Mateo tilted his head. The gesture was perfect. Too perfect. “No? Then why do you hold my compass? Why do you wear my father’s ring on your finger? Why did you cross the Sierra and the Páramo and the canyon of black sand? For a stranger?”

With a final, silent implosion, it collapsed inward, folding into a point of absolute darkness no larger than a grain of sand, which then winked out of existence. The cabin shuddered. The breathing walls went still.

The Esperanza’s cargo bay was open. Inside, he found the crew. They were not dead. Or rather, they were not just dead. Their bodies were mummified by the dry air, their skin the color of old parchment, but their mouths were open, locked in perpetual, silent screams. And from their eye sockets, growing towards a crack in the hull where a sliver of moonlight pierced through, were pale, white flowers. Flor de la luna . The flower of the moon. A species that, according to legend, only blooms when fed by the terror of the dying.

The cabin was pristine. The charts were still pinned to the wall, the brass sextant still on its hook. And sitting in the captain’s chair, back straight, hands folded on the table, was Mateo.

Elías drew his revolver. The metal felt cold and childish. He pushed the cabin door open with his shoulder.

It lunged. Elías didn’t move. He thrust the obsidian shard forward. It was not a blade, but it didn’t need to be. It was a mirror.

“My brother was afraid of the dark,” Elías said, his voice cracking. “He slept with a candle lit until he was eighteen. You have no candle, Mateo. And your eyes… they don’t blink.”

He was a madman. He was a liar. He had no title, no friends, and no future. But he had his brother. And in the savage lands, that was the only weapon that mattered.

Elías sank to his knees. He didn’t weep. The Gran Páramo did not allow tears. It drank them before they could fall.

It took a step forward, and Elías saw that its feet did not touch the floor. It hovered an inch above the boards.