The Dojo remained in silence. The moon, suspended above the tiles, seemed to float upon a breath that was no longer human. The embers had burned down to dark dust. Between Sebastián and Selena, the air still vibrated with the echo of what had been said, as if each word had left a mark upon the stone. Neither moved. The hours, if they still existed, had dissolved into the silence.

Sebastián did not avert his gaze. The stillness weighed upon his shoulders, but not from fatigue; it was the weight of thought, of all that had yet to be told. The veins on his forearm throbbed as if they carried a foreign pulse. For an instant, he looked toward the extinguished brazier, and the line of smoke rising from the ash seemed to trace the shape of his own memory.

—If I continue recounting in this way —he said at last—, dawn will find us here. And I won't even have reached the halfway point.

Selena kept her posture straight, her hands joined behind her back. Her eyes, cold and precise, sought not emotion but function.

—Then change the method —she replied without inflection—. If you cannot speak it, show it.

The phrase fell without weight, yet its meaning was absolute. Sebastián held her gaze a moment longer, understanding that such permission was not human: it was a natural command, the next form of duty. Then he nodded slowly and stepped aside without another word.

The air of the Dojo moved with him. The floor, barely touched by his steps, returned a faint echo, almost ritual. As he crossed the threshold, the night wind entered behind him and unraveled the remaining smoke. Outside, the stone corridors were wrapped in shadow; the paper lanterns trembled, their yellow flames bending as if they too were breathing. Every wall held the echo of ancient vows.

He walked in silence. The night had the texture of a dream that had not yet decided whether to continue. The dampness of the forest hung in the air. From somewhere within the Dojo came the faint sound of water: the inner pond, where the reflection of the moon seemed to watch everything.

Sebastián advanced to the inner chamber. The wooden door yielded without a sound. Inside, the air was warmer; a pale blue spiritual lamp pulsed near the floor. The light barely reached far enough to reveal the sleeping bodies. Virka rested on her right side, her black hair fallen across her face. Valentina was curled against her, holding a corner of the cloak. The rhythm of their breathing intertwined in a cadence that belonged neither to pain nor to fear: it was the calm born only when death no longer lingers.

In the corner, Narka watched. His reduced form rested upon a slab of stone, though nothing about him suggested rest. His golden eyes were two ancient embers that needed no blink.

Sebastián bowed slightly, in silent respect.

—I have recounted the essential —he murmured—, but too much is still missing. If I keep speaking, I'll need entire nights. Selena seeks to understand… but words are not enough.

Narka did not answer immediately. His voice, when it came, was more a vibration than a sound.

—There are forms that require no voice. But your level does not allow you to open them by your own will.

The air tightened between them. Sebastián lifted his gaze.

—Can you do it?

—I could. Not for you, but through you. Your Qi touches the surface of the soul, but it does not pierce it. I can. I am a bridge between planes, and my current can flow where your body cannot reach.

Sebastián watched him without surprise.

—What will I show?

—Not thoughts. Echoes. —Narka's words resonated more within than without—. She will not hear what you say; she will feel what you were. She will see your memories from when your flesh still bled, when your soul sought form.

A long pause. The blue glow of the lamp reflected on Sebastián's skin, which seemed made of cold iron.

—Is there risk? —he asked.

—Only for those who lie —said Narka—. Nothing can be hidden within the bond. If your truth is incomplete, it will hurt. But you do not lie. You only carry.

Silence expanded. Sebastián looked toward Virka and Valentina. In her sleep, the girl moved an arm, searching for the warmth that protected her. The contrast between that gesture and the density of power in the room was so absolute it almost hurt. Narka followed his gaze.

—They sleep within your purpose —murmured the guardian—. That is reason enough.

Sebastián nodded. He stepped closer, and without kneeling, extended a hand. Narka raised one of his claws and placed it upon it. Immediately, the air changed. The shadows contracted. A faint tremor ran through the floor. The blue glow of the lamp turned gray, then red, then gray again.

Sebastián's body did not move, but within him something opened: a deep current, a silent river that belonged neither to Qi nor to flesh.

—When the mind stops —said Narka in a grave voice—, let the soul continue.

A dull vibration passed through the walls. The flames of the lanterns in the corridor went out one by one, without smoke. In that instant, the bond was woven: not active, but alive, like an invisible line awaiting the moment to be touched.

Narka withdrew his claw.

—The channel is open. Do not use it until you stand before her. I will sustain the flow.

Sebastián bowed his head in agreement. Without looking back, he crossed the room. The door closed with just enough sound not to wake anyone.

The corridor received him with the calm of an endless passage. The dead lanterns hung from the ceiling like weightless bodies. The wind carried the scent of wet stone. In the distance, the Dojo seemed to hold its own breath.

Each step was a measure. Each shadow, a witness.

When he returned to the main hall, Selena was still there. She had not moved. The brazier remained extinguished, but the air seemed to vibrate around her, as if she had sensed the change before seeing it.

Sebastián stopped before her. He said nothing at first. His presence was different: something in the shape of his eyes, in the calm of his chest, announced that the human had yielded to another kind of clarity.

—I have found a more direct way —he said, his voice low.

Selena showed neither curiosity nor doubt. She only nodded once.

—Show it.

Then the air of the Dojo trembled. An invisible current, red and gray, rose from the floor and ascended to the ceiling. The shadows moved in opposite directions. The silence turned to pressure. The moon outside seemed to extinguish itself for a single heartbeat.

Far away, Narka opened his eyes. A thread of spiritual energy crossed the distance, imperceptible to any other being, and touched Sebastián at the center of his chest. In that same instant, Selena exhaled, and her pupils dilated.

The Dojo held its breath. The stone vibrated with a sound without tone, and between both bodies emerged something that was neither light nor shadow: a pulse.

Sebastián's soul began to project its truth.

What until then had been narration became vision.

And the silence, at last, spoke.

Darkness does not fall: it opens. There is no roof of the Dojo, no lanterns, no dim bronze of the embers; only a black space that breathes as if it were the chest of a mountain holding its air so that two presences may float without weight. Sebastián hangs suspended, his body legless, unraveling into strands of reddish energy that spin like contained whirlwinds; Selena, beside him, retains firm, cold, precise lines —a pale edge that feels more like judgment than light. They do not speak. Narka's voice does not enter through the ear: it vibrates between bone and thought, rough and deep, as if the stone itself were whispering within the sternum. The channel is open. Do not move. When he thinks, you will see. The blackness pulses like a heart still choosing to whom it lends its blood, and with Sebastián's first heartbeat, the world splits open.

The rusted glow of the Blood Mountains appears all at once, without dawn, as if the light were seeping tiredly from the veins of the rock. The wind does not blow: it cuts. It caresses with an edge and stays beneath the skin. Valleys cleft like throats, ridges crowned with red crystals that spark without sound, horizontal stalactites nailed into the air like old teeth. Sebastián gazes from a rocky spur, and the beast—arched back, stunted wings folded against its sides—sniffs the metal of the weather with reverent caution. The essential law of the biome enters without language: here everything that lives wounds by hunger, by edge, or by cold. Selena neither hesitates nor comforts that landscape; she registers its grammar—smell of dry iron, geology in tension, an environment that does not negotiate with the soft. The black bites the edges and leaves what is necessary; the rest sinks.

They descend through a red gorge that breathes dead heat. The walls expand and contract like fossilized ribs, and the ground moans hollow beneath bare feet. The beast moves ahead a step; its hum sharpens against the rock. Something approaches, dragging scales: a scavenger that cleans what the mountain discards. The black membrane covering its eyes throbs; it does not roar, it only breathes—and that breath announces hunger. Sebastián does not think; his body precedes the idea. He leaps onto a ledge, throws a stone toward an empty point, shifts the echo; the beast flanks in a spiral. The bone worm strikes at the decoy, bites air, exhales acidic vapor. Sebastián drops onto its back, drives his fingers between plates; the beast bites into the base of the segmented skull and twists with methodical violence. The crack does not sound like bone: it sounds like will breaking. Black blood streams, and the mountain drinks it in silence, as if feeding something deeper. Sebastián's forearm splits open from the wrist; the beast licks and cauterizes—clean pain that seals. There are no phrases. Here, every unnecessary word costs a tooth.

The cavern appears with black veins and red crystals lit from within, as if someone had sown embers inside the stone. In the center, a dark pool bubbles with the patience of an organ. Sebastián marks the ground with three crooked lines. They are not symbols: they are warnings, the outline of a tiny territory within a world that respects no boundaries. The rock roars from within. The blood of the pool rises as a column aware of its own antiquity. From its center emerges a monstrous turtle, its shell pierced by mineral spears and a single yellow eye that measures inward, not outward. It advances slowly but with a pressure that deforms the ground. Sebastián's first attempt fails: fingers between plates, a joint that won't yield, a bone tail striking and hurling his body against the wall. His shoulder cracks. The beast risks a leap toward the eye, but the turtle sinks and spits thick blood that blocks breath by sheer weight. The companion is trapped for an instant. Sebastián charges with the injured shoulder; a hot burst crosses his collarbone. He tears off a fragment of stone and drives the improvised blade into the membrane between shell and leg—it doesn't go deep, but it goes right. The turtle twists and releases. There is no triumph. There is shared pressure. The mountain, which until now had only watched, seems to accept the volume of three breaths. The turtle withdraws, sinks half its body into its pool, and leaves the eye open. It does not flee, does not die, does not command. It respects.

Doubt comes when the blood is already dry. Sebastián does not beg; he asks through a crack. He names Draila, and she does not enter—she confirms herself. She takes no steps, casts no shadow. She exists. The voice comes soft, without tenderness. You did not win. You survived. What you seek is not power; it is fracture. There is no technique to give you. The path is claimed through wounds that cease to be events and become method. Teach it to me, he says. Not yet, she says, because you still wait for someone to place it in your hands—and that expectation is a soft part that still breathes within you. Keep fighting. Keep falling. When your body no longer fears breaking, the path will come on its own. The scene folds and falls away like old skin.

Time ceases to have form, and what remains are acts. Irregular stones tied to the chest with dry roots until breathing stumbles; barefoot ascents over dark crystal, soles torn off in sheets that do not weep; fists against rock, then forearms, elbows, forehead—not to break columns, but to break oneself and rewrite the flesh. The beast watches; when Sebastián falls, it pushes, as one who remembers with the body what another has yet to understand. The turtle blocks the way halfway through the path: each day Sebastián must climb its shell with broken hands and leap across an abyss that always kicks the stomach; the fall is a language, and the ground, a teacher without patience. At dusk—an oxidized glow that never warms—the turtle's tail draws symbols: circles that spin into themselves, open crosses, forms that ask not for faith but for memory. Sebastián carves them with his fingers until they bleed and traces them blindly; each mistake has a claw, an edge, or a void. None of the three show mercy. Nor cruelty. They do not need it.

The body begins to make decisions before he thinks to call them decisions. The blood grows denser and clings to the skin before falling, as if the scab chose to be born a second early. The same movement chips more stone: there is no incantation, there is density. He lands badly, the ankle twists, and pain rises to the knee then withdraws like a dog learning a new command: don't exaggerate. In the icy pool, the turtle's claw does not cut—it pulses against the sternum. A deep wave awakens a muscle that did not exist and yet had always been waiting. The labyrinth of the next night is already drawn in his own dried blood, though he does not remember making it; when he touches it, a pull in his back drives a spine inward and does not release it. He does not ask what it means. He accepts it. The beast stops growling to correct him and merely watches. That, in her, is respect.

Draila returns without spectacle. She enumerates without grand names; her words are smooth stone. What you have does not channel Qi, nor mana, nor aura; yours devours them and turns them into flesh, muscle, pressure. You have crossed from the reactive body to the autonomous body: muscle that acts even while you sleep, reflex that dodges without asking permission, endurance that organizes itself beneath pain. She promises no future, only points out the cost. If you go back, you will erase what pain has written. Selena measures each phrase as if they were vectors: energetic difference, a self-contained system that needs no altar nor ritual technique. She records the data without letting any of it cross the skin into emotion.

Above, where once his knuckles left their skin, there are no columns. There is a stone altar like a warm hollow. At its center, the body that never lived the forest: a Sebastián clean of cracks, of losses, without the heartbeat of thorns. He opens his eyes, and the battle begins within. Each strike returns him to childhood, to hunger, to a fear crawling from a broken car, to a song under the rain that no longer answers. The body he is now does not respond to the first call, and for an instant, it falters. Then, at the world's edge, the red bracelet tied to his ankle appears—not as a charm, but as a root. He bites it off, tears it free, throws it away. The copy freezes, as if struck by a blow it cannot comprehend. What happens next is not fury: it is certainty. Sebastián grips his reflection's neck, slams it down; he does not devour flesh—he absorbs function. He integrates what he had denied. When it ends, no one remains on the altar. Only the hollow left by what at last has an owner.

Between cold cracks, the bracelet waits for him like a witness that does not plead. It does not shine. It does not call. Sebastián wipes it clean with his fingers, measures it against his forehead, and ties it around his left bicep. It is no shield. It is a visible scar to prevent easy forgetting. The beast changes the tone of its hum, barely; the turtle's yellow eye blinks once. There is no ritual, no oath. It is enough not to look away.

Near the pool, standing, Sebastián speaks softly. You could have killed me and you didn't, he says to the turtle; you wounded me and you taught me. I will not drag you. If you chose to step out of the mold, walk with me. The thick liquid trembles. The frost on the shell cooks itself into thin lines. Step by step, the turtle emerges from its mineral sleep and positions itself beside the beast. Three presences, no contract. The biome does not object: the mountain steps aside with a courtesy it never grants to the weak. Narka breathes from outside: the flow endures; what is seen here is no metaphor.

The chamber of the world accelerates, yet every gesture remains legible. Descents that no longer demand the knee's permission; ascents sustained in the silence of a new muscle; blows that cease teaching stone and begin teaching flesh; nights when the body does not seek rest, only stillness to rearrange fibers and seal, in darkness, what light would not know how to order. And on a day that never dawns, the air thickens with ancient patience; a fissure blinks, and Draila appears as confirmation of something that had always waited at the edge. She brings no concessions. She brings a boundary.

There is no ceremony when the mountain decides to memorize a step. The air does not brush—it curves around. The beast and the turtle stand close, not as escorts but as witnesses of a mold that ceases to be mold and becomes method. Sebastián asks for nothing. He no longer needs to. The fire in the refuge burns low, as if it too had healing to do. He does not sleep. The body does not ask it. The night stops falling and folds back. Then the black begins to eat the edges, and the Dojo appears behind—not as a change of scene, but as skin returning to its place.

Narka does not sever. He sustains. One truth still remains. The black space breathes and returns, for the last time, the edge of rusted light over a cliff that looks like taut wire. There is a sound from within the mountain, like old bones breaking. It is not threat. It is summons. Where once he struck, the hollow waits; the uncracked figure no longer exists; what remains is him, with thorns beating to the rhythm of the world. He takes a step, and the air bends. He takes another, and the air chooses not to touch him. Selena does not intervene; she senses precisely that any word would be a profanation of a method that does not require her. It is enough for her to understand. And she does.

Narka's voice drops half a tone and frames the edges of the place: the channel endures, do not speak. What happens now will be truth outside. The images fold without blurring: blood that decides when to fall; labyrinths drawn by a hand that does not remember; the turtle's claw pulsing on the sternum; the beast correcting without tenderness; knuckles that no longer tremble after impact; an ankle that twists and does not invite panic. None of it asks for epic. It asks for memory. Selena builds it in silence, line by line, with the patience of one who knows that facts weigh more when no one tries to adorn them.

The pulse deepens. The darkness closes a finger and leaves Sebastián standing, the bracelet tightening around his bicep like a map that no longer guides, only certifies that there was a path. The beast at his right, the turtle behind, and neither awaits command. What exists is neither danger nor peace. It is postwar: a territory where everything has already been decided. The mountain is silent in respect. The thorns beat like a drum that does not summon. They confirm. In the same breath, the altar, the copy, and the void return in a compressed flash—not to repeat, but to remain engraved.

Narka speaks a single line of basalt: you may leave when you wish; what was seen will not be denied. Sebastián breathes as if pushing the night toward the shore and nods without words. Selena, still floating, lets the clarity run down her back like cold water. She offers no comfort. She does not deem it necessary. She keeps the method as it was shown to her: without adjectives to deform it. The black space folds like damp fabric, and the Dojo surfaces like stone through water. The final heartbeat does not farewell. It continues.

They return to clean stone and cold air. Nothing in their postures promises rest. Their shadows touch only slightly at the edge and decide not to join. Narka no longer speaks. He doesn't need to. Selena fixes her gaze and understands that the projection gave her no spectacle—it exposed structure. Sebastián lowers his chin a centimeter; his red eyes turn without brightness, deep, carrying the dark murmur of a halted hurricane. No one names what they saw. There is no need. Something—the mountain, the beast, the turtle, or silence itself—has just accepted that this flesh, at last, stopped asking for permission.

The Dojo breathes with them. Outside, the living forest does not bow—it waits. The night does not break—it reclines. Selena offers no conclusion; she records a condition: what stands before her is not a memory recounted; it is a body that has already told itself through blows and chose to remain. And the bracelet, visible and taut, is not nostalgia. It is the signature of one who did not allow the child to become obstacle or banner, but root. There is a fissure that beats and now bears a name, not because it asks for one, but because it is inevitable to call it.

And the world, which once sought to erase him, begins to learn the courtesy of stepping aside.

The silence of the Dojo was not emptiness, but the purest form of the echo that remains after a truth is revealed. The air stayed suspended, as if still holding the vibration of the spiritual channel. Sebastián remained still, seated upon the stone, his gaze fixed on the floor that had endured the pressure of his energy. Before him, Selena opened her eyes slowly. She did not gasp, did not display visible alteration; only the exact rigidity of one trying to measure what she had just witnessed with the precision of the mind. Her breathing barely lifted her chest. She had returned from within another consciousness, yet the weight of what she had seen still lingered there, clinging to her skin like a residue of fire.

The Dojo was dark. The only light came from outside: the tilted moon crossing the doorway, whitening a strip of the floor. Selena lifted her gaze toward it. She noticed its position had changed—lower, paler, more sunken into the curve of the sky. Time had continued its course. Not much, but enough to show that midnight had passed. Outside, the forest breathed with the slow rhythm of dead hours, and the wind, heavy with moisture, entered effortlessly, lifting the dust in motions that resembled invisible hands. On the stone, a faint warmth of dissipated spiritual energy remained. Everything had ended, yet the sensation of being inside the channel persisted, as if reality itself had not fully realigned.

Selena lowered her gaze toward Sebastián. She did not need to form her thoughts yet; she observed in silence the nearly imperceptible tremor of his breath. Narka stood to one side, in his reduced form, motionless, eyes closed as if still listening to the inner currents of the flow. A long moment passed before Selena spoke, her voice low, clean, without the weight of emotion:

—The bond has closed… but time here barely moved.

Her gaze shifted from the ground to the master. The tone remained neutral, inquisitive without judgment.

—The colossal turtle I saw in your memories… that was you, wasn't it?

Sebastián turned his head slightly, but before he could answer, Narka's deep voice cut through the silence. It did not come from the air, but from the space itself.

—It is better that she wait, —he said, his tone a rock speaking to the wind—. What she has seen is only a part. More forms remain before she can comprehend the whole.

Selena held her gaze fixed on him, then nodded once. She did not press further. She knew how to recognize the limit of an answer when standing before something that was not meant to be touched yet.

—I understand —she replied at last, without hardness. She turned her eyes toward Sebastián—. What I observed was not mere brutality. Every action seemed calculated, every wound a decision. Has your entire path been that way? Pain and growth as the same thing?

Sebastián did not answer immediately. He took a few seconds to raise his eyes. There was no shadow of doubt on his face—only the dry calm of one who accepts what he is without needing to name it.

—Yes —he said at last, his voice deep, steady, contained—. It has always been that way. But not all pain leaves marks on the flesh. In time, the body stops breaking, and what shatters is the mind. I wouldn't know what else to call it. It's mental… but it hurts the same.

The words fell slowly, like fragments of stone dropped into water. Selena did not look away, and no compassion appeared on her face—only understanding.

—Then your strength is not merely physical.

Sebastián inclined his head slightly, a minimal affirmation that closed the subject without embellishment.

Narka spoke again. His voice no longer weighed as heavily, but it still carried the depth of centuries.

—She will understand more when she sees what remains. There are things that cannot be explained—only shown.

The air of the Dojo trembled at those words, not from force, but from truth. The wood creaked beneath the wind, and the extinguished brazier exhaled one last breath of faint smoke.

Sebastián rose slowly. The movement was precise, without visible fatigue, though the entire atmosphere seemed reluctant to release him. His shadow stretched long across the floor, crossing the pale beam of moonlight. His red eyes caught the light with a metallic hue.

—We will continue —he said, looking toward the entrance of the Dojo—. What was promised still stands.

Narka lifted his gaze—barely a gesture, yet enough to make his presence seem to extend once more throughout the entire hall.

Selena watched him a few seconds longer before following. In her mind, the images from the channel continued to arrange themselves, each one adhering to a meaning she had not yet learned to translate. The logic of what she had seen did not belong to the common laws of learning; it was another kind of understanding—a discipline that hurt even to remember.

The door of the Dojo opened a little wider as Sebastián stepped through. The night breeze entered, carrying with it the murmur of trees and the distant sound of water. It was a late night, yet still alive. The stars seemed colder, more scattered. The moon, barely dissolved on the horizon, continued watching from its curve. None of them spoke as they took a few steps outside the hall. The silence became a natural extension of the conversation they had left unfinished. Narka followed calmly, floating at a distance that required no glance.

The Dojo remained behind, breathing on its own, keeping the remnants of the power it had witnessed.

The night, still open, awaited the next memory.

The air inside the Dojo stayed motionless, heavy with newly dissolved energy. The brazier's embers died without smoke, leaving a warm shadow over the stones. Outside, the moon had descended almost to the edge of the trees; its light was no longer silver but a sickly white, as if the sky resisted dying completely. Selena kept her gaze fixed on that glow, still dazed by what she had seen. The previous vision still vibrated within her mind—not as someone else's memory, but as a shared experience, an echo her own body had absorbed without understanding. Time had passed, but not enough. The night was still there, suspended between breaths.

Behind her, Sebastián moved. His shadow stretched across the wall, tall, outlined, and for a moment his figure seemed to tremble with the same frequency as the air. He walked until he stood before her. His expression showed no fatigue, only a calm too controlled—the kind that precedes the inevitable.

—What you saw was not all —he said, without harshness—. There is more, and you will understand it better if we continue.

Selena slowly turned her face. There was no surprise in her expression, but the exact tension of one who knows that understanding always has a price.

—More of you? —she asked, her voice barely a thread.

—More of us —he answered—. Mine, Narka's… and Virka's. What comes next is not just history—it is origin.

Narka's voice emerged from the darkest corner of the Dojo, deep, resonant, but never imposing.

—The channel can be opened again. I only need your order, Sebastián.

The young man nodded, his gaze still fixed on Selena.

—We'll do it. But this time, you will see more than wounds and bodies. You'll see the why behind every step. I cannot give you their full memories, but I can let you witness them. That way, you'll understand what binds us.

Selena kept silent. She merely inclined her head—a brief gesture that carried both acceptance and caution.

—All right —she said—. I don't want to interpret it. I just want to see.

Narka emitted a low sound, like a restrained growl dissolving into vibrations.

—Then hold the thought. Do not resist when the darkness touches you.

The air changed. A pressure gathered beneath the floor, as if the stone remembered its liquid form and wished to return to it. The moonlight fractured over the ground, spinning as though it floated in water. Narka shifted a few centimeters; his shell emitted an inner glow, incandescent lines expanding in perfect circles until they covered the entire Dojo. The shadows moved in rhythm with his breathing. Sebastián closed his eyes. Selena did the same.

Darkness did not arrive as absence, but as expansion. Sound folded in on itself, and each body lost its weight. When they opened their eyes, there was no stone, no ground, no air. Only a sea of living dusk that pulsed with red and gray tones, as if blood had learned to breathe. Sebastián floated before her, his legs no longer visible, his body reduced to fragments of dense light that throbbed with every breath. Selena too was a suspended silhouette; her form appeared more solid, yet the edge of her skin dissolved into vapor. Narka was not present, but his voice filled that space like an echo without direction.

—The bond is anchored, —he said—. What you see will respond to what he chooses to remember.

The voice came from nowhere. It was the air itself.

Sebastián lifted his gaze. The space answered: around them, the darkness began to open like a curtain of smoke, revealing flashes of another world.

—What you will see now… —he murmured— are not only my steps. They are the roots of what still sustains us.

The gloom fractured. From it emerged mountains—not made of rock, but of petrified flesh. The skies were a rusted wound. Everything breathed. Selena felt the pulse of those mountains beating with their own rhythm and realized that every stone there carried memory. She recognized the landscape: the Blood Mountains. The same place she had felt before, but now alive, breathing against her skin.

Sebastián's body within the vision moved forward beside two shadows: a slender beast with red eyes and a colossal turtle dragging its weight with dignity. Selena watched, motionless, as the young man advanced through sharp ridges, his bare feet leaving trails of blood that did not hurt. Every movement was precision, every strike an act of understanding with the mountain. The feeling was different from the first time: there was no senseless brutality, but communion.

The air vibrated as the first battle began. Creatures descended from the cliff without warning. Selena saw them attack, fall, and be destroyed in a rhythm that resembled a dance of pure violence. Sebastián's body was not human, but an equation between strength and purpose. Virka fought beside him, a roar that split the silence; Narka watched from behind, his golden eye fixed—measuring, comprehending.

The scenes flowed with perfect continuity. Blood was absorbed by the earth, wounds sealed, and time disassembled itself. Sebastián did not speak, but his thought was a heartbeat Selena could hear: I do not fight to win. I fight because I exist.

She felt it. She understood. And in that instant, she realized she was not witnessing history—she was witnessing conviction made flesh.

Then Draila's voice took form, as if the mountain's air itself remembered her. She did not appear with shape; she only vibrated around them.

—You have begun to listen, —she said.

Selena felt the impact of those words inside the bond. It was as if they were meant for her as well.

In the vision, Sebastián answered without stopping.

—I don't know what I'm hearing. Only that it's there.

—Because it does not come from you, —Draila whispered—. It comes from what you do not yet understand that you are.

The memory expanded. The creatures, the fissures, the echoes. Selena felt each phrase as a physical weight in her chest. Draila's words seeped into her mind with the clarity of a sentence.

—The beast… the turtle… remain with you because they chose to. You do not command them. You accompany them.

Selena's spiritual body trembled. She understood. What others would call monsters, for him were witnesses. What others would call punishment, for them was communion.

The flow shifted color—from red to deep gray. Draila spoke of ancient wars, of creatures created not to serve, but to remember. Behind Sebastián, Selena saw the trace of a lost age: cities sunken into stone, temples devoured by living mountains, human figures turned into statues of salt. Everything vibrated as though the mountain itself were the archive of a world that had grown weary of existing.

Narka's voice resonated through the channel, merging with Draila's.

—The memory of the stone still breathes. Do not try to understand it—only witness it.

Selena obeyed. She let herself be carried by the current.

Then the bond changed its rhythm. The scene froze on an instant: Sebastián before the beast, covered in blood, eyes hollow, chest open. His lips moved without sound. Then his voice filled the space.

—They cannot have names… they have already fulfilled their purpose.

The words distorted but did not vanish. Virka looked at him. Narka, in the background, closed his eye. And Selena understood: this was the deepest fracture—the doubt of one who has survived too much.

But Sebastián, in the vision, spoke again. His tone had changed.

—No… that isn't true. If they keep walking, then they are still alive. If they are alive, they deserve a new beginning.

The entire mountain trembled. Selena felt the ground dissolve beneath her feet. And then she heard the name.

—You are Virka, —he said—. Because your roar was my baptism, and your claw, my boundary.

The word carved itself into the air. It was not sound—it was symbol. A thread of energy that wrapped around her as well. She could feel the weight of the baptism, the way a name could alter the substance of reality. And when Sebastián turned toward the turtle, she already knew what would follow.

—You are Narka. Because you guarded the unnamable… and still chose to walk.

The bond became saturated. Energy covered them like a mantle. Selena could barely hold herself upright. The pressure forced her to breathe through the darkness. It was as if every cell in her body were being compelled to remember that once, long ago, it too had been something that sought purpose.

Then—silence.

Color vanished. The space closed. Everything returned to black.

Narka's voice emerged softly.

—The channel can be closed. What she has seen is enough.

The tone was neutral, yet beneath it there was something that resembled respect.

Darkness dissolved into light.

The Dojo reappeared slowly, stone by stone. The air regained its temperature, its scent, its weight. The moon was still in place, only more inclined. The shadows were longer. Selena blinked. Her eyes adjusted to the physical world with effort.

Sebastián stood before her. He did not look exhausted—only quieter. In his gaze was a new depth, as though each newly shared memory had emptied and filled him at once.

Selena placed a hand on her chest. She could still feel the foreign pulse beating beneath her skin.

—I saw everything… —she whispered—. And it wasn't only your story. It was theirs too.

Sebastián nodded slowly.

—Now you know why they walk with me. They don't follow me. We walk together because we understood the same truth: pain isn't overcome—it's shared.

Selena stayed silent. In her eyes there was a mix of comprehension and disquiet.

—And I also understood… —she said, her voice lower— that each of you was born from something the world wanted to forget.

Narka opened his eyes. His voice resonated again, deep and steady.

—Forgetting is a form of defense. But remembering… is choosing to feel again.

Sebastián looked at him and nodded.

—That's why I had to show it. Not to justify myself. But so you'd know what we are.

Selena held his gaze for a few seconds, and for the first time, the coldness in her face fractured slightly—not into tenderness, but into respect.

—I understand, —she said—. And now I know the answers I'm searching for aren't in you, but in what you've managed to preserve.

Narka emitted a low, deep sound that resonated through the stone.

—The bond has closed—but not entirely. Some things still breathe between you.

Sebastián turned toward him.

—I know. But for now, it's enough. She's seen what she needed to.

Selena nodded. The tension in her body dissolved into a slow sigh. She moved toward the Dojo's window. The moon was still there—thinner, older, yet still alive.

—It's still night, —she said, almost to herself.

Sebastián answered from behind:

—And it will remain so until we choose to move forward.

Silence returned, but it no longer weighed. It was a different kind of silence—the kind that doesn't divide, but binds. Within it breathed three presences: one human, one guardian, one witness. The air of the Dojo filled with restrained calm, the kind of stillness that doesn't announce rest, but preparation.

Narka closed his eyes once more.

—When you wish to continue… I will listen.

Sebastián nodded.

Selena turned, looked at them both, and though she did not say it aloud, she knew something had changed forever.

Outside, the moon sank behind the forest. And beneath its worn light, three shadows were cast upon the Dojo floor: a man, a creature, and an ancient presence that still breathed like a sleeping mountain. None spoke. None needed to. For what remained to be seen… had already begun to awaken.

The air in the Dojo felt newly born, as if it had just remembered the weight of silence after holding an entire universe. The lines of energy still vibrating around Narka slowly faded, leaving a metallic residue in the atmosphere—a mild warmth that belonged neither to body nor to soul. Selena kept her eyes open, but her gaze was elsewhere, fixed on something that did not yet exist in that place. She did not move; she only watched, as though her mind were trying to isolate the newly acquired information, deconstruct it, measure it, archive it. There was no visible emotion. What there was—was calculation: an attention sustained by the habit of understanding even what did not demand explanation.

Beside her, Sebastián remained seated, his torso relaxed, hands resting on his knees, eyes on the ground. He seemed not to think, but the stillness around him was too intense to be mere calm. It was the kind of silence that follows recognition. Narka, still in his full size, kept his shell lit by a dim, almost breathing glow, each line of light fading in rhythm, as if his body remembered the way energy withdraws from an exhausted channel.

No one spoke for a long stretch of breaths. The stone retained a faint tremor—a lingering echo of what the connection had been. In the distance, the forest murmured with wind, but the sound did not fully enter; it was a restrained hum, filtered by the weight of the spiritual energy still dissipating in the air.

Selena blinked. Her mind replayed the images: Virka roaring amid blood, Sebastián's body breaking only to rebuild itself, Narka holding a wound the world could no longer close. She did not feel pity. It was not respect. It was structural comprehension. Every element had function. Every wound served a purpose. What she had seen was neither epic nor tragedy, but a closed system following exact logic. That was enough. She did not need to see more to understand. More information would not bring more knowledge—only dispersion. To look further would corrupt the clarity just achieved. What I saw makes sense, she thought. And when something makes sense, it is studied, not glorified. Her breathing was steady, her pupils unmoving. There was no shock. Only precision.

Narka slowly lifted his head. His voice resonated, deep and grave, like stone shifting in its bed.

—The channel is stable. I can continue if you wish.

Selena turned her face slightly. Her answer came without delay, without raising her tone.

—No. It's enough.

The silence that followed was so clear that even the moon seemed to stop in its path.

—What I've seen is enough to understand the root, —she added—. If I continue, I'll mistake analysis for faith.

Narka did not reply. The lines of light across his shell went out completely, leaving only the pale reflection of the stone beneath them.

Sebastián watched her—not with surprise, but with a focus that sought no approval. He knew that decision did not come from fatigue. It was a technical choice: a mind recognizing the boundary of its own usefulness.

The air thickened for an instant. The residual heat withdrew. The Dojo returned to its natural temperature.

—Then you've understood what was necessary, —said Sebastián quietly.

Selena did not look at him right away. When she did, her gaze carried neither hardness nor softness. It was clean, like a freshly tempered blade.

—I understood what I needed to, —she answered—. Seeing more wouldn't change the outcome. You are function before form. And that is something I respect.

There was no affection in her tone. It was an exact observation—almost scientific—yet it contained more recognition than any praise.

—And she, Virka… —Selena continued— chose a form that contradicts her origin. Not out of weakness, but efficiency. I understand that decision.

Sebastián nodded once. His lips did not move again. The light on his face was gray—it cast no shadow, only outline. Narka made a low sound, as if air were redistributing itself inside his shell.

—The channel rests, —he said—. What you have understood now belongs to you. The rest will wait.

His voice carried no solemnity. It was a record, a confirmation that the process had concluded exactly as intended.

Selena remained silent for several seconds. She thought about what she had just heard, about how precisely those words aligned with what she had already decided. "The rest will wait." It was a practical truth. Knowing when to stop was part of mastery. Continuing without purpose only distorted results. She had reached the limit of what she could use. She needed nothing more.

Then she thought that to look was an act of control. She had looked at Sebastián, at Virka, at Narka—and she had understood their structure. But if she sought equilibrium, she also had to allow herself to be looked at. Not as surrender, but as method. Every observation, to be complete, had to be reciprocal. "If I have analyzed," she thought, "then I must allow myself to be analyzed."

The silence stretched on. The consumed embers left a faint smell of burnt mineral. Narka withdrew, shrinking into his smaller form. His shell—once a landscape of glowing runes—was now a smooth, black surface. He moved slightly until he rested beside Sebastián, motionless, like an ancient stone that still breathed.

Selena exhaled slowly, closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them again, her gaze had changed. It was no longer the gaze of one who calculates—it was the gaze of one preparing to expose herself, without showing it as weakness. She rose smoothly. Every movement was measured, almost ritual. She walked a few steps until she stood at the center of the Dojo, beneath the open roof. The moon, now low, traced a white circle around her feet. The shadow of her body extended in a straight line toward Sebastián—a precise division between them.

Sebastián did not move, yet his attention followed her. In his chest, the heartbeat of thorns remained steady, as if understanding that this was not a moment for strength, but for listening. Selena stopped walking.

—I have seen enough of you, —she said.

Her voice was clear, emotionless, yet charged with authority.

—Now you will see what is necessary of me.

Sebastián raised his head slightly.

—Of you?

She nodded once.

—If understanding must be mutual, it will be. Not out of weakness—out of method.

Narka opened one eye, making no sound. He understood the shift in flow. This time, it would not be he who guided.

Selena took another step forward until her shadow merged halfway with those of the other two.

—Listening helped me understand, —she continued—. Now, if you are to judge me, let it be by the same measure.

The tone was not defiance. It was protocol—a way to establish order within the sequence. Sebastián watched her without speaking. His expression showed neither approval nor surprise, only the quiet acceptance of an equilibrium that had become inevitable.

Narka closed his eye again. The air settled completely. The channel slept, yet the space already seemed to anticipate another opening.

Selena remained motionless beneath the moon. The wind entering through the cracks in the roof stirred her hair slightly, without disturbing the precision of her stance. There was no visible fatigue—only focus. Her breathing, steady, gave rhythm to the silence. In her mind, the structure formed itself with the same clarity with which she would dissect an enigma. She thought of Sebastián—of what he represented, of the duality between strength and self-knowledge. But what she had grasped was not admiration, nor empathy. It was pure recognition of coherence. What he was made sense within his parameters. It did not need to be explained. And that, paradoxically, made him worthy of analysis.

He revealed himself without concealing the shape of his fractures, she thought. I will do the same. Not as confession. As record.

The moon shifted a few degrees, and the circle of light moved with it, washing a different side of her face. That change alone marked the closure of the previous fragment and the preparation for what would come. In her gaze lingered a faint, almost imperceptible tension—not fear, but precision before commencement.

Sebastián lowered his head slightly, a gesture of readiness. It was not submission—it was attention.

Selena inhaled. The cold air filled the Dojo.

What would follow would not be mere narration. It would be dissection.

And yet, for the first time, something in her inner tone deviated from analysis—not from emotion, but from the need for balance.

To understand a fracture, she thought, one must show one's own.

Outside, the night kept moving. The forest exhaled. The stone breathed.

The Dojo, now in complete stillness, seemed to hold within itself the echoes of all that had been spoken.

Selena stood motionless, the moon casting an oblique line across her cheek.

When she spoke, it was without solemnity, yet with the weight of one who knows every truth must begin with order:

—You listened to my silence. Now listen to what shaped it.

Narka did not speak. Neither did Sebastián.

Only the air responded, shifting as though a new current were about to open.

Selena closed her eyes.

And the narrator, in the voice of thought, left one final line before the change of focus:

The night did not end. It only changed its voice.

_________________________________________________________

END OF CHAPTER 49

The path continues…

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