.

But he had not understood.

The combat had been clean.

Precise.

But his body…

still responded like one executing a technique, not like one who is the technique.

At nightfall, with the animal's blood evaporating in the red grass, Sebastián did not return to the clearing.

He walked straight toward the stone base where Narka rested with half-closed eyes.

The colossus did not sleep.

He never slept.

He only listened.

—Can I ask you something? —said Sebastián bluntly.

Narka did not reply immediately.

The heat of his mineral back vibrated like a slow drum.

—Ask.

—I feel that… each time I do it better. I move more precisely. I adapt faster. But still there's something that doesn't fit —Sebastián frowned—.

As if everything I do were calculated… not lived.

Does that make sense?

—Your body has become a tool. But it is not yet a voice.

—And what does that mean? That I have to stop thinking?

—No —Narka said with the calm of stone that has heard everything—. Thinking is form. But form without soul… is only imitation.

—Then what do I do? —he asked, frustrated—. Simply stop controlling?

—No —Narka barely turned his neck—. Simply… listen.

Truly.

Not what you think your body wants.

Listen to what it is already saying… but you do not let it express.

Sebastián clenched his fists.

Not from anger.

But because something inside him was cracking.

—I feel like I am close.

As if there were something… behind each movement, wanting to come out.

But I'm blocking it.

A soft voice interrupted.

—Then let it out.

Virka.

She was sitting on a stone ledge, feet dangling, silently observing from before Sebastián arrived.

—Let out what? —he said, without turning.

—The form —replied Virka—.

The expectation.

The mold you have in your head of how a body should move.

You don't copy it from anyone, but you are still forcing it.

—It's not that easy —muttered Sebastián—.

If I let my body do what it wants… what if nothing comes out? What if I just… fail?

Virka lowered her gaze.

—Then you fail.

But it will be your form.

And from there, everything is born.

Sebastián crossed his arms.

—Did you do it like that?

She nodded.

—I did not learn to roar.

The roar was already there.

I just had to let it destroy me first… until it became part of me.

—And didn't it hurt?

—It hurt more not to let it out.

Silence.

Sebastián sat on the ground.

He rested his elbows on his knees and stared at his hands.

There were no wounds on them.

But he felt something in his bones trembling.

Not from weakness.

From containment.

—Maybe… I have wanted to use my body like a sword.

But a sword… does not change.

It only cuts.

Narka murmured from his mineral altar:

—And you were not made to cut.

You were made to mutate.

The words fell like iron into water. That night, Sebastián did not train.

He lay on the ground, without posture, without defense.

He breathed with his mouth open.

Let his spine arch as it wished.

Let his legs stretch in opposite directions.

Let his arms move endlessly.

He did not seek perfection.

He sought fracture.

He let the body speak in fragments.

Let one movement cut off halfway.

Let another be born from a spasm.

And slowly… something emerged.

A tremor.

Not physical.

A vibration that rose from the center of his stomach like a tongue of controlled lava.

An impulse that did not ask permission.

Only space.

And he… let it pass.

At dawn, his muscles ached as if he had fought for hours.

But not from forced effort.

They ached like a root newly pulled from the earth… exposed to air for the first time.

He had no wounds.

He was not exhausted.

But every joint seemed to have shifted place… though all remained where they belonged.

He rose slowly.

As he moved his arm, lifted his leg, spun at his hips… something had changed.

He no longer felt his body obeyed.

He felt it was his very will… shifting with form.

There was no difference between wanting to move and moving.

That fraction of thought before action no longer existed.

Everything was one.

And in that state, Sebastián understood:

he had not acquired a new technique.

He had purified the connection with his being.

It was no longer directed force.

It was form born of essence.

And for the first time…

he felt his art was not about to be born.

It had already begun.

Time had passed since Sebastián's body stopped being resistance and began becoming rhythm.

He had not decided it. He had reached it by walking, observing, repeating.

But something still did not fit.

It was not the environment. That he already knew.

It was him.

Every time he fought, his body responded well.

Every time he trained, his gestures were precise.

But they did not flow.

They were not born on their own.

They still seemed executed, not lived.

That afternoon, after a long sequence of exercises in the densest part of the prairie, where the grass reached his chest, he stopped.

He was alone.

Virka observed him some twenty steps away, sitting on a half-sunken rock.

Narka rested beneath a dry ledge, barely breathing.

Sebastián closed his eyes and began to move.

A slow combination of crossed steps, torso turns, diagonal displacements with falling weight.

Each gesture had been born from something lived: a fight, a trap, a fall.

They were not decorative. They were real.

But when uniting them… the rhythm broke.

The intention did not flow.

The body responded… but without continuity.

He stopped.

Snorted through his nose.

—No… this isn't it.

Virka approached. She did not ask anything.

She only copied the last movement he had made. Shoulder, arm, and turn.

—What's wrong with this? —she asked simply.

—It feels forced. I do it well, but… it doesn't follow me —Sebastián raised his hand, marking the gesture again—.

I feel like I start with a clear idea… but something cuts off right when I should release the rest.

As if the movement drowned at the end.

—Yes. I see it too —Virka replied. It wasn't criticism. It was companion—.

As if you tightened it just before letting it be.

Do you think too much before doing it?

—I don't think. But I seek it. I want to do it right. Maybe that already ruins it —he said with restrained frustration.

—And what if you do it without seeking to do it right?

—Then maybe it won't be useful for anything.

Virka smiled with narrowed eyes.

—And what if "not being useful for anything" is what makes it real?

Sebastián frowned.

—What do you mean?

—Not everything we do in battle serves a purpose.

But if it serves you to survive… then it's enough.

You don't need it to look good. Only to work when you don't think.

Silence.

The wind stirred.

The red grasses swayed as if listening.

Narka lifted his head from afar.

—What you are doing is good —he said, without moving—.

But it is still an edge.

If you want to create something… you must break the circle where you repeat what you already lived.

—And how do I break it? —asked Sebastián.

—Do something that has no origin in fear. Nor in memory.

Only in what you can imagine right now… even if it doesn't look like a fight.

Sebastián turned to Virka.

—What do you imagine when you think of protecting?

She lowered her gaze.

—A leap.

I'm always above what I want to protect.

That's why I attacked from above when I was beast.

—Not me.

I… always have my feet on the ground —Sebastián crossed his arms—.

When I fight, I sink. I anchor myself.

I feel that if I rise… I lose base.

—Then try moving without rising —said Virka.

He looked at her, tilted his neck, and returned to the center.

This time, he did not begin with the learned gesture.

He pushed his weight downward, dragging his left foot, turning with his torso glued to the earth.

As if he were mud, not body.

His arms did not extend.

They closed over his chest.

His head lowered.

And when he spun… it was like a broken gear, yet still turning.

Ugly.

Asymmetric.

Real.

—That… —said Virka— that is you.

Not as a style.

As a reaction.

—It's not pretty —replied Sebastián.

—It doesn't have to be.

Sebastián crouched.

He dug his fingers into the earth.

—Then this is what I have.

A way of falling, without breaking.

—And of breaking… without being seen coming —added Narka.

Sebastián nodded slowly.

It was not a martial art yet.

But it was a movement that represented him.

And if he repeated it enough…

if he listened to it enough…

it could be the true seed. The rhythm of the prairie had become part of him.

He knew it by the way his steps no longer broke the grass, but read it.

By how the wind was no longer just weather, but direction.

By the way his muscles no longer responded with strength… but with choice.

And even so, something unsettled him.

The movements he had discovered, those impulses that burst from his body without structure, without name, without technique… were no longer enough.

Not because they failed.

But because they were beginning to repeat.

And to repeat without understanding… was dangerous.

That night, as the sky turned a red less intense than the earth, Sebastián sat near a clearing.

He was not restless, but neither at peace.

He was full… of impulse without direction.

Virka appeared shortly after, carrying part of a hunted creature.

She sat beside him, without words.

Narka arrived later, as always, without announcing himself.

Only his enormous presence settled at the edge of the conversation.

Sebastián spoke bluntly.

—I think I have to leave.

Virka slowly turned her head.

She did not ask "why?". She just waited.

—Not to leave the prairie. Not to flee. I want… to go away for a few days. Alone.

I want to be with this —he said, placing his hand on his chest—.

What I feel inside.

What is forming.

I want to see if it survives without witnesses.

If it grows without anyone watching.

Narka lowered his head slightly.

—If it survives in solitude… it is because it was already real.

If it dies… it is because it still needed foreign soil to stand.

—Exactly —replied Sebastián, with a sigh—.

I don't want to create a technique.

I want to discover it.

I want to peel away the layers until only what lies beneath remains.

The raw.

The mine.

Virka adjusted herself.

She placed the piece of meat to one side.

—Are you afraid to go?

—No —he replied without hesitation—.

I'm afraid to return without having changed anything.

Silence.

Not an uncomfortable one.

A dense one.

Narka closed his eyes.

—The prairie no longer tries to kill you.

Now it observes you.

Let's see what you do with that respect.

Later, they did not speak much more.

They ate.

They breathed together.

And when the sky went completely dark and the air turned heavy and serene, Virka approached.

She said nothing.

She asked no permission.

She only stopped in front of him, breathing calmly.

Sebastián looked at her.

He knew it was not a farewell.

They did not know how long it would take.

Nor what he would be upon returning.

But both understood that something in that night was marking a before and after.

She leaned forward.

He did not move.

And then, their lips touched with a slowness that required no intention.

It was not hunger.

It was not tenderness.

It was a wordless pact.

The kiss did not last long.

Not because they cut it…

but because it did not need more.

And afterward, they did not speak of it.

They only sat together, breathing the same air, sharing a silence that no longer hurt.

At dawn, Sebastián stood.

Narka was still still.

Virka did not sleep.

He did not look back.

He only walked into the depths of the prairie.

Without weight.

Without impulse.

With direction.

Because this time… he did not seek anything new.

He only wanted to prove that what he carried inside…

was enough to create.

The prairie did not receive him with beauty.

The air grew denser.

The red of the grass, deeper.

Sebastián knew he had crossed into an area still unknown.

And that ignorance, even for him, could mean death.

But it was not death he sought.

It was proof.

The light fell obliquely, as if the sky doubted whether it should still illuminate him.

The first creature appeared on the second day.

It did not come with stealth.

It was no ambush.

It was a declaration.

A quadruped figure, lower than a feline, but with an arched back covered in segmented plates.

From its spine sprouted filaments like reeds swaying in the wind.

Sebastián knew they were not decorative.

When the creature advanced, it did not do so with strides.

It glided.

Its body left no tracks.

Its scent was not animal.

It was like wet iron.

Sebastián did not retreat.

He bent his stance.

Lowered his center of gravity.

His gaze became a straight line, measuring the movement.

—You don't come to hunt. You come to study —he murmured.

The creature stopped four meters away.

The reeds on its back rose in a straight line.

And then it attacked.

It was not speed.

It was a burst.

The first movement was a feint to the right.

Sebastián read it and spun in counter-cut, using his back foot as pivot.

The edge of a claw grazed his hip.

The second movement came from the ground.

The creature spun like a spiral, hurling its whole body in a sweep with its dorsal plates.

Sebastián did not dodge.

He leaned forward and drove his forearm into the ground, raising a leg with brutal precision.

The heel struck the enemy's side with exact force: not to break bone, but to cut the spin.

The sound was dry. Like stone breaking.

The creature screeched. Not in pain. In failed calculation.

But it did not stop.

It leapt again, straight at his throat.

Sebastián threw himself down, tensing his abdomen, spinning in controlled fall, and mid-rotation, with elbow first and then knee, struck twice the side of the creature mid-flight.

The monster fell to his left.

It tried to rise.

Sebastián did not allow it.

He leapt with both legs, spinning on his torso, and landed with one knee directly on its skull.

The sound was wet. A low burst.

And then, silence.

Sebastián breathed quickly.

Not from exhaustion.

From forced precision.

Every movement had cost calculation. Tension. Pulse.

But he had not taken a single serious wound.

Only a superficial cut on his shoulder.

He leaned down.

Touched the enemy's body.

—You resisted more than I expected —he whispered—. Thank you.

He did not eat its flesh.

He did not skin its hide.

He buried it.

Not out of morality.

Out of respect for what had been his mirror. The following days were meticulous.

He began to mark safe zones.

Small depressions where the air was cleaner.

Terrains with more stone than grass, where the most aggressive creatures would not pass.

He traced lines in his memory.

Angles of attack.

Escape routes.

He recorded everything with movements.

With muscular tension.

With silent practices under the moon.

And so, each night became a laboratory.

He did not repeat out of habit.

He repeated to refine the error that only he could see.

A kick that did not cut enough.

A shoulder turn that was too wide.

A jump that landed half a second late.

Each failure was an opportunity.

By the end of the second week, his body no longer felt like a tool.

It felt like a living equation, written with scars.

And in his back, his shoulders, his hands, the movements were no longer his.

They were part of the prairie.

Part of the strategy.

Part of the new being that had been born between dried blood and absolute control.

He had walked for hours, following the crossed tracks of a creature he had observed for days.

He had not confronted it before because the time was not right.

But now his body demanded it.

Not to prove strength, but to test whether his form could already survive a predator without prior plan,

only with trained reaction, tactical sense, and direct connection between will, space, and body.

The area was covered with low grass, denser, almost sticky.

The terrain was slightly concave, with broken stones scattered like claws jutting from the earth.

The air was static. There was no wind.

The environment was holding its breath.

Sebastián removed his shoes.

He needed to feel the ground with absolute precision.

The first warning did not come by sound.

It was a vibration on the sole of his foot, slight, constant, like a distant drum.

It was coming.

The creature emerged from the left flank, a hybrid mass between feline and reptile, with a wide, low body covered in shining plates.

It had two tails, each ending in a bony structure with spikes.

Its legs were short, muscular, built for quick bursts and frontal charges.

It did not roar.

It did not stop.

It attacked.

Sebastián crouched instinctively, one knee almost touching the ground.

And when the creature leapt, he did not spin or throw himself back as a conventional fighter would.

He sank lower.

Let the enemy's body pass over him by pure difference of angle,

and in doing so, used the weight of his own fall to launch a vertical elbow strike against the creature's rear joint.

The bone cracked, but did not give.

Not enough.

He spun his whole torso while rolling to the side, dodging the lash of one tail that grazed his ear.

He slid with his chest against the ground, used the spin's momentum to stand in a low stance,

and when the creature turned again with both tails raised, Sebastián did not step away.

He advanced.

He entered the space between both tails as if it were a crack in its defense.

With a lateral step, he pressed a stone, used it as leverage to launch himself toward the enemy's right flank.

He fell with elbow first, aiming at the joint between the foreleg and the torso.

The blow connected with a wet sound.

The animal's body arched to the side.

And when it tried to counterattack, Sebastián was already beneath it.

He grabbed its neck.

Not with strength.

With direction.

He used his weight.

Twisted it backward.

Turned with open hips, locking the creature's limb against his chest.

He brought it down with a single push, driving it into the ground with his knee on its throat.

The creature shrieked. It did not die.

One tail rose, and Sebastián lifted his right arm like a shield.

The spike struck and bounced.

His skin bled, but did not give way.

The tension of his muscles had absorbed the vibration of the blow before the bone.

He shouted, not from pain, but to tense his jaw,

and struck one, two, three times against the creature's skull with his forearm curved like a sickle.

The beast went out.

Not slowly.

As if someone had cut its current.

Sebastián did not move immediately.

His body was still in trap mode.

Every muscle still expecting a second assault.

His eyes swept the surroundings, searching for movement.

Nothing.

He rose.

Not fast.

Measured.

He looked at his hands.

They trembled slightly.

Not from fear,

but from the echo of precision.

Every gesture in that fight had no longer been loose instinct.

They had come out chained.

Coordinated.

The step.

The turn.

The fall.

The rotation of shoulders.

The use of the elbow.

The absorption of impact…

Nothing had been thought.

But everything had been tested before.

In the body.

In the routine.

For the first time, he had not fought to win.

He had fought because the body had taken control without releasing the will.

And that was new.

It was not simply an effective form.

It was a form that carried his mark.

He scanned the place where it had happened.

Remembered the creature's movement pattern.

Remembered how he had responded to each charge.

Not with more strength.

But with precise direction.

Controlled weight.

Exact bodily axis.

There he understood that his body was no longer executing a reflex.

It was expressing a logic.

A logic built with suffering, repetitions, terrain control, study of enemies, adjustment of rhythm, breathing and pressure.

He did not give it a name.

But he knew that what he had just done,

if he repeated it, if he polished it, if he tested it against tougher enemies,

could become a true structure.

Perhaps not a school.

But a language.

He did not seek more enemies that night.

He did not practice movements.

He only walked in slow circles, with arms hanging,

letting his body memorize without interference what it had done.

Not with the mind.

Not with intention.

Only with weight, footprint, breath.

It was the first time he felt that the body was not an extension of his will…

but its core. The next dawn, he did not hunt.

He did not eat.

He went toward a raised area, where the terrain curved like a half-moon.

The wind there did not blow strong, but it had constant direction.

The grass was short.

The scents were concentrated.

And the scattered rocks offered readings of shadow, position, and echo.

That space would become his workshop.

During the following days, Sebastián did not train in the classic way.

He did not repeat sequences with counting.

He did not make combinations.

He moved in intervals.

Slowly.

With weight.

In internal camera.

Sometimes he stopped just before finishing a turn.

Other times, he returned to the previous position to test if he could reach the same angle from another impulse.

He measured.

Not visually.

With the skeleton.

With the tension of muscles in different climates, different humidities, different types of ground.

And then the first principle emerged:

"Not every movement must end in impact."

He discovered it when he faced a scaly creature with sharp reflexes.

Sebastián opened with a lateral spin and extended his arm as if to strike with the back of it.

The enemy reacted violently.

It leapt at the supposed opening.

But there was no strike.

Only emptiness.

In that emptiness, Sebastián turned his ankle, pressed his heel,

and, taking advantage of the enemy's impulse, used the spin of his torso as a trap to throw the enemy out of its own balance.

The creature fell without understanding why.

Sebastián did not kill it.

He only let it go.

Not out of mercy.

Because that lesson had already been given.

The days went on, and more principles emerged.

He did not name them aloud.

But he felt them:

"The ground is not a limit, it is a tool."

"Your weight is your densest weapon."

"If your center breaks, your will disperses."

He began to create unintentionally.

To draw with movement.

To repeat not from habit, but because the body chose to return to those gestures.

And then something new appeared.

A creature never seen before.

It did not move by impulse.

It moved by pattern.

A kind of angular predator, with a body segmented in triangles, legs thin as blades, and a head without eyes.

The beast did not attack like an animal.

It measured.

It retreated and advanced following his breathing.

It adapted in real time.

Sebastián knew instantly that this was not a challenge of strength.

It was a test of style.

Each time he attacked, the creature responded with an impossible angle.

Each time he retreated, it closed the exit as if reading his next step before it happened.

He had to fight without rules.

So he did.

He lowered his center.

Fell with his back almost against the ground.

Spun with elbows and knees drawn in, using friction as impulse.

The creature launched a thrust with its forelegs.

Sebastián used a movement he had rehearsed by accident three days earlier:

he turned his torso while his leg crossed his own body,

and with his knee, struck upward,

as if his body were a spring in reverse.

The impact bent the enemy's leg.

Not from strength.

From direction.

The creature shrieked, recoiled, and attacked from above.

Sebastián did not block.

He leapt forward.

Abandoned the ground.

Spun in the air.

Landed in a posture he had never practiced:

knee forward, arm covering his side, head lowered,

torso rotated backward.

An animal gesture, yet precise.

And when the creature launched its final attack, he did not dodge.

He let his body move as it had already learned to move.

The enemy collapsed.

Not because Sebastián was stronger.

Because the space no longer belonged to the enemy.

It was his.

And so, unintentionally, without seeking it,

the first true nucleus of his art was born.

It had no name.

But it had a logic.

A structure.

A sequence.

And most important: a function.

From that moment, Sebastián did not train to improve.

He trained to preserve what his body already knew to do.

And now… for the first time, what he did was no longer reaction.

It was creation. Five months.

That had passed.

Five months of repetition without memory.

Of combat without audience.

Of evolution without guide.

Sebastián did not come out different.

He came out exact.

He was not bigger, nor faster, nor stronger.

But every gesture of his was pure economy.

Nothing was left over.

The animals watched him from afar.

They no longer attacked him.

Not because they feared him…

but because they no longer saw him as a piece moving through the grass.

They saw him as part of it.

His art had no name.

Nor a style.

But what he did when moving, what he expressed when fighting,

was no longer improvisation.

It was a living form.

And then, when the sky began to change hue,

when the winds stopped blowing in their usual direction,

when the earth began to vibrate from within…

Draila appeared.

She did not descend from the sky.

She did not rise from the earth.

She was simply there.

As if she had always been.

Sebastián was not surprised.

He only straightened.

She looked at him, with that expression that was neither smile nor judgment.

And extended her hand.

In her palm there was a small sphere.

It was not stone.

It was not energy.

It was a crack.

A crack that pulsed.

—Do you know what this is? —asked Draila.

—No.

—It is your core.

Sebastián did not respond.

—Not one like common cultivators' —she continued—.

This one does not accumulate Qi.

It decomposes it.

It digests it.

It destroys it to remake it.

This core does not live on stability… it lives on hunger.

Silence.

—And what do I do with it?

—You swallow it.

You let it consume you.

And then… if you survive, you will begin to cultivate.

Not like them.

Like you.

Sebastián took the sphere.

It was hot.

Not from temperature.

From intention.

He brought it to his chest.

And absorbed it.

It did not shine.

It did not hurt.

But the world changed.

Inside his chest, something began to vibrate.

Not like a motor.

Like a living wound.

Draila stepped back.

—You have five days. Then you must bury yourself.

—Bury myself?

—Yes. The body exhausts. The soul adapts. But this core…

does not wait.

If it does not receive energy, it begins to eat itself.

And with you inside, it will devour everything.

—How do I feed it?

—By fighting.

By feeling.

By absorbing.

—And if I don't fight?

—Then you die.

But slowly.

From within.

Sebastián asked no more questions.

—What is Qi?

—The energy that was trapped when the gods were sealed.

—And what does cultivating it mean?

—Giving form to something that was never meant to have it.

—And why me?

Draila lowered her head.

—Because you… did not come into the world to learn.

You came to remake it.

Silence.

—And what comes now?

—Now… you bury yourself.

And when you rise…

the world will have to decide if it is worthy of your existence.

Sebastián nodded.

Not out of obedience.

But because he had already decided it before hearing the answer.

And without more, he walked to the center of the prairie.

Opened the earth with his hands.

Entered it.

Covered himself to the shoulders.

And closed his eyes.

Not to sleep.

But to begin.

The prairie fell silent.

And the world held its breath.

END OF CHAPTER 11