The music died mid-screech as Zenko moved.
Clara had never seen anything like it—not in the war, not in her nightmares. The demon crossed the theater in three strides, his shadow stretching like taffy, his scar-lines flaring white as a forge's heart. The children scattered, their instruments clattering to the stage. Only the black-eyed girl stood her ground, her bow still poised over the hair-strung violin.
Don Javier sighed, adjusting his cuffs. "Must we do this every time?"
Zenko's answer was to rip the orchestra pit's railing from the floor and hurl it like a javelin.
Wood splintered. The black-eyed girl laughed as the railing impaled the spot where she'd stood—but she was already gone, her laughter echoing from the rafters.
Clara's ears popped. The air tasted of burnt copper and old roses.
Then the corpses attacked.
The "mannequins" from the hallway lurched forward, their gold-threaded mouths splitting as they moaned. One—a woman in a moth-eaten ballgown—swung a rusty cleaver at Clara's throat.
She ducked, feeling the blade graze her bun.
"Zenko!"
He was busy. Don Javier had produced a straight razor from his waistcoat and was dancing around Zenko's strikes with unnatural grace, humming a waltz. Every time the razor nicked Zenko's skin, the demon's scars dimmed.
The ballgown corpse swung again. Clara grabbed the only weapon at hand—a stage prop, a wooden cross from some long-forgotten Passion play.
It burst into white flames the moment her fingers touched it.
The corpse shrieked. Clara swung.
The burning cross connected. The ballgown ignited like parchment, the fire spreading up the gold threads in its lips. For a heartbeat, Clara saw a face beneath the powder—a woman she recognized.
Sofia Alvarado. A union organizer. Vanished last winter.
Then the corpse was ash.
Zenko roared. Clara turned just in time to see him catch Don Javier's razor between his teeth and spit it back, the blade embedding in the stage floor.
"Enough," Zenko growled.
He slammed his palm into Don Javier's chest.
The cultist's pristine suit blackened. His skin cracked like overcooked glaze, revealing something squirming beneath. He staggered back, hissing—
—then collapsed into a swarm of black moths, scattering toward the rafters.
Silence.
Clara's hands shook. The cross's flames died, leaving only charred wood.
Zenko wiped his mouth. "They'll be back."
"Who the hell are they?"
"The same as me," he said. "Just older hungers wearing prettier skins."
A whimper came from the stage.
The child musicians huddled together, their glassy eyes clearing. The black-eyed girl was gone, but a single violin string lay coiled where she'd stood, glistening like a fresh-cut vein.
Zenko's nostrils flared. "We need to go. Now."
Clara pointed to the children. "We can't leave them!"
"They're already dead," he said flatly. "Their hearts just haven't noticed yet."
As if on cue, the youngest boy coughed. Black petals spilled from his lips.
They fled through Madrid's saffron-lit backstreets, Zenko steering Clara with a hand between her shoulder blades. His touch burned—not unpleasantly, like a fever breaking.
"Where are we—?"
"Quiet." He shoved her into an alley just as a Guardia Civil patrol rounded the corner, their boots clicking in unison.
Clara held her breath. The amulet pulsed against her chest, its rhythm syncopated with her heartbeat.
One guard paused, sniffing the air. "You smell that? Like a slaughterhouse after a rain."
Zenko's fingers tightened on Clara's wrist. His scars brightened, casting just enough light for her to see the hooked talons his nails had become.
The guard shook his head. "Must be the tanner's up the block."
They moved on.
Zenko dragged Clara deeper into the labyrinth, finally stopping at a crumbling tenement with a door painted the dull red of old blood. A sigil was carved at eye level—a sword through a flame, nearly identical to the crest on her grandmother's box.
"In," he ordered.
The apartment was a time capsule of heresy.
Dried herbs hung from the ceiling. A chalkboard listed names in columns labeled "Lost" and "Taken." A wall-sized map of Spain was studded with pins, red yarn connecting Toledo to Barcelona to a village Clara recognized—her grandmother's hometown.
And the books. Piles of them, stacked like sandbags against the walls. Some were modern, their covers stamped with Franco's censors' marks. Others looked centuries old, their spines crackling with gold-leaf titles:
"The Blood Choirs of León."
L"On the Containment of Hungry Shadows."
"Sister Inés' Last Confession."
Clara reached for the last one—
Zenko snatched her wrist. "Don't."
"Why? Because it'll tell me what you won't?" She yanked free. "Who are you? Really. And why do those cultists want me dead?"
He exhaled through his nose. Embers sparked in his breath.
"You're not the one they want to kill," he said. "They want you to open the amulet all the way"
A floorboard creaked.
Clara spun. A figure stood in the kitchen doorway—a gaunt man in a priest's cassock, his left sleeve pinned where an arm should be.
"Ah," he said. "The Keeper's finally awake."
Father Mateo Robles had the eyes of a man who'd seen the bottom of hell and brought back souvenirs.
He limped forward, pouring two glasses of anisette with his remaining hand. The liquor smelled medicinal, like something brewed to numb more than thirst.
"Drink,"he said, pushing a glass toward Clara. "You'll need it."
She didn't touch it. "You knew my grandmother."
"I knew what was left of her after the war." He tapped the map. "She hid pieces of the amulet's ritual across Spain. Burned most of them. The cult's been digging through mass graves looking for the rest."
Zenko leaned against the wall, his scars pulsing in time with Clara's amulet. "Tell her the price."
Robles sighed. "Every Keeper dies young. Your blood feeds the seal. Your grandmother lasted the longest—fifty-three years. Most don't make thirty."
Clara's throat tightened. "And if I refuse?"
"Zarzenki wakes. The cult turns Spain into a banquet hall. Millions die." The priest knocked back his drink. "Or you do your duty, and just you die."
A clock ticked. Somewhere outside, a child sang the wolf-in-the-flame rhyme.
Clara stood abruptly. "I need air."
Zenko moved to block her. "It's not safe—"
"Let her go," Robles said. "The amulet won't let her stray far."
The night outside was too quiet, the stars blotted out by a haze that wasn't clouds. Clara gripped the iron railing, her knuckles blanching.
The amulet hummed.
A whisper curled from its depths—not Zarzenki's voice, but a woman's.
"Clara."
Her grandmother's tone.
"Look under the floorboard beneath your childhood bed. The one with the wolf's head carving."
Clara's breath hitched. "Abuela?"
Silence.
Then, softer:
"Don't trust the priest's wine."
The convent's attic was colder than before .
Clara pried up the floorboard with her stolen needle, her fingers numb. The space beneath was lined with salt and dead flies . And in the center—
A second ironwood box.
Smaller than the first, its carvings showed a wolf howling inside a flame .
The amulet shrieked when she touched it.
Not in warning.
In recognition .
The box opened with a sigh. Inside lay:
- A lock of hair (white, streaked with red).
- A faded photograph of her parents, their faces scratched out.
- And a bone needle , its tip blackened as if dipped in poison.
The hair twitched when Clara reached for it.
Then—
The attic door slammed shut behind her.
A familiar voice purred:
"Oh, Clara. You shouldn't snoop."
Don Javier stood in the doorway, his mouth unstitched at last , his teeth filed to points.
Behind him, the black-eyed girl smiled.
The air in the attic thickened like congealing blood.
Clara's fingers closed around the bone needle just as Don Javier took a step forward, his polished shoes creaking against the floorboards. Behind him, the black-eyed girl twirled her violin bow— strung with a fresh, glistening strand of hair.
"You've been busy," Don Javier crooned. His voice was different now—less human, more like a recording played backward , syllables curling unnaturally. "Opening boxes you shouldn't. Reading letters meant for the dead."
Clara's pulse hammered in her throat. The needle in her palm thrummed , its blackened tip vibrating as if alive.
"What do you want?" she demanded, shifting to keep both cultists in her sight.
The black-eyed girl giggled. "You already know."
Don Javier reached into his waistcoat and withdrew a small silver thimble —engraved with the same flame-and-sword crest.
"Your blood, of course," he said. "Just a drop. Enough to finish the song."
Clara's grandmother's warning echoed in her skull: Don't trust the priest's wine. But she hadn't said anything about thimbles or bone needles .
She tightened her grip on the needle.
"No."
Don Javier sighed. "I was afraid you'd say that."
He snapped his fingers.
The black-eyed girl raised her bow and drew it across the violin strings.
The note that shrieked forth wasn't music—it was the sound of a throat being slit mid-scream.
Clara's vision splintered.
She was no longer in the attic.
She was in Toledo, 1936.
Smoke choked the streets. The cathedral burned, its stained-glass saints melting in their frames. A woman— her grandmother —knelt in the square, her hands bound with barbed wire.
A Falangist officer pressed a pistol to her temple.
"Last chance," he growled. "Where is the amulet?"
Clara's grandmother spat blood at his boots. "Where you'll never reach it."
The gunshot split the world.
Clara gasped, lurching back into the present—just in time to see Don Javier lunge for her, the thimble glinting.
She stabbed the bone needle into his outstretched palm.
The effect was instantaneous.
Don Javier shrieked , his skin blackening where the needle pierced him. The attic walls breathed inward , shadows stretching like taffy. The black-eyed girl's violin burst into flames , the hair strings snapping with a sound like breaking bones.
Clara didn't wait.
She slammed the second box shut , scooped it under her arm, and leapt through the attic window.
Glass shattered. Cold night air whipped her face as she fell—
—and landed in Zenko's arms.
His scars blazed white-hot, his pupils slitted like a cat's. "Hold on."
Then they were running , Madrid's streets blurring around them.
Father Robles' safe house was ransacked.
Books lay gutted, their pages strewn like feathers. The map of Spain had been slashed to ribbons , the yarn severed. And the anisette bottle— shattered , its contents eating through the floorboards like acid.
Robles himself sat slumped at the table, his one hand clutching his throat.
"Poison," he rasped as Clara rushed to him. "In the wine. Knew it… the moment I tasted it."
Zenko growled, scanning the room. "They knew we'd come back."
Clara gripped Robles' shoulder. "Who did this?"
The priest's gaze flicked to the bone needle still clutched in her fist. "You found it. Good. That's… Sister Inés' work." A wet cough. "Her rib. Sharpened on the altar stones after they burned her convent."
Clara's stomach turned. "This is—?"
"The only thing that can kill what's already dead." Robles' breath gurgled. "Listen. The cult's moving tonight. They've taken… the children. To Toledo. To finish… the ritual."
Zenko's claws flexed. "How many?"
"Enough blood to… wake him fully." Robles' eyes glazed. "Clara… your parents… they didn't die in the war. They were… sacrificed. By your…"
His body stiffened. Then— his chest split open , not with blood, but with black moths , pouring forth in a fluttering wave.
They coalesced into a single word on the wall:
TOLEDO.
Then the room was silent.
The highway to Toledo was a ribbon of moonlight and ghosts.
Zenko drove a stolen Guardia Civil motorcycle, Clara clinging to his back, the bone needle sewn into her sleeve hem and the second box strapped to her chest. The amulet burned between them, its pulse frantic.
"Robles said my parents—"
"Don't." Zenko's voice was rough. "Not yet."
Clara swallowed the questions festering in her throat.
The city appeared on the horizon—Toledo, the city of three faiths, now a funeral pyre waiting to be lit. Its cathedral spires stabbed the sky, the same stones where Inés had fought five centuries ago.
As they neared the gates, Clara realized:
The streets were empty.
No guards. No civilians. Just discarded shoes, tiny ones, lined up like breadcrumbs leading to the cathedral.
And the sound—
A choir singing.
Not in Latin. Not in Spanish.
In the old tongue.
The one from the box.
"Sangre y ceniza," Clara whispered.
Zenko killed the engine. "It's already begun."