The war was over or so we thought. The killings should have ended with it, the graves should have stopped growing. But this was the fourth child found dead, and it seemed the war had followed us home. A Coruña looked the same as when I left salt on the wind, gulls crying over the harbor but something beneath it had soured. People whispered in doorways now. Mothers kept their children inside even in daylight. And as I walked those familiar streets, boots still stained with the mud of foreign fields, I couldn't shake the feeling that whatever haunted this town had been waiting for our return."
September 1st, 1605 — A Coruña, Spain
The war was over or so we believed. A year had passed since the guns fell silent over A Coruña, and still death found a way to linger. It clung to our streets like the morning fog, seeping into doorways, clinging to rooftops, following us even into our dreams. And now, staring down into the shallow ravine, I realized one cold truth:
The killing had merely changed its shape.
The child lay still on the rocks below small, pale, limbs stiffened by the night's chill. Lantern light trembled in the hands of the men behind me, their breath coming out in unsteady wisps. The fog was thin but heavy enough to blur the edges of the world, leaving the boy's form half in shadow, half in sight, as if death itself hadn't yet decided where to place him.
This was the fourth child.
In eight days.
My boots scuffed the stones as I descended slowly, every step accompanied by the soft scrape of leather against rock. I had seen this before. Not this scene, this ache. This quiet horror that grips the edges of the mind. I had felt it in the war, in moments before ambushes or after discovering what remained of men I once fought beside.
But war had rules, even if savage ones. This… this felt different. Wrong in a way I couldn't name.
I crouched beside the boy, lowering myself carefully, half expecting him to stir. Children should move. Twitch. Breathe. Even in grief, their bodies should retain some warmth, some reminder of life. But Antonio, this boy I now recognized from the marketplace, always running in circles around his mother's skirts was as still as the stone beneath him.
His small hands were folded neatly across his chest.
Deliberate.
Purposeful.
Someone had placed him this way.
My throat tightened.
Again.
Not another. Not another damned child.
Behind me, the men murmured. Fishermen. Hunters. People who had never seen death beyond accidents at sea or in the woods. Their voices were frayed at the edges.
"Is it… is it the same?" one of them whispered.
I didn't turn. Didn't look up. My eyes were on the smear of ash along the boy's neck, a faint grey streak, barely visible unless you knew what to look for. A mark, almost symbolic, as if meant to be discovered. The same as the others.
I brushed the ash lightly with the back of my knuckle. Cold. Too cold.
A faint symbol, burnt faintly into the flesh beneath.
My stomach hollowed.
"Yes," I said quietly. "Exactly the same."
A ripple spread through the men behind me a collective shudder, a sound like fear passing from one breath to the next. Someone cursed softly.
I closed my eyes.
This wasn't supposed to happen. The war was supposed to end all this. The deaths. The terror. The burying.
But here we were again.
I rose slowly, every joint in my knees protesting from wounds old and new. The world above looked warped through the fog lanterns swaying like distant stars, faces barely shaped, only their fear clear enough to read.
And then I heard it.
A scream.
A high-pitched, cracking wail that pierced the damp morning air and split it open.
"¡Antonio! ¡Dios mío, Antonio! No… no, por favor… mi hijo! MI HIJO!"
The mother's voice.
Her cries grew louder with every step she stumbled down the slope, her shawl slipping from her shoulders as she ran, hair wild, face stricken with a desperation that should never belong to a parent.
She saw us.
Then she saw him.
Her knees buckled, and she practically threw herself into the ravine, slipping twice, landing hard, scrambling toward her son's body.
"Antonio!" Her voice cracked into pieces as she reached him. "Mi niño… mi pequeño… mi sol…"
She touched his face with trembling fingers.
"Wake up… por favor… wake up…"
She cradled him in her arms, rocking, pressing her cheek to his cold forehead. Her cries echoed up into the cliffs, into the mist, into the bones of every living soul present.
The hunters, three men with broad shoulders and steady hands, hands that now shook helplessly shifted uneasily.
"Señora," one of them whispered, "he's gone."
She didn't move.
"Señora…" He stepped closer. "Antonio is gone."
Her screams rose again, raw and ragged.
Then, slowly, painfully, the truth seemed to settle into her body. She stopped moving. Stopped crying. Stopped breathing, or so it seemed. Her face grew hollow, her eyes emptying into something deeper than grief.
Her mind broke, just a little.
And she lifted her gaze to me.
Her eyes went wide and glassy, wet with tears that hadn't yet fallen.
"You," she whispered.
I froze.
"You promised…" Her voice cracked. "You Manuel you promised to protect us. You told us the war was over. You told us we were safe. Is this the peace you uphold?"
The words hit me harder than any musket fire I'd ever endured.
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came. Because she was right. I had promised. I had sworn that whatever horrors we had faced in the war would not follow us home. I had sworn to defend our people, our children, our town.
But promises meant little against the thing stalking us now.
The hunters moved gently, prying Antonio's lifeless body from her arms. She resisted at first, then collapsed against the rocks, clutching her chest, whispering prayers so quiet they sounded like wind caught in broken glass.
I looked away.
I couldn't bear her eyes.
Not when I felt the weight of her accusation sinking into my bones.
Is this the peace I promised?
God help me.
The hunters carried the boy up the slope. The mother followed, stumbling, her sobs breaking in intervals like waves against cliffs. Lanterns held high, we all ascended back to the world above.
The moment we reached the crest, the town square bell began to toll.
Ivan; broad-shouldered, bearded, steady as any man I'd known before the war strode out ahead of us. His voice boomed across the square.
"Otro niño!" he shouted. "Another child is dead!"
The crowd gathered instantly, like shadows folding in. Women gasped. Men cursed. Older children clung to their mothers. Babies cried without reason. The square erupted into panic, voices overlapping in a weaving tapestry of fear.
"What do we do?"
"What monster is this?"
"Where were the guards?"
"How many more?"
"Who is next?"
"Not my child God, not mine!"
I stood silent among them, the noise swirling around me like smoke. My mind buzzed with a familiar numbness—the kind that strikes before an ambush. The kind I'd hoped never to feel again.
Then the old man stepped forward.
Every town had one: the elder no one listened to until fear made his words suddenly carry weight. Ours was a thin, stooped figure wrapped in wool and shadow, with a face cracked like old leather and eyes that had seen too much of the world.
He leaned on his staff, stepped into the open center of the square, and spoke in a deep, raspy voice that cut through the noise like a blade through cloth.
"Something crawled out of the shadows because of your wars…"
He pointed a trembling finger toward the ravine.
"…and it has come for reckoning."
The square fell silent.
Utterly.
Not even the wind dared interrupt.
I felt the words settle into me like ice. Something inside me, something I didn't want to acknowledge shifted.
Because for a moment, I believed him.
For a moment, it made sense.
The fog that moved strangely at night.
The cold spots in empty rooms.
The whispering children claimed to hear before they vanished.
The ash.
The symbols.
The feeling of being watched, always watched.
For a moment, it all aligned.
Something came home with us.
Or worse something had been waiting.
A shiver crawled up my spine.
My rational mind pushed back.
No. No, Manuel. There is a killer. A human. A broken one, yes but human. Not shadows. Not monsters.
But then the old man's eyes found mine, piercing through the mist and the fear, through the guilt and the trauma and the memories I tried so hard to bury.
He held my gaze for too long.
Too knowingly.
And whispered, almost gently:
"It follows the broken boy. The shattered ones. And you brought back many."
I inhaled sharply.
Did he mean me?
No. No, that was impossible. There were many broken by the war…. men who came back half themselves, minds scattered, sleep haunted. The old man couldn't be pointing at me.
Unless… no it couldn't be, it couldn't be something other than ordinary
My heartbeat thudded in my ears.
The old man turned away as if the matter were settled. As if he had said all he needed. As if he had laid down truth like a stone at our feet.
The crowd erupted again fear, panic, suspicion, anger, all swirling into chaos. Voices rose, fingers pointed, accusations hurled.
And in the middle of it all, I stood still.
Unmoving.
Because for the first time since returning home, I felt something colder than fear.
I felt recognition.
A shadow stretched long behind me as the sun rose over the square, and I had the cold, sinking certainty that the old man was right. Something had crawled out of the darkness, out of the aftermath of the war and it wasn't finished.
Not by a long shot.
And if it truly was tethered to someone broken…
Then it was closer than any of us realized.
Maybe even closer than I dared admit.
The weight of the town pressed onto my shoulders. Every eye seemed to land on me, the soldier, the survivor, the one who had come home when so many had not. The one who had sworn to protect them.
The one they would blame if the deaths continued.
I clenched my jaw.
Fine.
If this was the burden I was to carry, then so be it.
War had taught me one thing:
You don't wait for darkness to take the first strike.
You hunt it first.
Even if it means hunting something that wears the face of a man you once knew.
Even if it means hunting something wearing your own shadow.
I stepped forward, raising my voice over the panic.
"Everyone inside," I commanded. "Bar your doors. Keep your children close. And trust no one outside your own home. Not tonight. Not until we know what we're facing."
My words sent ripples through the crowd.
Some obeyed immediately.
Others resisted.
But fear moved faster than doubt.
And still
I couldn't shake the feeling that as the people fled into their homes, the shadows around the square deepened just slightly. Like something was pleased.
Like something had been watching.
Waiting.
And now…
now it had chosen its next player in this small, broken town's twisted reckoning.
Me.