On the Path of Eternal Strength.

There was no farewell from the shelter. The Bloody Mountains offered no paths. Only veins. Wounds. Open cuts in the stone that never healed. Every step Sebastián, the beast, and the turtle took was an intrusion, a scrape against a skin that never forgot pain.

They advanced in a tense line, with no sounds except breath and crackling. The frost over the rock was tinged with rust by their touch. The ground, more than firm, seemed to endure them reluctantly, as if calculating how much longer it could hold before splitting into an abyss. Sebastián led the way, his bare feet chewing on the edge of the stones. His body no longer bled easily, but every wound that emerged fused with the previous one as continuity, not novelty.

The first day of marching did not end. It only transformed into night without warning. The sky did not change color, but the air grew heavier. Thinner. As if the atmosphere reduced its oxygen on purpose, to test how many times a body can breathe without air.

They walked through what Sebastián perceived as a double day. The slopes grew steeper. The walls closed in. At times, they had to climb tunnels that contracted like mineral throats, and other times slide down over inclined plates covered in coagulated blood.

Then, without warning, the first attack. A shadow falling from a cliff: no roar, no warning, only the dry impact of a creature with lateral jaws and spines on its legs. Sebastián did not retreat. He turned with his whole body, dodged without thinking, and let his elbow strike the base of the enemy's skull. A dry sound, like marrow splitting. The creature convulsed and fell.

He needed no weapons. His body was enough. But it was not one. It was five.

The other figures fell in cascade. Beasts with tough skin and vibrating claws, their movements choreographed by hunger. The turtle planted itself firmly. The beast crouched. And Sebastián… let go.

Without roaring, without thinking, with a rhythm dictated solely by his blood. His knuckles were maces. His heels, blades. His chest absorbed blows as if inhaling them. Every time a claw tore into his flesh, another part of his body responded with more pressure, more violence.

He broke a spine with his jaw. He stomped on a head until it split in two. He spun on his own axis and rammed an enemy torso with his back, breaking it from within.

When the last being fell, Sebastián was covered in blood. But he was not panting. The heart of thorns beat with constancy, without urgency. The beast watched him. The turtle did not move.

The ground swallowed the blood slowly. As if the mountain recognized the worth of the offering. Sebastián said nothing. He only bent down, picked up a fragment of enemy rib, and used it to mark a cross on the rock. A trace. A testimony. The march continued.

The journey was punishment, but also communion. Each day they advanced, each night they slept under the hunched gaze of mountains that seemed to watch them from millennia past. And each battle —for there were always battles— was more brutal, longer, purer.

But Sebastián did not wield weapons. He used no tools. He pronounced no names. He only struck. He only survived.

And his body —thicker, harder, quieter— began to understand something words could not translate: that it was not the world that had to respect him, but his flesh that had to merge with the world, until both were the same. A single function. A walking rift.

The walking rift… does not stop. Not because it has a destination. But because stopping would mean remembering who he was.

The Bloody Mountains rose on each side like open jaws. They were not just rocks. They were compressed stories. Hills rising like scars. Walls covered in blood salt. Caverns whispering with voices no language could translate.

Sebastián did not speak. Did not think. He only walked.

The heart of thorns marked the pace. One beat for every meter. One rumble for every hill. The soles of his feet no longer felt the stone: they absorbed it. They understood it. They read its shape before stepping, as if the body had learned to negotiate with the edge.

They crossed three ravines.

The first exhaled a red vapor that did not burn, but burned. Not on the skin, but in the muscles, which trembled under the air as if remembering every time they had been torn. Sebastián walked through it. He did not cover his face. He did not blink.

His eyes burned. His eyelashes encrusted. And he went on.

The second ravine was of living rock. Not because it was hot. But because it pulsed. Every stone throbbed, every wall had its own rhythm.

There, the turtle stopped. Bowed its head. As if greeting an old relative.

Sebastián, however, climbed it. Not with force. With method.

His fingers sank roots into cracks. His feet clawed the mineral until forming steps. And when he reached the top, he did not celebrate. He only spat blood and descended the other side.

The third ravine was sown with corpses. Fossilized. Beasts, humanoids, reptiles. Some trapped in the act of fighting. Others embracing their own shadow.

Sebastián looked at them. One by one. Not with compassion. With study.

He saw a four-armed body covered in black spines. He tore out a bone. Long, curved. He brought it to his mouth.

Not to use it. To test it.

He chewed it. The taste was of rust and despair. He swallowed it.

His body did not reject the substance. It assimilated it. And then they went on. The days were no longer counted by the sun. The oxidized glow never changed.

What did change was the texture of the wind. The sound beneath the earth. The thickness of the shadow.

For two journeys, he did not eat. Did not drink. The beast hunted a creature with an anvil head and liquid legs. It devoured it without sharing.

Sebastián did not ask. Nor did he feel offended.

The turtle licked the stone. And he…

…he fell.

Not from fainting. From accumulated gravity. From a body that demands friction against the ground to once again feel direction.

There, in that red dust, he did something new: he began to swallow earth.

Not from hunger. From necessity. As if he needed to digest the world to no longer fear it.

He bit small stones. Crushed them. His gums bled. His teeth cracked. And still, he swallowed.

The body did not tremble. It adapted.

Hours later, when he rose again, his sight had changed. His pupils had contracted. Colors were no longer colors. They were signals.

A blue shadow meant moisture. A purple shadow… meant death nearby.

That was his new map.

Further on, from a cliff, flying creatures descended. Like blades with wings. They screeched without throat.

There were ten. Then twenty.

He did not dodge. He did not fight immediately.

He waited.

He let them approach. Surround him. Believe they had captured him.

And then…

He loosened his torso. Flexed his legs. And spun with an explosion of twisted muscles.

The air exploded. Bodies split without direct contact. Wings rolled like leaves torn by a gale. And the blood… rained.

Sebastián remained at the center. His breathing… did not even quicken. The heart of thorns beat. But it no longer dictated orders. It was a witness.

And the body… the body had stopped obeying. Now, it was beginning to create.

The day advanced without sun, only with the constant vibration of subterranean heat that kept the rock alive. Sebastián and his two companions moved among stone corridors so narrow that their shadows seemed to merge with the walls. The terrain was a twisted skeleton: dead roots, whitened bones, rock platforms carved by ancient floods of dried blood.

Every step was recorded by the environment, as if the mountain wanted to memorize his walk.

Sebastián sometimes stopped, without evident reason. He only listened. The breathing of the beast. The viscous sound of the turtle's drag. And something else… an inner voice that did not come from his mind, but from the memory of his flesh.

The rift did not speak with words. Only with pressure.

Then, it happened.

Draila appeared at his left, without sound, without light, without warning. As if the world had made space for her by inertia.

"You have begun to listen," she said.

Sebastián did not stop. "I don't know what I hear. Only that it's there. Like an echo that doesn't come from me."

"Because it doesn't come from you," Draila replied. "It comes from what you don't yet understand you are."

Silence held for a few steps. Distant rocks creaked like ancient vertebrae.

"The beast… the turtle… remain with me," murmured Sebastián. "Not by chains. Not by power. But they remain."

"Because they chose. And because you also did," Draila tilted her head slightly. "That, in this world, is worth more than any seal."

"What are they?"

"Errors. Witnesses. Echoes of a war the world still prefers to forget."

"What war?"

Draila did not answer immediately. The air seemed to thicken. "One that split the earth… and divided those who once decided what life was."

"Divided?"

"Yes. Some chose to persist as fragments rather than fall as a whole."

Sebastián narrowed his eyes. "Were they created?"

"Some. Others awoke on their own, in places where pain was so dense it became flesh."

"And those who created them… do they still exist?"

"That depends on what you mean by exist," whispered Draila. "There are ways of living that resemble nothing of being awake."

"And if one day I understand everything?"

"Then you will no longer be asking. You will be remembering."

The turtle barely lifted its head. Its eye glowed with a faint light, as if resonating with something it could not say.

"Do they have names?"

Draila stopped. "They had. But the name was the first thing they left behind. Just as you… if you keep walking."

"Who made them? Not only as creatures… who thought of them the first time?"

Draila did not answer immediately. The mountains on the horizon seemed to pulse with an almost imperceptible vibration, as if they too were listening.

"They were not thought. They were… necessary."

"Necessary?"

"In a previous era, there were those who did not create out of ambition, but out of balance. And to achieve it, they gave shape to chaos. Not with tools. With will. With sacrifice. The beast and the turtle are part of those ancient pacts. Part of an order that broke long before you were born."

"And those who made that pact?"

"Some extinguished themselves by choosing balance over victory. Others hid within what they had founded. And a few… still walk, but without face, without name."

Sebastián frowned. The sweat on his forehead was no longer from effort, but from something denser. The weight of understanding without comprehending.

"Are they alive?"

"Some live in forms that no longer fit the word 'life.' Others… ceased being individuals. They became paths. Laws. Cycles."

"And you?" —Sebastián barely turned his face— "Were you like them?"

Draila did not deny it. But neither did she answer. She only walked at his side. The rift in her presence seemed to open a little wider, as if memory dragged her toward what she could not say. "The beast… was it made to fight?"

"No. It was shaped to protect something that was lost. That is why it roars, even when there is no danger. Its memory is not of events. It is of intention. It fights because it still seeks what no longer exists."

"And the turtle?"

"It was a seal. Not of an enemy. Of a wound. One so great that the world could not close it on its own. They buried it with knowledge. With silence. With pain."

"But now it is awake," murmured Sebastián. "Does that mean the wound also…?"

"Do not ask yet," Draila said more firmly, with a shadow of warning in her voice. "Some rifts are not opened out of curiosity. They open by calling what sleeps."

"And if I already awakened it?"

Draila stopped. "Then there is no return."

Silence fell like a slab that did not crush, but did not allow movement. Sebastián clenched his fists. He walked, but the weight was not in his legs.

"What are they, then?" he whispered, without needing to clarify whom he meant. "Not as allies, nor as enemies… but as… existence."

Draila glanced at him sideways. The wind crossed her face without ruffling her mist.

"The beast was not born. It was gathered. Pieces of many things: fury, loss, broken loyalty. Someone built it… not to obey, but to remember what must not be repeated."

"And does it remember?"

"It feels. But it does not understand. It only roars when something approaches that resembles its origin."

"Is that why it attacked me at the beginning?"

"No. It tested you. Not because you were dangerous. But because… you were hollow."

Sebastián did not reply. He kept walking, but he felt the echo of his steps move inside him.

"And the turtle?"

Draila did not answer immediately. She took in air, or so it seemed.

"The turtle was born. But not by natural means. It was summoned… by mistake. And when it emerged, it was too much. It could not be destroyed. So they decided to bind it to a function: to guard. To contain. To suffer without collapsing. They turned it into a prison of the unnamable… and in that process, it learned to observe."

"What did it observe?"

"Everyone. But it only moved for those who bled without surrender. That is why it accepted you."

"Who summoned it?"

"Those who desired power without paying the price. The same ones who later feared what they had unleashed… and sought to hide it under the form of a slow, passive creature."

"So then… is it alive?"

Draila looked at him with a different gravity. "It is awake. Which is not the same."

"And now that it walks with me?"

"It does not walk with you. It walks near you. And that, Sebastián, is more than many have achieved."

A long silence stretched between them. The mountain creaked in the distance, as if stirring in its dreams.

"Do they have souls?" he asked, without knowing why he used that word.

"They had."

"And now?"

"Now they have function."

"Like me?"

Draila stopped. Her shadow stretched among the stone edges like a line that did not know to which world it belonged.

"Like you… if you keep walking."

And Sebastián did not reply. Because he understood that, for now, he needed no more answers. Only steps.

"And if… they also had a new name?" asked Sebastián suddenly, without taking his eyes off the path ahead. "Like me."

Draila tilted her head slightly. Her voice became lower, as if the answer only partly belonged to her.

"A name is not just sound. It is destiny. And they… already fulfilled theirs. Whatever you give them now… does not change them. It only changes you."

Sebastián frowned. He did not stop walking. But something in his gaze hardened, as if searching for a crack in the answer.

"And what if what I want is for them to walk not only as shadows of the past… but as something that comes with me into what is new?"

"Then give them a name. But do not expect them to remember it."

The beast, several steps ahead, barely turned its neck. Its hum tore the air, deep, like a thought without words. The turtle, behind, kept steady, unyielding, leaving dense marks on every stretch of stone.

Sebastián lowered his gaze. The heart of thorns beat deep, in a different cadence. It still hurt… but no longer dictated his decisions. It only accompanied.

"I will name them," he murmured. "Not to own them. Only to know I am not alone in this way of advancing."

There was no answer. Not from Draila, nor from the creatures. But neither opposition.

The journey continued.

The terrain curved into increasingly unnatural forms. Mounds of fossilized flesh rose among black cracks; dry roots hanging like torn tendons; purple mists descending from impossible holes in the sky.

Nothing seemed alive. But everything observed.

Sebastián stepped firmly, though his feet bled. Each step left a denser mark, as if his body were becoming part of the landscape.

The beast slid between rocks with wide strides. The turtle, behind, never lost rhythm, even when the mountain sometimes trembled beneath its weight.

And in the middle, Sebastián… doubted. Not from fear. But from Draila's words.

"They do not change. Only you."

"What did that mean?

That his attempt to name them was only projection? That, in truth, he walked with beings that would never cease to be what they were? And what if he was the same? A function pretending to have a name."

He clenched his teeth. Quickened his pace.

Because even without an answer… the rift was still waiting. And it did not stop for doubts.

The path narrowed until becoming a broken ledge over a bottomless abyss. The walls sweated dry blood. Stones hung from the ceiling like inverted fangs. The air… was sharpened.

And then, he felt it. A brush beneath the skin. Not danger. Challenge.

Five creatures emerged from the cracks. They were bipedal, of cracked flesh, with triple jaws that vibrated without sound. They had no eyes. Only bone tongues groping the air, as if searching for his flesh through the memory of other bodies.

The beast roared. The turtle turned its eye. Sebastián raised his hand.

"No. Do not move."

His voice was dry. Not from fatigue. From decision.

His body advanced alone. The rift inside him pushed him as if the stone wanted to see how far he could break without dying.

One of the creatures leapt. Sebastián did not dodge. He received it with his chest, and when its claws tore him, he embraced it by the neck and sank his fingers into its back. Not with rage. With method. He twisted it in the air. Slammed it against the ground. Split it.

Two more surrounded him. One rammed his leg, trying to break it. Sebastián did not retreat. He lifted his thigh, let the teeth sink, and then dropped his elbow onto its skull until it collapsed like a rotten fruit.

The other bit into his side. Sebastián turned, let it tear flesh. While it hung from the chunk, he tore its head off with a yank.

Black blood. Thick. Acid. Sebastián's flesh burned.

But he did not retreat. Not because he thought he could win. Because he refused to stop.

Draila's words still lingered, striking his skull from within.

"They will not change. Only you."

"Give them a name… but they will not remember it."

"They already fulfilled their destiny."

He clenched his teeth.

The other two enemies wavered. Sebastián took a step.

And thought:

I was a child. Then… I was a seed. Now I am a rift that carries a name. But I don't even know what it means.

He howled. Not with throat. With bone.

The sound shattered everything.

The last two creatures tried to flee. They did not succeed. One was caught from behind by Sebastián's ribs, which opened like spears. The other was trampled until its skull lost all shape.

Silence. Only his breathing. Only his blood. Only his shadow trembling on the stones.

The beast watched without moving. The turtle closed its eye.

Sebastián let himself fall to his knees. His chest opened with each inhale as if he were still fighting. His hands were not hands. They were claws covered in flesh that no longer seemed human.

"They cannot have a name…" he murmured.

He was not looking at them. He spoke alone. He spoke with the rift.

"They already fulfilled their creation. They already were what they had to be. I was a child. Then, I was a channel. And now… I do not know what I am. But what walks with me must not be named."

He fell silent. The echo of his words seemed to drag across the stone, as if the world itself wanted to correct him.

Then he frowned, looked at his own bloodied hands, and murmured lower, with a deeper tone:

"No… that is not true." He rose slowly, his chest rising and falling with contained violence. At last his gaze turned to the beast. Then, to the turtle.

"Why should someone's destiny end just because they fulfilled a function? Why go on living… if a final end was already assigned to them?"

He took a step forward. The rock beneath his feet cracked. But it no longer sank. No longer bled.

"I cannot give you a new name. Because it would not be fair to impose another form on you without asking if you want to go on. But neither can I deny it… if you still keep walking at my side."

He stopped before the beast. "You remain here."

Then looked at the turtle. "And if you remain here… then you are still walking."

He clenched his fists. The blood on his knuckles hardened like living stone.

"I was created to break. They were created for something else. But none of the three… has stopped."

His voice trembled, but not from weakness. From a strength he still did not know how to name.

"So if they have no destiny… perhaps that makes them free.

And if they are free… perhaps I do not need to name them to possess them… but to let them be reborn.

Perhaps a name is not a prison. Perhaps… it is a seed."

He looked at his hands. Then at the beast. Then at the turtle.

"If they have ceased to be what they were… and have decided to keep walking, then they too have the right to a new beginning. A real one. One that was not imposed on them."

He held his silence a second longer. His eyes lit with the stillness of someone who, for the first time, understands the value of sharing his path.

"Not as subordinates. Not as summoned. But as… the only ones who saw me burn and did not run."

The air grew tense, as if the mountain too were holding its breath.

"If I was able to rename myself after the break… so can they."

Then, the beast lifted its head. The turtle, without opening its eye, exhaled a dense bubble. And Sebastián… took another step.

Not forward. But toward them.

Like one who recognizes that what comes next is not walked alone. And that rebirth… is also a way of remembering.

The path did not open. It let itself be stepped.

The rift between rocks that had devoured them for the last time now folded as if its edges remembered the weight of his steps. There was no longer resistance. Only continuity.

Sebastián did not speak. Not because he had nothing to say. But because he was still digesting his decision.

The beast walked at his right. Firm. Silent. The hum that once vibrated as warning was now a low murmur, constant, almost serene.

The turtle moved at his left, without haste, but without pause. Its steps did not break the ground. They affirmed it.

They advanced for hours. Days. Time spilled nameless, like everything they dragged along.

The Bloody Mountains deformed around them: obsidian spines sprouting from the depths, craters still smoking with the remains of creatures that never became fully alive.

A swarm of carnivorous bodies surrounded them at dusk. Sebastián did not look at them. He only stepped forward.

The fight was brief. Brutal.

He fought with hands, with feet, with teeth. Not out of fury. By method.

When it ended, the ground was a canvas of torn flesh. His body was covered in blood that was not his. And yet, he breathed with a new calm.

The beast approached. Not to protect him. Nor to claim the battle. It only sat before him. And waited.

Sebastián looked at it. Not with superiority. Not with compassion. But with something deeper: recognition.

"You were the first," he murmured. "The first to see me bleed and not run. The first to break me to teach me to rise."

The hum fell silent. "I do not know who created you. Nor why you exist. But now… you walk with me."

The creature lifted its face. And Sebastián pronounced:

"You are Virka. Because your roar was my baptism. And your claw… my frontier."

The wind shifted direction. As if the world recognized that something had just been sealed.

Virka did not react with euphoria. Nor with noise. She only stepped closer, and touched her forehead against Sebastián's.

A gesture. An affirmation.

The journey continued.

But now… they were no longer three nameless shadows. They were two forces… and one who had finally been named.

And although Sebastián did not say it aloud, he knew the turtle had heard everything. And that, when the moment came, its name too would emerge from silence. The night was not night. But the body understood it as rest.

Sebastián awoke. Not from shock. From temperature.

Virka's body was still beside his. Close. Firm. It did not touch. It accompanied.

The warmth between them was not sweat. It was permanence that had not dissipated.

And something in Sebastián's chest kept beating with another pulse. One that did not dictate rhythm… but presence.

He sat up. Virka did not move.

But when he lifted his hand, she raised her head. And there was no tension. Only recognition.

The cave remained in shadow. The world still did not demand they move on. But the stone… was no longer hostile. It only waited.

And then Sebastián turned.

The turtle was outside.

It did not sleep. It did not snore. It only existed, as if eternity had molded it for that moment.

Sebastián stood. He felt his legs denser, not heavier. As if his center of gravity had changed with the fusion.

He left the cave.

Virka followed him. Not at his back. At his side.

The turtle lifted its eye. It did not speak. It did not shrink. It only looked at him.

And in that instant, Sebastián understood:

That creature did not need recognition. But still… it remained with him.

Not by destiny. Nor by debt. By decision.

And if Virka had been baptized with roar, this turtle deserved a name that spoke of the silence it had guarded for centuries.

Sebastián approached. He did not touch. He bowed his head. Not in submission. In respect.

"I cannot give you your first name," he whispered. "But I give you the one that will walk with me."

The turtle did not blink. The eye remained open.

"You are Narka. Because you guarded the unnamable… and still chose to walk when no one asked you to."

The wind stopped. The earth exhaled a dry creak.

And Narka, without a word, stepped forward. Not toward Sebastián. Alongside him.

Virka, from the other side, hummed softly.

And for the first time, Sebastián walked with names at both flanks. Not as master. Not as leader. As a rift accompanied.

And on his back… something new vibrated. Not a technique. Not a power. A certainty:

That everything still without form… was being born.

And that now, he would not do it alone.

Because this journey, though carved in blood, was no longer a punishment.

It was a path shared by those who recognized each other not by origin, but by permanence.

They no longer walked by force. They walked by will.

And the Bloody Mountains, which had tried to break them, now opened passage.

Not in surrender. In respect.

The stone did not soften. The blood did not cease to flow. But something had changed:

They were no longer three loose bodies crossing a hell. They were a unit woven by the rift.

And what was to come… would see them arrive together.

END OF CHAPTER 7