—A Nocturne—Sofia replied, observing the dark trail it left behind.—. They live where the light has been forcibly extinguished.
Then Mateo spoke; the blind boy was the only one who thought clearly.
“He’s not the only one,” he said hoarsely. “My other eye is burning. Like a ghost of light.”
The realization hit Ricardo like a jolt. If there was one parasite… there had to be another.
Sofia ran to the piano and knelt down, staring intently at a small opening near the base.
“There’s a nest,” she whispered. “It was just a scout. And its job wasn’t to steal your view.”
Ricardo felt a deep, icy chill.
—So… what was your job?
“Protecting what you didn’t want to see,” Sofia replied, pointing to the hole in the wall. “And now they know. Let’s wake them all up.”
Ricardo didn’t hesitate. The girl could be a witch… or something worse, but she was the only one who understood what was happening.
“Take out the other one,” Mateo said calmly, extending his hand. “I trust you.”
This time, Ricardo didn’t stop her.
Sofia repeated the same precise and terrifying movement.
From Mateo’s left eye, he drew another Nocturne: larger, darker, brighter.
It didn’t jump. It remained motionless in his palm, as if waiting for orders.
Suddenly, Sofia screamed… not from fear, but from pain.
“They’re protecting something!” he exclaimed. “Something much bigger than the fear of the light.”
From deep within the wall, behind the piano, came a sound… damp, 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.
“They’re in there,” he 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… not because of a power outage, but because an immense shadow fell over the mansion. Day turned into night.
The Nocturnes were at home.
The nest of darkness
Ricardo ordered his guards to bring demolition tools.
Tear down that wall! Now!
The interior wall of the music room collapsed in a matter of minutes.
The stench was unbearable: old mold mixed with the same metallic smell.
Inside the narrow cavity, they saw them.
Dozens of Nocturnes. Some crawled slowly through the isolation. Others huddled together in a black, pulsating mass.
Ricardo’s lantern caused convulsions in the crowd. A chorus of high-pitched shrieks filled the room.
“Look closely,” Sofia said. “They don’t just eat meat.”
They fed on the twilight created by Mateo’s blindness: symbionts of trauma, thriving where memory had been repressed.
The Secret in the Wall
In the center of the nest there was something that didn’t fit.
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 instantly.
It had belonged to Mateo’s mother.
He had died twelve years earlier in a car accident… the same day Mateo went blind.
Ricardo had claimed that the box was lost during the move.
But there it was.
Hidden in the wall.
Inside there wasn’t a ballerina… but a photograph. Seven-year-old Mateo, smiling next to his mother. On the back was shaky, frantic handwriting.
“I don’t know how to hide it. The boy saw everything. I can’t let Ricardo find out. He would destroy everything.”
Silence filled the room.
Matthew had not gone blind from the shock.
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 is back.
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 panel appeared a man: Daniel, a former engineer whom Ricardo had fired years ago.
He pointed a gun at Sofia.
“The girl has to die,” he hissed. “She ruined everything.”
Chaos broke out.
Sofia threw the Nocturne in Daniel’s face. Drawn by terror, he clung to her skin.
Ricardo lunged at him.
Daniel confessed everything: embezzlement, threats, the chase that led to the accident. Mateo had witnessed it all.
The Nocturnes were not the disease.
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