However, Captain Morel wasn’t convinced. Something was strange: the backpack was barely damaged, with no signs of a long fall. Furthermore, there was a pen mark on the map that hadn’t been there when the copies were examined five years earlier.
“This doesn’t add up,” Morel whispered to one of the technicians. “If Julián wrote this after getting lost… we have to find out why.”
The reopening of the investigation turned into a puzzle. And what the team discovered the next day, descending ever deeper into the fissure, completely changed the interpretation of the case.
The rescuers began their descent at dawn. They installed ropes, anchors, and thermal sensors. The fissure was narrow and humid, and every meter seemed to swallow the light. The sound of the wind faded as they descended, replaced by a heavy silence, as if the air had been trapped there for centuries.
Eight meters away, they found the first significant clue: a piece of red cloth, perhaps part of Julián’s windbreaker. It was torn, but not from a sudden fall; rather, it looked as if it had been torn intentionally, like a sign or a symbol.
“It was deliberate,” Morel said. “Julian was trying to leave a trail.”
The theory fit with something that had always worried the family: Julián was an experienced hiker. It didn’t make sense for him to disappear on a moderately difficult trail. But if for some reason he’d chosen an alternative route, perhaps to shelter from a sudden storm, it would have been plausible for him to have tried to orient himself using the trail markers.
Twenty feet away, they found the second clue: a small metal container with an expiration date two years after his disappearance. This puzzled them. It seemed to indicate that someone, not necessarily Julián, had brought food there after 2020.
“Is it possible someone used this crack as a hiding place?” asked one of the technicians.
“Or that someone found Julián and Clara,” replied Morel. “And didn’t report it.”
