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.
At that moment, the garden lights went out—not from a power failure, but because a massive shadow fell over the mansion. Day turned into night.
The Nocturnes were home.
The Nest of Darkness
Ricardo ordered his guards to bring demolition tools.
“Break that wall. Now!”
The inner wall of the music room collapsed within minutes.
The stench was unbearable—ancient mold mixed with that same metallic odor.
Inside the narrow cavity, they saw them.
Dozens of Nocturnes. Some crawling slowly along insulation. Others clustered together in a pulsing black mass.
Ricardo’s flashlight made the mass convulse. A chorus of shrill screeches filled the room.
“Look closely,” Sofía said. “They don’t feed only on flesh.”
They fed on the twilight created by Mateo’s blindness—symbionts of trauma, thriving where memory had been suppressed.
The Secret in the Wall
At the center of the nest was something that didn’t belong.
Not organic. Artificial.
Sofía reached in without fear and pulled it free.
A small, dark wooden music box—covered in dust and webs.
Ricardo recognized it instantly.
It had belonged to Mateo’s mother.
She had died twelve years earlier in a car accident—the same day Mateo went blind.
Ricardo had claimed the box was lost during the move.
But here it was.
Hidden in the wall.
Inside was not a dancer—but a photograph. Mateo at seven, smiling beside his mother. On the back was frantic handwriting.
“I don’t know how to hide it. The boy saw everything. I can’t let Ricardo find out. This would destroy everything.”
Silence swallowed the room.
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