The path was not meant for children.
It did not announce this.
It did not warn.
It simply revealed it—through pain, through difficulty, through the silent removal of all comfort.
It was narrow.
Unstable.
Unforgiving.
And yet Karna walked upon it without turning back.
Each step was deliberate.
Each breath was controlled.
Not because the path allowed it—
but because he refused to surrender to anything that did not.
The world had fully changed now.
No forests remained behind him.
No streams.
No canopy of leaves or sheltering roots.
Only stone.
Only wind.
Only the vast emptiness of altitude and silence.
The sky stretched endlessly above him.
Clear.
Cold.
Distant in a way that made even light feel unreachable.
The path climbed slowly upward, carving its way through jagged rock formations that looked as if they had been broken rather than shaped.
The wind here was no longer gentle movement of air.
It was force.
