On the Path of Eternal Strength.

The forest had no beginning and no end. The roots coiled around themselves, forming impossible labyrinths, and the trees, with bark cracked like rotten skin, leaned toward each other as if sharing secrets. There was no light. Only a pale, dirty gray, floating like mist among the branches.

Sebastián walked slowly.

His bare feet sank into a soft, damp ground, covered with dead leaves and small splintered bones. The air smelled of old mushrooms, of dried blood, of something that had stopped living a long time ago but had not yet finished rotting.

His body was no longer the same.

Scars crossed his skin like a chaotic net. There was no clean flesh left. Around his neck, pressure marks formed dark rings; on his shoulders, semicircular bites had healed poorly, leaving pieces of hardened, fibrous skin. His arms were covered in cuts, old and new, some open, others with black scabs. His hands, swollen from constant use, showed broken knuckles, black nails, dried blood beneath cracked skin. His palms were pure exposed nerve, as if the flesh had been torn layer by layer.

His chest and abdomen were full of faded bruises, yellow and violet, like withered flowers on his skin. His ribs protruded beneath his skin like dead branches. On his left leg, a long, poorly closed wound seemed about to reopen with each step. His right thigh bled slowly from a deep scratch made by a claw-shaped branch. He limped, but he did not stop.

Only his face remained intact.

It was the only thing that had not been touched, as if something invisible had protected it with cruel intent. As if the forest, the world, or whatever was watching him, needed his face to still be that of a child.

But that child was no longer there.

He walked for hours or days, time bending among the branches. The empty stomach did not complain: it had stopped doing so long ago. Only his body, slow, increasingly heavy, begged for rest. Fatigue was not normal weariness; it was something deeper, as if he were crumbling from the inside.

His eyelids weighed heavy. His muscles contracted without order. The cold seeped into his bones, despite there being no wind. When he finally let himself collapse at the foot of a hollow trunk, it was not by choice. It was because he could no longer go on.

And there, unwillingly, sleep caught him.

First, it was a whisper. Then, a pressure. As if someone slipped in through his closed eyes.

The first thing he saw was a house. His house.

The kitchen. The clean floor. A table with warm bread. And his mother… with her back turned. He tried to call her, but no sound came out. He moved forward. He felt the warmth of the scene, a false warmth. When she turned, she had no face. Only a smooth surface of taut skin. No eyes, no mouth.

And yet, she spoke.

—Why did you come back?

The voice was his. Sebastián's. It came from that faceless body, like an echo duplicating itself and breaking him inside.

He woke up.

Or thought he did.

He was in another place. A white room, with his four friends. He saw them play, laugh. But they did not look at him. They did not see him. One of them approached, extended a hand. Sebastián took it.

And as he did, the friend's skin dissolved, like soaked clay, bones falling to the floor.

Another dream within the dream.

Now he was running through a forest identical to the real one, but with trees made of flesh, with branches that throbbed. Voices pursued him, not figures. Voices in his tone, with his words. They repeated things he had said, things he had done. And things he thought but never spoke.

—You didn't protect them —they shouted—. You left them.

He tried to cover his ears. He couldn't. His hands were tied by roots.

He woke up.

But the forest was the same.

Or worse.

Because now what surrounded him seemed different, though nothing had changed. He felt every shadow judged him. That every branch remembered his dreams. That the forest had seen him break inside.

And there was no compassion there.

Only presence.

Sebastián did not cry. He only breathed. Lowered his gaze to his destroyed hands, the mud beneath his nails, the blood still slowly sliding down his leg.

He remembered the faces of his friends… increasingly blurry. One of them —the tallest— had a name he no longer remembered. Another, the one who always laughed, no longer had laughter in his memory. The girl… her name began with M, or maybe not. The fourth, the quietest, the one who once gave him half his bread, now had a face merged with the monster from the pit.

—I don't know who they were anymore —he murmured.

The forest did not answer.

The shadows stretched a little longer.

And Sebastián curled up, eyes open, not knowing if he was still awake. The body moved by inertia. The steps were clumsy, without direction, as if something were dragging him from within. He did not walk with purpose. He did not explore. He only went down, down and down, through roots that opened at his passage and branches that seemed to close after letting him through.

The trees were not trees. They were forms. Silent silhouettes that watched him without eyes. Sometimes the trunks had cracks that breathed. Sometimes the leaves bent without sound. Nothing in the forest made noise and yet everything weighed upon his ears. Like a buzzing born in the center of his chest.

Sebastián did not look around. Looking was useless. The landscape did not change. The darkness was not complete, but the light never reached. Only a directionless clarity, as if the sun were trapped underground, rotting.

Sebastián's body no longer seemed his own. He felt it. He felt every corner. And that was the worst.

His right thigh had been open for days, a wound in the shape of a bite, although the monster that had made it was no longer there. The flesh had not closed. Sometimes pus oozed. Other times it hardened like stone, and when touched, it crunched like a shell.

The fingers of his left hand were twisted. Not broken. Twisted. One had stayed that way when he clung too long to a branch so as not to be dragged away by a creature shaped like wind. No one tore it off. It simply dislocated by force. It was never reset.

His chest had fine lines like wire, marks made by thin claws. They had not attacked him out of fury. They marked him slowly. As if they wanted to leave something. Sebastián did not remember how long it had lasted. He only remembered that he did not scream. Not because he was strong. Because he no longer had a voice.

The right ribs hurt when breathing. He had fallen from the top of a hollow rock and had not stopped to check which bones were broken. He only crawled until the pain became part of the movement.

But his face —his face— remained clean. The forest did not touch him there. Sometimes he thought they did it on purpose. That they wanted to leave him something intact, as mockery. A human mask to hide what he no longer was.

And then he fell.

Not like a violent fall. Rather, as if they let him go. As if they had carried him there just to let him surrender.

The body collapsed upon damp leaves that smelled of nothing. The neck fell sideways. The arms spread. Breathing became slow. Very slow.

His eyes did not close immediately. They only stayed fixed, empty, staring at something that was not there.

And then, the dream.

Not a normal dream. Not a refuge.

A trap.

The school hallway appeared, floating in front of him, as if it did not really exist, but it was there. Sebastián did not remember how or why, but somehow he knew he belonged to this place, although his memory unraveled when he tried to search for answers. He was just there, in the white hallway, with lights flickering without electricity. The sound of his steps did not reach his ears, as if the world had stopped listening to him.

He was alone.

Alone, except for them.

Lu… Lu… something with L…

E... E… he could not remember.

Sof... Sofía… or was it S… or something.

Ju... Ju... what was it?

The figures were in front of him. His friends. But they were not them.

The clothes were there, but the eyes —those eyes— empty, holes staring at him. There was no face, only teeth. Disfigured smiles, mouths opened to the impossible. The faces were not those of friends. They were smiling corpses.

"You forgot us," they all said at once.

Sebastián could not respond. He wanted to, but his throat was empty, full of dust. The voice that came from his mouth was a drowned whisper.

Lu... came closer.

Her hands were disfigured. One missing, two missing... Each step she took, a dark mark remained on the ground, as if she were bleeding from within, as if everything was constant wear.

E… her face was covered in mud. Mud that cracked every time she spoke, dropping pieces of herself into the air, into her ragged voice.

S... floated. Her eyes, bandaged, pointed at him with an empty gaze.

And Ju... he was writing. On the walls. With blood. Strokes and more strokes Sebastián could not read. Each word seemed to fall apart before he could understand them.

"Why didn't you come back?"

"Why didn't you stay?"

"Why are you the only one who breathes?"

Their voices were like needles. As if every word were a piercing.

But what truly shattered him was not the pain of the words. It was the silence that followed. A thick silence that crushed him, that filled the air with something unbearable, as if escape were impossible.

The floor began to crumble. Not like water. No. It was worse. Something that devoured everything, like living flesh under fire.

The air smelled of burnt bones. And then the sky cracked. Everything shattered around him. The pressure in his chest, the heaviness in his body, forced him to remain still. He could no longer move, not even breathe as before.

The ground dissolved beneath him, as if disintegrating into flesh and melted bones.

Sebastián looked at his friends, but he was no longer sure if they were them. He no longer knew anything.

He did not remember why he was there.

He did not remember anything of his life before this place.

Nothing.

Only confusion.

He tried to remember who he was, but his thoughts fell apart. As if the very air he breathed were erasing him.

Who was he?

What was he doing here?

The forest…

It was not there, but somehow he felt it.

Not in his body.

In his head.

A crack, something cracked inside him.

Roots.

Roots that sprouted from his ear, his nose, from the center of his skull.

And there he understood that he no longer knew if this was a dream or if it was real.

There was no difference anymore.

It was as if everything, everything, were consuming him.

"Wake up," whispered a voice that was not his.

But he could not.

The forest already had him. Sebastián understood that physical pain was the easiest thing. The real. The tangible. But this… this was different.

It was a seed, something that had grown inside his mind.

And it had just germinated.

What was happening in his mind was deeper than any wound. And he knew it.

The dream was now his only reality.

It was more than a refuge.

It was his prison.

Nothing moved. Not even time. Only the sensation of sinking.

The root that had germinated inside his mind did not stop. It grew. It spread. Twisted thoughts. Split them apart. Confused them.

An image crossed his head. His hand. Or what seemed to be his hand. The fingers were twisted. One of them was no longer there. It did not hurt. Nothing hurt. Only the memory burned that it should hurt. And that confusion was worse than pain.

The ground had disappeared. There was no ceiling. No sky. No body. Only the idea of one. The weight of a form. The heat of a presence. But it was like wearing the shadow of someone else.

And the voices continued.

you were not you

you never were

you disguised yourself as human

and now it breaks

Each word was a dry echo. As if someone spoke from inside his skull.

He wanted to say stop. But there was no mouth. He wanted to cover his ears. But he had no arms. Only that form, that thing without substance that breathed without air, that thought without ideas.

He saw a reflection. Floating in front of him. A black, liquid surface that reflected nothing at first. But as he looked closer, it began to show things. Faces. Fragments. Pieces.

A boy. Maybe him. Maybe not. He played with someone. A laugh. A voice. Nothing clear. Nothing solid. Then that same boy cried. His eyes were full of mud. He screamed for something. A woman. She had no face. Only a huge hollow in the face.

Everything broke.

The surface exploded in silence. It drenched him in cold. In absence.

Sebastián tried to remember his name again. He only heard a hollow laugh.

And then he knew he no longer knew it. Not his name. Not his reason. Not his pain. Only the void remained.

A void wrapped in borrowed flesh.

A shell.

The forest whispered inside him. Not in words. In pulses. In beats.

It did not tell him to surrender. It told him he already had.

The forest knew. It knew how to break him down. How to split him without shattering him. It wanted him soft. Hollow. Docile.

And Sebastián was.

The inside of his mind fell apart like wet paper. He thought of something, and that something fell apart before he finished understanding it. He did not know if he was breathing. If he was still lying on the mud. If he even had a body.

He only knew it was not over. That something else was coming. Something worse.

And it came.

A door.

Floating.

Solid.

Old wood, with rusted fittings and a crooked handle.

It should not be there. Nothing in that place was solid. But the door was. And behind it… a smell.

Freshly baked bread.

Clean clothes.

A name spoken tenderly.

Sebasti…

He did not hear it fully. But it was enough. The sound burned his throat. His chest.

He felt his body. For the first time since everything broke, he felt it.

He dragged himself.

The door was not far.

He reached out his hand.

Touched the handle.

It was warm.

On the other side, there was light. Not white. Not yellow. A soft light. Blue. Blue like a memory of a sky that no longer exists.

He opened.

And saw it.

A home. One he did not recognize, but his heart remembered. Clean walls. Wooden chairs. A table with crumbs. A voice singing softly from a room.

He felt tears. Real ones. They ran down his face, through his only untouched part. Through his face, the only place the forest had not touched.

A figure came out of the room. It had no face, but the silhouette was enough. It was love. It was refuge. It was mother.

She opened her arms.

Come.

And Sebastián went.

He ran.

He embraced.

And then…

Then everything went out.

The house fell like ash.

The figure turned into dry branches.

The door closed behind him with a dull thud.

And the blue light turned red. Dark. Viscous.

The floor opened.

Sebastián fell.

This time, he truly fell.

He screamed. But the scream did not come from his mouth. It came from the trees. From the roots. From the entire forest.

A roar of triumph.

Because it had him.

Because that hope was the last.

And it had broken.

Now nothing remained.

Only the seed.

And that seed was him. He woke up.

But not with a start. Not with relief.

He woke up like an ember ignites. Slow. Silent. Warm inside.

His eyes opened without understanding the diffuse light between the branches. There was no sky. Only a thick mist slipping through gray leaves, as if the forest had not yet fully released him.

The body moved before the thought. It did not tremble. It did not hurt. It was firm, heavy, different.

He felt it as he breathed. The chest no longer weighed the same. The flesh responded as if it were made for something more.

To hunt.

To endure.

To serve.

There was no dream anymore.

But the dream had changed him.

It was not a hallucination that remained. It was this. This new way of being awake. This new way of being.

He rose among damp leaves. The ground did not reject him. The roots did not touch him. Everything around seemed to accept him.

The forest looked at him.

And he looked at it too.

As part of it.

As one of its children.

He began to walk. He did not know where to. But it did not matter. The impulse was clear. He did not need purpose. He did not need questions.

He only needed to continue.

The senses were different. He saw the invisible. Heard breaths that made no noise. Felt the heat of fear in the distance. Smelled the thought of living things.

And he moved with them.

He did not remember who he had been.

He did not remember why it hurt before.

Only one name remained, buried under layers of new flesh, instinct, silence.

But then…

Something fell in front of him.

A small thing.

Red.

A bracelet.

Old. Of thread.

Clumsily tied, as if small hands had made it without knowing exactly how.

He looked at it.

The forest stopped.

Everything stopped.

The chest burned. Not with pain. With memory.

Not clear. Not complete. But real.

"Remember." whispered a voice that was not of the forest.

And then he knew something.

He did not know who he had been.

He did not know why the names bled.

He only knew what his name was.

Sebastián.

And that, though small, was enough to make the forest tremble.

It was not redemption.

It was not freedom.

But it was a crack.

A word that survived in the middle of the monster.

A word that hurt.

A word that burned.

A word that, for now, was enough.

The forest did not move again.

Nor the air. Nor the sounds. Not even the mist between the leaves.

Sebastián, that burning name, remained still with the bracelet between his fingers. He did not think. He did not cry. He did not tremble. He only breathed… and that was already much. Because in that breath there was no pain. There was no child from before. Only the body that remained.

Then, the forest blinked again. And with it, the world.

And with it, Sebastián.

He did not ask why. He did not try to remember more. The memory was a crack, yes, but not enough to stop the hunger of the forest, nor its call. And he was no longer someone who resisted that.

He only stood up.

And walked.

First came the silence.

Not of the surroundings. That was still full of creaks, puffs, wet breaths among the undergrowth. The true silence came from him. From his body. From his flesh. Not a branch broken under his steps, not a leaf whispering when his skin brushed them. The forest taught him without words. Every muscle learned on its own.

Walking was floating.

Crouching was disappearing.

Breathing was merging.

His feet did not sink the ground. His hands did not disturb the air. His eyes did not shine. The smell of his body changed: he no longer smelled of child, nor of blood, nor of fear. Now he smelled of dry humidity, of bark, of ancient moss. It was as if he had been carved from living wood.

A creature passed beside him, tall and entangled in itself, made of broken branches and multiple legs. It did not see him. It did not feel him. Not even smelled the heat flowing from his neck. Sebastián remained still, imitating the posture of a rotten trunk.

And the forest approved.

It then showed him how to move among shadows that were not cast. Because there, light had no rules. The leaves did not let the sun pass in a logical way. The forest had its own shadows: deep, silent, impossible. There Sebastián learned to enter.

It was not magic.

It was obedience.

First, the sound of his steps faded.

Then the color of his skin.

Afterwards, the outline of his figure itself.

Until only a presence remained. An intention.

And that intention was lethal.

The first trial came without warning. A creature —no bigger than a wild dog, but with a jaw hanging down to its chest— wandered among roots. It dripped black drool. It had no eyes. Only a slit where they should have been. Sebastián did not think. He did not feel. He only obeyed.

He did not attack from the front.

He did not run.

He let himself fall, from above, from a branch he did not even remember climbing.

The body struck like a weightless rock. The hands, still small, sought the points the forest had shown him in dreams. Behind the ear. Beneath the jaw. In the center of the throat. It was not strength he used. It was precision.

Three strikes.

Three pulses of darkness.

The creature did not roar. It did not shriek. It only collapsed upon itself as if its soul had been crushed from within.

Sebastián did not stop to look.

He did not stop to think.

He returned to the shadows.

And waited.

The forest vibrated around him like an ancient heart. It approved. It guided him. It taught him without words how to be nothing. How to kill as if he had never been there. Hours, or days, passed. Time became a rumor. Sebastián no longer slept. He did not need to. He closed his eyes only when he had to become soil. When he had to merge with the landscape.

He learned to use the body as a tool: the nails to tear throats, the fingers to sink into soft flesh, the teeth to rip tendons.

But he did it in silence.

Without joy.

Without hunger.

Only because the forest demanded it.

He left no trace.

He left no sound.

He left no soul.

He was a child, yes. But he was also something else.

And that something else was perfect for what the forest needed.

But it was still not enough.

The forest did not say it, but it imposed it.

The first day —if days even existed there— it forced him to climb. Not with hands, but with skin. Sebastián understood that his arms were no longer his: they were roots ascending, twisted, rough. He did not feel vertigo. He did not feel fear. He felt the need to reach where the sun could not.

And upon reaching, he did not rest.

From above, he had to throw himself upon dead branches, upon exact points on the ground where silence would not break. Each poorly executed fall meant punishment. The punishment did not hurt. It was worse: the forest ignored him. It made him alien. It made him feel once more like before.

And Sebastián did not want to be before again.

The second day there was no air.

No wind. No sound. Only a dense mist that penetrated through the pores. The forest did not teach him to breathe. It taught him to absorb. Each cell opened like a mouth. Like hungry skin. And he learned to move like this: sliding in the fog, fused with it. He no longer walked among trees, he walked inside them.

He began to hunt creatures that only lived in that thickness.

Small.

Fast.

Silent.

But not enough.

The forest set the rules. Sebastián fulfilled them.

Each night —if that was what those moments of total darkness could be called— a new trial came.

First, to walk without shadow.

Shadow was trace, and trace was weakness. The forest forced him to cross spaces lit by mushrooms and fireflies without casting darkness on any surface. To achieve this, he had to control his body so that not a single fiber trembled. He learned to move only when the light changed, to remain still when the shape of his figure threatened to appear. He even learned to breathe between flashes of glow, becoming something that did not touch reality with its presence.

Then, to kill without leaving smell.

The prey were sensitive, not to sound, but to trail. Each time he exhaled, they discovered him. So he stopped exhaling. He learned to hold his breath for minutes that felt like hours, to advance without disturbing dust or floating particles. He sank his hands into flesh with precise movements, avoiding useless spillage, avoiding the stench of open blood. His touch was so clean that the forest began to erase his tracks behind him. He left no remains. He left no signs. Only death without presence.

And finally, to disappear without moving.

The forest placed him before creatures with fixed gazes. The challenge was not to hide. It was to not exist while they looked at him. He learned to control the heartbeat. To close the pupil as if it were an animal reflex. To lower the temperature of his skin to match the bark of the trees. And when he could not hide, he simply became an extension of the environment. It was not camouflage. It was fusion. He became part of the matter. A living statue without consciousness, without light.

And he succeeded.

At the cost of himself.

At the cost of his spark.

The eyes, once alert, full of wonder or fear, slowly dimmed.

It was not a sudden change. It was day by day. Night by night.

Each trial stole a spark. Each success left a crack.

Until that trembling blink of the living no longer remained.

Only still surfaces. Like stagnant water.

They no longer sought anything.

They only saw what was necessary.

The forest shaped him without compassion. Tested him with creatures that were like mirrors of himself: small beasts, deformed, cunning. Some hid feigning weakness. Sebastián learned not to fall. He learned to kill even before confirming the danger.

Not by impulse.

But by calculation.

They gave him branches like blades. Leaves that cut flesh with just a touch. Stones that drained heat from the body. He did not need them. His fingers were sharper. His breath colder. His body, more brutal.

Sleep ceased to be a necessity.

Dreaming, a useless memory.

The forest demanded efficiency, and Sebastián responded with silence.

There were no more questions.

No more thoughts that stopped him.

Only the body and the order.

Walk.

Observe.

Eliminate.

Hide.

Breathe.

Walk again.

And among those acts, day after day —though he no longer knew what that meant— Sebastián stopped being someone who remembered having been a child.

Now he was part of something.

Not a child of the forest.

But its most faithful reflection.

A tool without name.

A being without light.

And that, for now, was enough. The order was not given with words.

It was a tremor beneath the earth. A murmur among roots. A movement in the sap.

Sebastián understood.

He had to eliminate.

Not an animal.

Not a creature.

A presence.

Something had entered that should not exist in the forest. Something that brought metal, fire, and steps with intention. The forest had tolerated it for a time. No longer.

Sebastián slid among the barks as if his flesh had been born in them.

There was no preparation.

There was no strategy.

He was the strategy.

Every branch creaked before he stepped. Every leaf shifted a second before brushing him. His body merged with the texture of the environment. He advanced like a thought, like a memory that cannot be fully placed.

In the distance, they breathed.

Two.

One heavier. The other more agile. Humans. Or almost.

He did not look at them. He felt them. On the tongue. On the skin. They were stains of heat in the midst of balance.

The forest urged him.

Silent.

Lethal.

Close.

He extended a hand. Not like one who will touch, but like one who will tear existence from a thread.

Then, something came loose.

A subtle brush, on his wrist. A tickle. Then, the light weight of a falling fiber.

The bracelet.

The old thread bracelet.

The one that had always been on his arm for no apparent reason. That did not hinder, that did not hurt. That simply was.

It fell among the leaves.

And the world stopped.

The forest did not understand.

The forest does not stop.

But he did.

Because a voice, not from the forest, spoke again:

"Pick it up."

His fingers faltered.

For the first time in many nights —or days, or whatever those cycles in which he no longer slept were— his hand trembled.

The footsteps of the intruders moved away.

The prey escaped.

And he did not move.

The chest burned, right where nothing had hurt before.

"Pick it up," said the voice again. It was not a command. It was an old whisper, with pain behind it.

And Sebastián —the being who no longer called himself that, the perfect instrument of the forest— bent down.

He touched the bracelet.

It was only thread.

Worn. Torn on one side.

But as he brushed it, something shone in the depths of his eyes. Not light. Not hope. Only a spark.

Human.

A memory too simple to be understood. But enough to hurt.

Enough to distract.

The forest roared.

Not with sound. With urgency.

The prey was lost.

The opportunity evaporated.

But Sebastián still held the bracelet.

Clutching it.

As if still within him remained a will not belonging to the forest.

As if still, somewhere, a child named Sebastián remembered that this bracelet should not be abandoned.

And though the next step he took was precise, it was no longer perfect.

It was no longer completely invisible.

The crack, minimal, was open.

And the forest, for the first time, was not entirely satisfied.

The forest did not scream. It did not roar. The skies did not thunder, nor did the earth tremble.

But something changed.

Sebastián felt it immediately. As if the air grew heavier. As if the trees stopped breathing.

The cold entered his skin, but it was not temperature. It was something else. A presence crawling through his bones, sitting behind his eyes.

And then… he stopped seeing.

Not with his eyes. With his mind.

The colors went out, one by one. The world became gray, then black, then… nothing.

But it was not blindness. It was confinement. As if they had locked him inside his own head and sealed the door.

He tried to move. His body did not respond. He wanted to speak. His tongue was ash. He tried to think… but the forest was already thinking for him.

And then the whispers came.

Thousands of voices, all the same, all empty. They did not scream. They murmured. And each word was like a thorn driving into what remained of his mind.

failure

disloyalty

distraction

weakness

human

One after another. One after another. Like constant drops falling upon stone until they split it.

They made him see.

But not memories.

They made him see false moments, distorted. His mother leaving, turning her back. His friends pointing at him with melted faces. Himself, as a child, begging for help from no one, in a room without doors, without windows, without voice.

They made him feel.

The betrayal of not obeying. The guilt of thinking of himself. The weight of a mistake turned sin.

And then the forest devoured him again.

But not like before.

Not like a dream.

This was awake. This was flesh. This was his soul torn to shreds.

He felt his fingers open against his will, dropping the bracelet.

He felt his heart beat backwards.

He felt his name tear in his chest, as if each letter were being ripped out by invisible claws.

Sebastián fell.

Not to the ground.

He fell inward.

An abyss with no end. Where broken pieces of himself floated: a childish laugh, a tear that never fell, an "I miss you" he never dared to say.

And when the bottom came, there was no impact.

Only silence.

And that silence weighed more than any punishment.

Then, a voice. Soft. Almost a breath:

"get up."

It was not the forest.

It was the other.

The one that resisted. The one that had not fully let him go.

The one that knew his name.

A red flash crossed the darkness.

The bracelet.

He extended his arm.

And for an instant… a single instant… the forest doubted.

It did not forgive.

But it doubted.

And that was enough for Sebastián to open his eyes.

Again.

But something had changed. Something more than the flesh. More than the mind.

Now, inside him, lived two silences.

The forest's.

And his own. Sebastián barely moved, his muscles tense and aching from the effort. He had not completed the mission. The distraction had been enough for the forest to decide to impose its punishment. And the punishment was not merciful.

The air thickened, as if time itself had stopped. The ground beneath his feet began to vibrate softly, but soon the vibration became a dull rumble. The roots, once harmless, began to slither from the earth, twisted and alive, like snakes waiting for a mistake.

"Why didn't you listen to me?" The forest's voice was a whisper, but its words thundered in his mind, as if each syllable drove itself into his brain.

The roots slid toward him, wrapping around his legs, binding him. Fear reached him before pain did. An unbearable pressure began to seize his body. The roots tightened more, and the ground seemed to come alive, absorbing his thoughts, devouring his will.

The air grew dense, heavy, as if it were trying to rip away his very breath. Sebastián tried to fight, to move, but his body did not respond. He could not scream. He could not think. He was trapped in an invisible net, a dream within another dream, a torment that would not end.

The voices came, but not in the way he had known them. They were not the soft, almost tender voices of the darkness. They were now deep and deranged, like echoes of the forest itself, like murmurs of the trees staring at him from all sides, relentless.

"You cannot escape," said one of the voices, its tone grave and rasping. "The punishment will be eternal."

His mind clouded. He tried to remember what he had been before arriving here, before falling into the shadow of this place, but the memory vanished like smoke. The names dissolved. The faces faded.

The roots crushed him, pressing against his chest. But it was the emptiness that truly hurt. The emptiness of having forgotten everything that had once been his, of being only a shadow, an empty shell without past or future.

And then, the forest began to whisper again, as if everything that had happened were part of a larger plan. His punishment was not only physical. The forest was shaping him. Like a sculptor giving form to stone, the forest was carving his thoughts, his memories. Erasing everything that made him human.

"Who are you, Sebastián?" The voice came softly, like a distant echo.

He did not know how to respond. He only felt the pressure in his chest, the tension in his head. His existence was fading like mist under the sun.

Once more, the forest let him fall, but not in the same way. It was not a rest. It was a shove into the abyss, into oblivion. A place where what he had been no longer mattered. Where there was only one word. One order. One purpose.

Somehow, Sebastián understood what he had to do. But he did not know how. Only the idea remained —of movement, of sacrifice, of the hunt. Something had changed in him. Something he could not fully grasp.

Suddenly, the roots released him, but the echo of the forest's voice remained, and the void filled him once again. He could not scream, he could not speak. The word he feared most had been given to him. He was nothing more than an extension of the forest, an extension that had to obey, to move, to kill.

The punishment had ended, but the pain had not. Only one question remained: who was left now of Sebastián?

He no longer cried.

Neither inside nor out.

The tears had dried in him like soil without water.

There was no rage.

There was no fear.

Only something still, locked inside, that no longer pushed from within.

The punishment was not a moment. It was a thorn planted in his conscience.

A thorn that turned. That opened.

Every time he thought of the bracelet.

Every time he heard the voice that was not of the forest.

Now his eyes did not shine.

Not because they were extinguished, but because they no longer reflected anything.

They did not search. They did not ask.

They only saw what had to be seen.

They only obeyed.

He walked as if the body were not his.

But it was not clumsiness.

It was precision.

A machine without a soul.

A child without echo.

The forest watched him in silence.

Not with tenderness.

With approval.

The roots no longer moved away from him.

They marked his path.

They whispered the next steps.

And he, without words, without will, followed them.

In his mind, what little remained of Sebastián floated like a broken thread.

Sometimes he heard the name.

Not his, not entirely.

But that old, worn syllable: Sebas...

As if someone called him from a place that no longer existed.

But he did not answer.

Not because he did not want to.

But because he no longer knew how.

The forest did not congratulate him.

It did not need to.

The absence of punishment was reward enough.

And then, a new order came.

Not with words.

With images that arose inside his eyes.

A figure. A target. A direction.

The body began to move.

The mission was clear.

The pain was past.

The identity was ash.

What remained…

Was functional.

Lethal.

Empty.

The forest did not need a child.

Only an instrument.

And that was exactly what Sebastián had become. The physical pain had disappeared, but what remained inside Sebastián was much worse. The forest, which had consumed him in so many ways, now left him in an abyssal emptiness. It was not the torture of his muscles, nor the sensation of wounds that no longer existed. It was the void the forest had left in his mind.

Sebastián felt nothing. Or rather, he could no longer feel anything. Every thought he tried to form vanished like mist in the sun. The memories, the faces, the names… all slowly crumbled away. Only a distant echo remained, a whisper in his head that he no longer recognized.

The forest was there, around him. But now he did not feel it as before. It was no longer a presence that guided him, that shaped him. Now, it seemed to be a part of him. Everything the forest had done, everything it had transformed him into, had reduced him to this deep emptiness. He was no longer a child, not even a being aware of his humanity.

He walked without direction, like a shadow, a mere extension of the environment around him. He had no goal, no desire. Each step dragged him further into nothingness, into total disconnection from what he had once been. The landscape that once seemed mysterious and full of threats was now simply a gray, dull background. The trees no longer rose with majesty before him. They were only shadows without meaning.

The roots beneath his feet no longer recognized him. The wind that passed between the branches no longer whispered, there were no words that called him. Not even the mysterious voice had returned. The forest had let him fall into the emptiness of his own existence. And yet, something kept him moving. Like a senseless pendulum, he went on.

But then, a sound. Distant. The crack of dry leaves.

Sebastián stopped, but not out of curiosity. Something inside him stirred, but without purpose. He looked ahead, and the red bracelet, the only thing left from his former life, appeared before him. Torn. Abandoned.

The moment was brief. The voice that had come before, the one that was not of the forest, echoed in his mind.

"Pick it up."

The order came like a distant echo. There was no urgency in the words, only a cold demand, as if the words themselves dragged him. Sebastián did not understand why, but without knowing why, he bent down and took the bracelet. At once, a shiver ran through his body.

There was no rebellion, no fear. He simply obeyed. It was a mechanical gesture, something he no longer felt as part of his will.

The instant the bracelet touched his skin, the forest reacted. An icy wind swept through the place, shaking the branches. The trees twisted as if suffering, as if something had altered the very structure of the forest.

Sebastián, in his hollow state, only felt an increasing pressure. The air grew dense, his chest compressed as if space were narrowing around him. But he was no longer in condition to resist.

The forest had noticed his hesitation.

The darkness, once absorbing, now became something heavy. More than an environment, it seemed like a body crushing him. Something invisible surrounded him, seeped inside him. Sebastián felt a searing pain, but not in his body. It was a mental pain. A pain that seemed to tear pieces from his soul, fragments of what he had once been.

He remembered the faces. Lucía. Emma. Sofía. Julián. But those names meant nothing. They were only shapes. Like echoes of something collapsing.

"Forget them." The voice echoed once more, but now it had no strength. No power. Only a shadow of what it had been.

Sebastián let the bracelet fall.

The forest sighed, and the echo of the whisper vanished once more. But he did not rise. He no longer had the strength to obey. His body was empty. His mind was broken. The name he once had, his identity, no longer existed. And worst of all was that, in some corner of his being, he realized he no longer cared.

The forest had won.

But it was not victory. It was the result of a hollowing, of a void from which he could not escape. Sebastián, as a name, no longer existed. And worst of all was that he could not remember why he felt empty.

End of Chapter 4