“Take out the other one,” Mateo said calmly, extending his hand. “I trust you.”
This time, Ricardo stopped her.
Sofia repeated the same precise and terrifying movement.
From Mateo’s left eye, he drew another Nocturpo: larger, darker, you shone.
He did not jump. He remained motionless in his palm, as if awaiting orders.
Suddenly, Sofia screamed… yes, …
“He’s protecting something!” he exclaimed. “Something much bigger than the fear of light.”
From the depths of the wall, behind the piano, came a sound… humid, multiplying, dozens of movements.
Then the smell hit them: metallic, rotten, like burnt electricity and wet stone.
Ricardo pressed his hand against the wooden piano. He felt a rhythmic vibration, like a heartbeat inside the wall.
“It’s right there inside,” she whispered.
The truth behind Matthew’s twelve years of blindness was hidden just on the other side of that wall.
At that moment, the garden lights went out… because they went out, because a huge shadow fell over the mansion. The day turned into night.
The Nocturos were home.
The dam of darkness
Ricardo ordered his guards to bring demolition tools.
Tear down that wall! Now!
The interior wall of the music room collapsed in rubbish.
The stench was unbearable: old mold mixed with the same metallic smell.
Inside the narrow cavity, they saw each other.
Twelve Nocturnes. Some crawled slowly through isolation. Others crowded into a dark, throbbing mass.
Ricardo’s lyrics caused convulsions in the crowd. A chorus of sharp shrieks filled the room.
“Look closely,” Sofia said. “It’s not just meat.”
It fed on the twilight created by Matthew’s blindness: symbionts of trauma, thriving where memory had been repressed.
The secret is in the wall
Eп el ceпtro del пido hay algo qυe пo eпcajaba.
It wasn’t organic. It was artificial. Sofia, without fear, put her hand in and pulled it out.
A small, dark wooden music box, covered in dust and cobwebs.
Ricardo recognized her immediately.
It had belonged to Mateo’s mother.
He had died twelve years ago in a car accident… the same day Mateo went blind.
Ricardo had stated that the box was lost during the move.
But there it was.
Escoпdida eп la pared.
Inside there was a dancer… if not a photograph. Mateo, seven years old, smiled next to his mother. On the reverse there was trembling, frenetic lettering.
“I don’t know how to hide it. The child saw everything. I can’t let Ricardo find out. He would destroy everything.”
Silence filled the room.
Mateo had gone blind from the impression.
He had gone blind because his mother had tried to hide something from him… from Ricardo.
“What did I see?” Mateo whispered.
—I remember— said Sofia. —The connection has returned.
Mateo grabbed his head.
—The car… it wasn’t an accident —she said—. I saw it before Dad arrived. I wasn’t alone.
A shadow moved.
From behind a hidden service role appeared a man: Daniel, a debt collector whom Ricardo had fired years before.
He pointed at Sofia with a weapon.
“The girl has to die,” he hissed. “She ruined everything.”
Chaos broke out.
Sofia slapped the Nocturpo in Daniel’s face. Driven by terror, he clung to her skin.
Ricardo lunged at him.
Daniel confessed everything: embezzlement, threats, the persecution that led to the accident. Mateo had witnessed it all.
The Nocturÿos пo eraп la eпfermedad.
Eraп la cura: creatures designed to block traumatic memory with darkness.
The end of the night
The police arrived. Daniel was arrested.
Matthew’s vision returned slowly: first blurry, then clear.
The first thing he saw was Sofia.
“Why did you help me?” she asked, with tears running down her face.
He shrugged.
“I had a uka too,” he said. “Mine didn’t blind me. It allowed me to see the darkness in others.”
He left at dawn, rejecting the money. He only asked for a promise.
Qυe Matthew eппtaría la verdad.
Because the worst blindness is not physical.
It is the one we choose when we are afraid to look at the pain.
And that is a vision that a multimillionaire can buy.
