On the Path of Eternal Strength.

The first day of march did not end. It only transformed.

In the distance, the Bloody Mountains seemed never to finish, as if each summit were a slightly different repetition of the previous one. But there were changes. Subtle. Cruel. The rock began to show thinner veins, older wounds. Less recent. As if the mountain, too, grew tired of bleeding.

Sebastián did not say it aloud, but he felt it. The stones no longer broke his feet with the same violence. Not because they grew softer, but because his skin had hardened. His body had learned to wear down in another way, to hurt without begging for mercy.

Virka went ahead, and Narka closed the line. That was how they moved, like a broken prayer repeated out of habit. They no longer spoke. Voice had become unnecessary. The sound of their steps was enough, the brushing of their bodies against the frost, the slow groan of the stone yielding beneath their shadows.

Hunger was a constant. But a constant so old that it no longer meant pain. Just another state of the body. Like cold, like dry blood on the ankles. Like breathing.

The wind blew less. Or perhaps they no longer cared. Sebastián had the feeling that something was waiting for them. Something that was not a creature nor a trap. It was a stage. A next version of pain. A threshold not yet crossed.

In the nights without night, when the sky seemed a grayish scab without depth, Sebastián opened his eyes and saw Virka still. Staring toward a point without name. The beast no longer slept the same. She did not curl up. She did not growl. She seemed thoughtful. Almost… expectant.

And Narka, the turtle, climbed ever higher before stopping. He sought positions that had never interested him before. As if height meant something Sebastián did not yet understand.

He was not yet nine years old. But he soon would be. Not because he expected it. But because something was preparing him for it. Something with no face, no name, but that brushed him from within. Each day, closer.

An entire day passed without a trace of life. No bird. No insect. Not even those cracks where sometimes fungi filtered through, pulsing like living wounds. Only stone. Only emptiness. Only the scraping of the world against their bodies like a rough tongue that did not know how to ask for forgiveness.

Sebastián walked behind Virka, and each step was an insult. The ground did not accept him, only tolerated him like one who lets a guest die at the door. His feet, hardened like burned roots, kept cracking. They no longer bled red. What came out was a kind of dark, thick sap that dried before reaching the heel.

The air scraped from within. It did not enter: it clawed. Breathing was like swallowing a handful of ground glass. But he did it anyway. Because to stop meant to surrender, and surrendering was more unthinkable than death.

The landscape shifted. The stone, once open and flayed, now rose in walls of fractured obsidian. Long natural blades, black and shiny like old meat cut lengthwise. The wind crashed between those walls and came out as a moan. A wail not from weather, but from something trapped among the minerals.

In one of those narrow passages, Narka stopped. Not like one who tires. Like one who remembers. He drove his legs down with force, splitting the rock, and stayed there, motionless. His single eye— that abyss of fever and age— fixed on an invisible point. As if seeing a corpse not yet born.

Sebastián approached. The frost crunched beneath his weight, but did not yield. His ankles ached as if each joint were being filed from the inside. Still, he did not stop. Pain was a constant voice. It no longer asked anything of him. It simply was.

He remained beside Narka. He did not ask. His body knew what his mind did not understand: there was something there.

Virka said nothing either. But the change in her breath was brutal. She breathed as if swallowing fire and exhaling gravel. It was not fatigue. It was containment. As if something in her were about to break… or to be born.

The stone ahead was shaped like a broken spiral, like a spine shattered in the middle of the path. At its base, the earth smelled different. Not of death. Of birth. Of something wanting to come out, and ready to break whatever to do so.

The pain in Sebastián's feet throbbed with the rhythm of an inner drum. His whole body trembled, but not from cold. It was something else. Something subterranean. As if his skin tried to peel away to let out something older than him.

Then Virka stopped. She did not growl. She did not turn her head. She only lifted her face toward the sealed stone sky, opened her jaw, and let out a muffled roar, rough as rusted metal scraping bone.

The sound was not animal. It was a warning. A signal of rupture. It was so deep that the echo did not return. It hung on the walls as if the mountains absorbed it.

And in Sebastián's chest, something broke. Not a bone, nor a muscle. Something more internal. More essential.

He needed no words. The roar said everything:

Tomorrow you will not be the same.

Virka's roar still vibrated in the stone when the ground changed.

It was not immediate. But it was clear. The path sank. Literally. A crack, narrow and alive, began to open under the spiral of rock, as if something invited them—or devoured them.

Narka did not move. He only lowered his head. Acceptance. Or resignation.

Sebastián did not hesitate. Not because he understood. But because his body leapt before he did. As if something in his bones recognized the place.

The crack swallowed him.

He fell.

Not violently. With purpose. As if the mountain placed him where he had to be.

And there the confinement began. He awoke in a dark space.

There was no sky. Only low ceilings of mineral bone. Everything smelled of dry muscle and rancid smoke. The air was hot. Too hot. Like the breath of a creature that had been alive for centuries inside its own tomb.

There, the body began to hurt in another way.

Not from wounds. From transformation.

The joints cracked without moving. The skin burned without fire. And inside the chest, a constant pressure. As if a second spine were growing within his own.

The cave crushed him.

Each wall seemed to breathe. They did not touch him, but they pressed. The pain did not come from outside. It came from within. As if the place knew exactly what it had to break.

Sebastián screamed.

Not from fear. From tearing.

He screamed as one screams when the body is remade. And the echo did not return. Because here, the echo listens.

Far away. Or perhaps not so far.

Draila sat before an altar of white bone. She did not pray. She waited.

Her body did not age. But her voice did.

At her side, a figure wrapped in bandages breathed with difficulty.

—He has entered —said Draila.

It was not affirmation. It was lament.

—And will he endure? —asked the bandaged one, with a liquid voice.

—It does not matter if he endures —whispered Draila, lowering her gaze—. The Path of the Indomitable Body does not await comprehension. Only flesh willing.

A murmur crossed the hall. It was not wind. It was not whisper. It was the mountain speaking from within.

—He will not leave there until the flesh submits —added Draila—. There is no technique. No instruction. Only body… and torment.

The bandaged one nodded, very slightly.

—Then… it has begun.

The confinement was not a fall. It was a sentence dictated by something older than will.

Sebastián did not descend. He was absorbed. Engulfed by the mountain as if his flesh were debt.

The crack closed behind him like a tomb gate.

Inside, there was no total darkness. There was something worse:

A hot, thick penumbra, where the air seemed to have texture. Where the rock smelled of rotten flesh. Where silence did not rest: it stalked.

During the first days, Sebastián tried to remember his name. He repeated it in his head as if it were an anchor. But each repetition wore him down. The word lost meaning. The idea of himself began to splinter, like a mirror struck from within.

The walls were not smooth. They were covered with a viscous substance, like dried mucus, splattered with fragments of bones embedded.

The ceiling dripped a milky liquid that did not fall in drops. It slid in slow threads. As if someone milked the mountain from within.

The air stank of burned muscle and rusted metal. To breathe it was aggression.

Each breath, a blade wrapped in warm silk.

He coughed until he bled. He vomited until only bile came out. Then… he breathed anyway.

There was no other choice.

The body reacted as it could: with fury. With rejection.

The skin of his arms began to dry and peel in strips. Like old paper. The toenails softened. Then they fell, one by one. Without pain. Like leaves that no longer belong to the tree.

His lips cracked so much that when he opened his mouth to scream, they split and bled. The scream was drowned in a torn, dry throat, incapable of sustaining its own form.

In the second week, the fever rose.

It was not heat. It was slow cooking of each organ. The stomach swelled. The eyes burned until they cried blood. The joints inflamed as if they wanted to burst.

The muscles hardened in sections, and then melted. As if they were learning a new way to exist. As if the fibers no longer responded to will, but to a deeper logic, more ancient, more savage.

He did not sleep. When the body collapsed, he did not dream.

He saw.

Faces in the walls. Floating limbs: fingers, ribs, eyes. Voices calling him by names he had never heard.

And among them, sometimes… one deeper. That did not speak words. Only pulsed.

One night—or what he felt as night—the skin on his back cracked. Not from wounds. From pressure. As if something inside tried to come out.

He crawled across the ground, screaming with what remained of his throat.

The stone did not respond. It only held him. Impassive. Like a cruel mother.

The third week was the beginning of sensory decomposition.

He no longer felt pain clearly. He felt distortion.

Sounds came as if from inside the skull. Colors mixed with tastes. Touch became a strange language.

Sometimes, the rock felt like wet cloth. Sometimes, like warm flesh. Sometimes… like another skin breathing beneath his own.

Hunger bit him like a real animal.

Sebastián began to bite his left arm. Not from desperation. From instinct.

The blood tasted bitter. Like spoiled wine. But it gave him a few minutes of lucidity.

Then the fever returned.

In the second month, the bones began to ache differently.

As if they were not his. As if they were being rearranged by invisible hands.

The legs trembled to the brink of fracture. One night, a knee dislocated on its own. The next day, it returned to place. Not with a crack. With a slow snap. Like a door closing without permission.

The teeth loosened. Not all. Only the incisors. One fell while he spoke to a wall that seemed to smile at him. He kept it in his palm for hours. Not from sadness. From curiosity.

The body was no longer his. Will was a farce. Only endurance remained. Endurance, because there was no other verb that made sense.

And it was in that absolute exhaustion, in that mire of pus, fever, hunger and solitude, where the confinement began to take shape.

Not as prison. As womb.

Something was being born. But it was not him.

It was what would remain when he ceased to exist. In the third month, he lost the notion of form.

He no longer distinguished his body from the space. The walls stuck to him. Sometimes he felt he crawled over himself. Sometimes, that his body was a cavern. And inside, something waited for its moment.

One dawn, the fingers of his left hand bent backwards. One by one. Without sound. Without strength to resist.

They remained like broken claws.

Two days later, they straightened by themselves. But not in the same position.

And even so… they worked better. They gripped with more force.

His neck began to turn beyond the human axis. Each night, a little more. Each vertebra yielded with a small groan.

At the base of the skull, a firm swelling appeared. It did not hurt. But it burned. And pulsed with its own rhythm.

The hair fell like dust. One morning, he found the scalp covered with black spots. Like burns.

When he scratched them, they bled. Beneath… the skin was different. Thicker. More opaque.

He tried to speak.

What came out were two simultaneous sounds. One high-pitched. Another deep. Uncoordinated. As if another spoke from within.

After that, he decided to be silent. Not from fear. From shame.

During the fourth month, he stopped feeling the heart.

He thought he had died.

But then he perceived another rhythm. Deeper. Like a drum in the stomach.

The center of life had descended. It pulsed in the navel.

The flesh thickened unevenly. The right forearm hardened like stone, with veins protruding like dry roots.

The left shoulder shrank. Withered.

The torso arched forward. The shoulder blades jutted out like daggers of wet bone.

The hips widened. Not to hold him better. To hold something else.

At night, he roared. He did not snore.

Deep roars, like a prehistoric beast trapped.

Sometimes he awoke with his mouth full of blood. He did not know if it was his. Sometimes… he did not want to know.

On the ground, new marks.

Wider prints. With claws.

Sometimes he saw his feet deform. Sometimes, return to original form. Never the same size.

The walls began to show something new: reflections.

On surfaces once opaque, his shadow appeared. And then… his figure.

Hunched. Violet skin. Black scabs. Sunken eyes. Dislocated jaw.

It was not Sebastián.

But it moved like him. And looked at him.

One night, it spoke.

—You will not leave. Only I.

And it disappeared.

That night, something changed forever.

The legs no longer trembled. They were columns.

The hands no longer had separate fingers. The tendons merged into a more useful form. Not human. Not animal. Something between both.

The lungs made less noise. But each exhalation smelled of raw flesh.

The intestine reconfigured.

He felt it twist inside him.

When he vomited, no blood came out. A gray membrane did. Like a sack that had contained something.

He stared at it for hours. Then buried it in the rock.

He had birthed a part of himself.

In the sixth month, he stopped trying to remain upright.

He no longer walked. He slid.

The feet were too hard to bend. The knees bent backwards. And that served him better.

The tongue became useless. So he stopped speaking. Even in his mind.

He thought with the stomach. He thought with the back. He thought with hunger.

He did not eat. He hunted.

There were new creatures. Things without eyes. Without clear form.

When he caught them, he broke them with the teeth he had left. And swallowed them whole.

Once he ate something that screamed from inside.

For days, that thing spoke to him from the abdomen.

—You are not the first body I try to take.

But it did not last.

His stomach was not a temple. It was a prison.

And he digested it.

The vertebrae grew outward.

They tore the skin like inner thorns. He let them out.

His back arched like that of a deformed ape.

But he was faster. Stronger. More adapted.

One day he looked at himself in one of those reflective surfaces. And what he saw made him laugh. Not from joy. From strangeness.

He had lost his eyelids. His eyes were always open. And yet… they did not hurt.

The inner voice returned.

"Now you are ready to decide."

And in his chest, something broke.

A dry sound. It was not a bone.

It was a layer. A last skin. A last memory.

And with that, Sebastián ceased to exist.

Only he remained. What was left. What survived form. Time. Flesh.

We are no longer in body. Nor in fever. Nor in hunger. Nor in the mire of flesh that screams.

Now we are in the world that waits.

Far from Sebastián. Close to what Sebastián has become.

Here, where stones are not ground, but memory. Where the air does not blow, but judges.

Where the days have passed… all. Six exact months.

Here is Draila.

She did not descend. She knew. She knew she could not accompany him.

She knew that pain was a path that had to be walked alone, like the blade that scrapes along bone until reaching the marrow.

She has waited beside the altar. A slab that no longer seems bone. Now it is something that breathes.

Scab after scab, it has covered itself with plates, with black lines, with small cracks that pulse with a rhythm that does not belong to this plane.

The place has changed with her.

The ceiling has lowered. The floor has opened. It is no longer a room. It is a ritual wound.

A navel between planes. A birthing chamber for something that has not yet finished forming… or deciding if it deserves to be born.

The bandaged figure is there too.

Never has he been so close, and yet, so far. He has lost his voice twice. Not from illness. From hopelessness.

And when he speaks again, it is with a whisper that does not want to be heard.

—It does not respond.

Draila is unmoved.

—It does not have to.

—And if it extinguished? —asks the bandaged one—. If what remains below is no longer Sebastián… nor anything?

Draila blinks for the first time in hours.

—Then we need not mourn it. Only fear it.

The bandaged one shudders.

—Do you understand what you have created?

—I did not create it. I only accompanied it to break. What forms on the other side of the shattering… never belongs to us.

The bandaged one approaches the altar. The surface trembles beneath his palm. Not heat. Not pulse. Recognition.

—This thing —he murmurs—. It no longer seems a channel. It seems a mouth. One that chews slowly.

—Yes —says Draila—. Because the way a body eats itself… is always slower than a god eating a man.

The bandaged one recoils as if it burned.

—And if it rises? If it breaks? If it does not distinguish between those who waited… and those who forgot?

Draila tilts her head.

—Then it will be just. Because that means it no longer needs names.

—And if the first thing it kills… is you?

She smiles.

Not with joy. With certainty.

—Then I will have fulfilled my part.

—You think that is redemption?

—No. Redemption was a useful word. Before. When we thought pain could be administered.

Now… only one question remains:

What does a creature do that has felt the world from within its own entrails?

The bandaged one is silent. But his trembling betrays him.

—Do you still feel you can control it? —he whispers.

—I do not try to control it —says Draila. Her gaze burns—. I try not to interfere. Everything it touches, it will touch as if it were its own bone. And if the world cannot bear its touch… then let the world break. A buzzing rose from the altar.

Not a sound. A thought.

"I am deciding."

The stone cracked slowly. The fissure formed a symbol. Not a word. A direction.

Draila finally breathed deeply.

—It is choosing.

—Choosing what?

—Whether what birthed it… deserves to keep existing.

The stone did not explode. It did not break with violence.

It opened like a wound that can no longer hold its pus.

The fissure at the bottom of the world split with slowness. As if still doubting whether it should allow passage.

But it was already too late.

He was not asking permission.

What rose was not a step. It was a vibration.

First beneath the skin of the mountain. Then in the marrow of Draila. Finally… in the structure of the altar, which began to tremble as if it leaned.

The air grew dense. Electric. Saturated with something that was not magic. Nor blood. But presence.

And then it emerged.

Tearing the rock like an insect bursting its cocoon. Not with urgency. With inevitability.

His fingers came first. Long. Hardened skin, with the texture of old leather mixed with ash.

Then the arms: covered in marks. Not tattoos. Not burns. Scars. Each one like a language. Like a sentence written in flesh.

The shoulders, too wide for a child. The chest: sunken at the center, but tensed as if inside dwelled something still pounding from within.

And finally… the face.

It was Sebastián. But only a deformed shadow of what he had been.

He still bore the childish outline: the curve of the cheeks, the proportion of the jaw.

But it was too exact. Like a mask carved in fury.

Beneath the skin, the veins marked like black branches. The neck seemed fractured in three places. And yet… it stood upright.

And the eyes…

Draila held her breath.

They were no longer wholly black. In the center of each iris, a red spiral turned. Slow. Constant. As if something inside him still watched through a bottomless tunnel.

The pupil, darker than night, had no reflection. It did not absorb light: it devoured it.

When his foot touched the stone of the chamber, it made no sound. But the walls contracted. Not from heat. From fear.

The altar cracked at the edge. A dry tremor ran through the floor.

Draila did not kneel. She must not. And more… she could not.

To kneel would have been surrender. And what stood before her did not demand surrender.

It demanded something older: Recognition.

So she remained standing. Lowered her head slightly. And extended her right hand, open, to one side, palm facing the ground.

A gesture unseen for centuries. The ceremonial greeting reserved for that which has not yet been crowned… but already governs.

It was a reception. Not as a mother. Not as a servant. But as a bridge between worlds.

She did not say his name. She did not call him anything. For she no longer knew how he should be named.

She only waited.

And he—that body that still seemed child, but no longer was—lifted his head.

His eyes scanned the hall. They did not look. They inspected.

And then, he spoke.

A single word. His voice was dry. Torn. Double.

—Where?

He did not ask "what happened." He did not ask "who am I." He did not seek explanations.

Only "where."

Because what inhabited him no longer sought origin. It sought direction.

Sebastián stepped forward. The stone seemed to yield, not from weight, but from recognition. As if the place remembered something that had not yet happened.

The air surrounded him differently. Not as one newly born. But as heir to something too ancient.

Draila did not speak. The bandaged figure did… with breathing. Broken. Cautious. Almost animal.

Sebastián stopped before them. Three steps away. No more, no less.

His eyes—with that constant red spiral, turning slowly, watching everything from an inner abyss—fixed first on Draila. He did not say her name. But he recognized her.

Then he looked at the bandaged one. And there, the atmosphere shattered. Not with words. With silence that became unbearable.

The man stepped back. A single step. Enough to fill the ground beneath with cracks.

—Do you know who you are now? —asked Draila. Her voice did not tremble. It was firm. Rough as stone polished with blood.

Sebastián did not respond immediately. He only slowly lifted his face, as if each vertebra of his neck spoke for him.

His eyes, lit by the red spiral, locked onto hers.

—Yes —he said. His voice was double, as if one came from his throat and another from his stomach—. I am the same who entered… but no longer to obey.

Silence.

He closed his eyes. And in that gesture, there was no doubt.

—Everything I was is with me. The names. The scars. The pain. Nothing was left behind.

He opened his eyes. The red spiral glowed faintly.

—Now I know it was not punishment. It was preparation.

Draila did not lower her gaze. But the bandaged one did.

—Do you know why you are here? —she pressed.

Sebastián inhaled deeply. The air whistled as it entered. His chest rose slightly. An exhalation more like contained vapor than breath.

—I did not come —he whispered—. I was birthed.

The words drove into the space like stakes.

The bandaged one trembled.

—He should not speak like that —he muttered, more to himself than to Draila—. It is not normal. It is not… possible.

—It is not normal —she nodded.

—Nor human —added the bandaged one.

—Nor necessary —closed Draila, without taking her eyes off the child who was no longer child.

Sebastián took another step. The altar creaked. Not from weight. From presence.

He looked at them both. Not with fury. Not with tenderness.

With the depth of one who has survived himself.

With the gaze of someone who remembers every step, every wound, every name… and still chooses to keep walking.

—What comes next? —he asked.

Draila opened her mouth, but did not answer immediately. For she knew: Sebastián was not waiting for orders. Only checking if they knew.

And the answer was no.

He no longer followed anyone. He only descended. And the world would have to learn to follow him… or be left behind. The silence weighed like a second atmosphere.

It was not discomfort. It was contained expectation.

Sebastián took another step, slow, steady. The stone did not tremble. But the air changed temperature.

His eyes—the red spirals turning with hypnotic rhythm—fixed on Draila. Then, on the bandaged one.

—And them? —he asked.

A single question. But loaded with names. Names unspoken… but alive.

Draila understood instantly.

It was not necessary for him to pronounce their names. But still, she did. For he deserved it.

—Virka… and Narka.

—Where are they? —his voice was not accusation. It was search.

—Virka… still walks. She has taken form. One that will be different to you.

And Narka… —she paused—has climbed higher than any other. He waits. He observes.

Sebastián nodded slowly. The gesture was not human. It was ritual.

—Then… I did not lose them.

—No —answered Draila, breathing deeply—. They were the only ones who did not let you go, even when you did yourself.

The bandaged one opened his mouth. But no words came. Only the sound of his bandages rubbing tight against his skull.

—I do not understand how he has survived —he murmured—. No body should have withstood six months down there.

—Because he is no longer only body —answered Draila without looking at him—. He is the full path. The fifth form. The Plus level.

Sebastián narrowed his eyes. Not with doubt. With memory.

—I felt it. It did not arrive as revelation. It arrived as burn. As rupture.

And now…

—Now the body does not obey your orders —interrupted Draila—. Only your intention. That is the Plus.

The bandaged one spoke again, this time with rage veiled by fear:

—And what are we supposed to do with him now? Guide him? Loose him into the world as if not…?

—As if not what? —interrupted Sebastián.

He looked at him.

But not as one looks at an enemy. He looked as a mirror that no longer recognizes itself.

—Are you afraid? —he asked. Not mocking. Not curious. Only precise.

The bandaged one lowered his gaze.

—Not of you… —he said at last—. Of the world when it sees you. Of what you will do if no one is able to stop you.

Sebastián did not respond immediately. He stepped closer.

—I no longer need to be stopped. Nor to be guided. Only not to be interfered with.

Draila, with her eyes locked on his, spoke without blinking:

—Do you know where you are going?

—Not yet. But my body will know. And when it knows, it will follow.

Draila nodded.

—Then you need no map. Only ground.

—And names —added Sebastián.

—Names? —the bandaged one repeated, confused.

—Yes —said Sebastián, almost with dry tenderness—. Because each name is a weight. And I have already learned to carry all those worth it.

He looked toward the ceiling, as if beyond the mineral the sun lived.

—Now I want to see them. Virka. Narka.

—Soon —said Draila—. They will know you have emerged. And when they see you… they too must decide.

—They will not do it with fear —answered Sebastián.

—No —Draila smiled, faintly—. They will do it with memory.

There was no ceremony when Sebastián departed.

Only steps. Firm. Precise. As if he already knew each stone, each shadow of the ascending tunnel.

Draila did not stop him. She did not give him direction. She did not dare to call him by name.

She only watched. As one watches an eclipse. Or the edge of a sword that has not yet fallen.

The bandaged figure remained beside her. Silent. Breathing as if each exhalation cost him part of his soul.

—And now? —he asked, at last. His voice was a whisper. A plea.

—Now —answered Draila, without looking at him— the world begins to learn.

—From him?

—No. —She closed her eyes—. For him.

The bandaged one shuddered.

—And if they do not understand?

—Then he will not stop to explain.

The echo of Sebastián's steps faded through the corridors, but the air was never the same again.

The sanctuary, which had contained monsters, specters, and memories, now seemed small. Insufficient to hold what had just left it.

Sebastián emerged from the rock as if the mountain had spat him out. Not from rejection. From respect.

The light outside did not blind him. There was no need for adaptation. His pupils contracted and dilated at will. He saw what he wanted to see.

The air was cold. But his skin did not tremble. He absorbed the temperature like a memory. And his body adjusted it from within.

He walked among stones and mist, as if gravity were a decision he controlled.

He did not run. He did not march. He moved with purpose.

A cliff collapsed before him, suddenly. Huge stones, falling like blades. A dry, final noise.

Sebastián raised a hand. He only wished to stop the fall.

The arm lifted with the precision of an ancestral weapon. The forearm tensed, and the palm curved at the exact angle to receive the impact.

The largest stone struck his arm. And split.

Not from force. From obedience.

His body knew what he desired. And executed it.

Sebastián did not even blink. The fragmentation happened as if he had ordered it with an unspoken word.

Further ahead, a narrow path threatened to collapse beneath his weight. But his body knew before he did.

The step shifted, on its own. Lighter. Precise.

It was not reaction. It was pure response to his intention to continue.

—So this is… the Plus —he murmured, while walking—. The world no longer receives me. It adapts.

He closed his eyes as he walked. And still, he did not stumble. His body avoided obstacles, felt the terrain, kept balance with total autonomy connected to his will.

Deep inside, his mind spoke in short phrases. His body listened to them as sacred commands:

"Higher." "Stronger." "Do not stop the step."

And all responded without error.

But still he did not feel Virka. Nor Narka.

He clenched his fists. Not from frustration. From impulse.

The veins tensed. Not to prepare. But because his body already knew what was coming.

—They are not here —he said softly—. But I know they feel me.

The wind shifted. Not from weather. From recognition.

And Sebastián kept walking. He was not searching. He went where the world did not yet know it must receive him. The mountain moaned from its core. And from its entrails—from living stone, from blood that does not flow—emerged a figure that was not monster… but not human either.

It was her.

The creature had no single face, but in the center… the outline was unmistakable.

His mother's face. Blurred. Broken. But with the eyes that had once looked at him with tenderness.

The lips trembled. The voice that arose was not roar. It was whisper. Warm. Painful. Alive.

—Do not break me, son…

Sebastián stopped. Only an instant. But in that instant, memories burst.

A warm spoon touching his cracked lips. A forced laugh to console him. A lullaby sung from the kitchen. His fingers seeking her hair while trembling with fever. A hand squeezing his the night before disappearing.

Sebastián's fingers tensed. Not from fury. Not from rage. From loss.

The figure extended its arms.

—If you advance… you will destroy me too…

Sebastián raised his hand. The body obeyed. But the heart trembled.

And then—without stopping—he drove it into the creature's chest.

Not with violence. With resolution.

The figure's body broke as if made of hot glass. But it did not scream. It only dissolved. As if it understood that this was its destiny.

As it faded, the warmest memories surrounded him.

A blanket. An "I love you" without voice. The first time she called him "my strong boy."

And then, his eyes bled.

Not from wound. Because tears no longer existed. Only what hurts when there is no water left in the soul.

He advanced without stopping.

The heart burned, but the step was firm. The mountain no longer resisted. For it had nothing else to offer him.

—Virka… —he whispered, with broken voice—. Nothing separates me now. Not even pain.

And then, the world opened.

Not as a gift. As acceptance.

For Sebastián no longer walked as son of the world. He walked as one who has buried it… and still lives.

The world opened. But not like a flower. Like a wound scarred by will.

Sebastián advanced. The ground no longer offered textures. Only direction.

Each step was an echo without echo. The wind did not sing. It only held the air so he could pass through without distraction.

And then… he felt it.

It was not impact. It was certainty. As if the body had arrived before the consciousness.

He stopped. Silence surrounded him like a damp cloak. Trees moved aside on their own. Roots withdrew. Shadows compressed.

Before him, a clearing. And at the center…

A red cocoon.

It was not vegetal. Nor wholly organic. It seemed woven with threads of flesh and sap, pulsing with a soft beat, as if inside there were a heart learning to beat like a human.

The cocoon breathed. Not like a living being. But like someone about to become one.

Beside it, motionless… Narka.

Enormous. Silent. With shell marked by ancient cracks. A single eye open, watching Sebastián without threat… but not without judgment.

Sebastián did not approach immediately. The body sustained him. The will restrained him.

Not from fear. From respect.

Because something inside him knew that what pulsed there was not only Virka… it was the way she chose to return to the world.

And he could not interrupt it. Only witness it.

The cocoon trembled. A fine fracture opened on its surface. A pinkish-red vapor seeped through the crack. And a warm light emerged from the center.

Inside, like in an aquatic dream, a figure began to define itself.

Long hair. Slender arms. Feet still closed like buds. The body was not yet wholly human. But no longer beast.

Sebastián took a step.

Narka did not move. But a thread of energy rose as warning.

He understood.

He must not interfere. Not yet.

Only see. Feel. Accompany.

And while the flesh of the cocoon pulsed, and the figure inside began to move its fingers clumsily, Sebastián—standing, face bathed in dry blood and dust—witnessed the transformation.

Not as one who waits. But as one who has arrived just in time… not to lose the only thing he is unwilling to break.

The cocoon pulsed. Not like a heart. But like a living warning. A biological border between what had been beast and what was about to be born as something even harder to name.

Sebastián did not move. Nor did Narka.

The forest fell silent, as if all living things understood that witnessing this was a privilege, not a right.

The first cracks opened on the surface of the cocoon. They did not burst: they slid, as if the flesh itself parted with submission.

An inner light gushed with the pulse of a half-formed being. It did not blind. But could not be ignored.

From within arose the first traces of form.

Thin fingers, still stained with the dense substance that had wrapped everything. Then, the arms. And with them… the marks.

Veins burning in dark red spread across the neck, the shoulders, the forearms. They did not look like wounds. They were circuits. Languages inscribed from within.

The body was that of a girl. But it was not fragile.

Four foot three. Exact proportions. Delicately outlined by an organic white tunic that fell to the knees. It had no seams. No adornments. Only existence.

The hair: very long, black. So dark it reflected no light. It moved as if submerged in something thick. Each strand seemed to have its own weight.

Finally, she lifted her head.

And the eyes…

Red. Liquid. Abyssal.

They did not shine. They burned.

The gaze of someone who has seen without eyes and now uses sight as dominion.

It was a girl. Yes. But it was Virka. And that was enough for the world to retreat… even though she had not taken a step.

Sebastián said nothing. Not a gesture. Not an overflowing emotion.

He only looked at her. And knew that what he loved had not disappeared. It had only become more fiercely real.

She did not yet speak. She did not yet walk.

But the world… had already inclined in her direction.

The air did not move. But between them, everything changed.

Virka took a step. Only one.

The sound was slight. But Sebastián felt it as if the world bowed.

Her red eyes looked at him without judgment. Only with certainty.

Sebastián, at last, also took a step. And then she ran.

Not as child. Not as warrior. As bond recovered.

The impact of the embrace broke nothing. But it unraveled everything inside.

Sebastián fell to his knees. Virka did not release her arms from his waist.

Her hair covered him like a mantle. And the veins lit in her arms shone just where they touched his body.

And in that contact… the ancient marks he bore since the first union began to burn.

Arms, chest, neck. Like contained fire recognizing its origin.

The connection reactivated. Not only the spiritual. The shared existence.

She did not cry. Neither did he.

But the world understood that there was love here that needed no words.

Behind them, Narka remained firm. Motionless. Vigilant. As if knowing that protecting that moment was more important than any guard or temple.

Then the air shifted. Not from wind. From presence.

Draila appeared among the mist. Her tunic still stained with ash. Beside her, the bandaged man. Face covered, but the tremor in his steps was visible.

Both watched them.

Not a word. Only the living image of what the world had not expected to survive. And which, nonetheless, was reborn stronger.

—This is not natural —the bandaged one whispered.

—It is not —answered Draila—. It is necessary. Virka did not release Sebastián. He, still on his knees, lifted his gaze.

—What will you do now? —asked Draila. Not with fear. With responsibility.

Sebastián stood, with Virka still clinging to his side.

—I will continue.

—Toward where?

—Toward the next biome. This world is not mine. But I will walk in it with those who walk with me.

Draila closed her eyes. The bandaged one said nothing more.

And so, in the silence after the rebirth, Sebastián took his first step out of the place where he had died… and was born again.

With Narka at his back. With Virka at his side. And with the world before him, with no permission to stop him.

END OF CHAPTER 8