He adjusted the strap of his worn leather satchel, the one that still held his brother’s compass. The needle no longer pointed north. Here, deep in the savage lands beyond the Sierra de los Muertos, it spun in lazy, useless circles, pointing only to the tremble in Elías’s hand.
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.
The creature saw its own nameless, formless horror reflected in the polished black stone. En Tierras Salvajes
The cabin was pristine. The charts were still pinned to the wall, the brass sextant still on its hook. And sitting in the captain’s chair, back straight, hands folded on the table, was Mateo.
“My brother was afraid of the dark,” Elías said, his voice cracking. “He slept with a candle lit until he was eighteen. You have no candle, Mateo. And your eyes… they don’t blink.” He adjusted the strap of his worn leather
The creature froze. For the first time, something like fear flickered in its borrowed eyes.
Elías’s hand trembled. The truth was a cold stone in his gut. He had crossed all that savage land not for hope, but for an ending. He needed to see the body. He needed to bury the guilt. The Esperanza’s cargo bay was open
On the floor, where the creature had been, lay the withered, peaceful body of Mateo Montalvo. Ten years dead, but finally, mercifully, just bones and dust.