En Tierras Salvajes -

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.

He gathered the bones into his satchel, next to the compass that now spun calmly, pointing north again. As he climbed out of the canyon, the first true dawn he had seen in weeks bled over the Sierra de los Muertos. The wind, for the first time, was just wind.

And it recognized itself.

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.

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. En Tierras Salvajes

They were wrong. He was neither. He was a brother, and brothers didn’t leave bones to be bleached by a pitiless sun.

The creature saw its own nameless, formless horror reflected in the polished black stone. With a final, silent implosion, it collapsed inward,

Elías descended using a rope made of braided leather. The silence was the worst part. No birds, no insects, not even the buzz of a fly. Just the soft crunch of his boots on the black sand.