“To protect what you didn’t want to see,” Sofía replied, pointing into the wall cavity. “And now they know. We’re going to wake them all.”
Ricardo didn’t hesitate. The girl might be a witch—or something worse—but she was the only one who understood what was happening.
“Remove the other one,” Mateo said calmly, extending his hand. “I trust you.”
This time, Ricardo didn’t stop her.
Sofía repeated the same precise, horrifying motion.
From Mateo’s left eye, she pulled out another Nocturne—larger, darker, gleaming.
This one didn’t jump. It lay still in her palm, as if waiting for orders.
Suddenly, Sofía screamed—not in fear, but in pain.
“They’re guarding something,” she cried. “Something much bigger than fear of the light.”
From deep inside the wall behind the piano came a sound—wet, multiplying, dozens of movements.
Then the smell hit them: metallic, rotten, like burnt electricity and damp stone.
Ricardo pressed his hand against the piano’s wood. He felt a rhythmic vibration, like a heartbeat inside the wall.
“They’re in there,” he whispered.
The truth behind Mateo’s twelve years of blindness was hidden just beyond that wall.