Candado awoke in a strange place, wrapped in darkness scattered with lights like distant stars. He was alone.
He looked around.
There were no walls. No horizon. No sky.
Only an indefinite expanse, like a space suspended between wakefulness and oblivion. Above his head drifted dim lights—not quite stars, but more like thoughts that had not yet finished forming. They did not illuminate; they suggested.
He walked.
His steps made no sound, yet he felt the forward motion, as though his mind needed to simulate physics to avoid dissolving into abstraction. There was no one. Nothing. Only him… and that clarity that seemed to observe him from above.
He walked further.
Until the ground—if it could even be called ground—began to ripple.
Something emerged.
Not violently. Not like a monster. But like an idea becoming conscious.
A blue figure… The blue presence.
It rose slowly from nothingness, translucent, without defined features, yet undeniably there. It had no eyes, and still it looked.
Candado did not step back.
He watched in silence, wearing that expression of his—a blend of clinical analysis and restrained defiance.
The blue presence approached.
It examined him in the same way.
“Interesting,” it said, its voice not vibrating through air but directly within the mind. “Your mental structure is coherent. Ordered. Yet at the same time… profoundly abstract.”
“I suppose,” Candado replied dryly.
The figure tilted what might be considered its head.
“Fascinating. You know what is about to happen. You anticipate the exchange. And yet there are elements you construct that are far from reality.”
“Is that so?” he exhaled faintly.
A subtle shift occurred.
The presence perceived it instantly.
Candado was no longer thinking about the conversation. His mind had pivoted—to another angle, another invisible edge.
“Incredible,” murmured The blue presence. “You never stop thinking. You impress me. But again, you were close. This is not about me. It is about you.”
“Really?” Candado said with a half-smile that never reached his eyes. “Then this should be simple.”
The presence inclined its head.
“Why are you already answering an exam whose questions have not yet been asked?”
Candado held its gaze.
“Tell me, blue avatar… what do you think I feel?”
“Many things.”
Candado closed his eyes.
That was all he did.
Silence.
The figure remained motionless. Seconds passed. Or minutes. Time had no hierarchy here.
“No…” the presence finally murmured. “I see nothing.”
Candado opened his eyes and released a slow breath.
“Then that’s it. You are only what I am… and what you can see.”
The presence seemed to absorb that statement.
Candado turned and took a few steps. The space responded. An armchair appeared before him—solid, dark, bearing the imagined wear of someone who had already sat in it many times.
He dropped into it.
“Go on,” he said, settling against the armrest. “I assume you’re a free metaphysical psychologist. Let’s get this over with.”
The blue presence, startled by the spontaneous materialization, mirrored the gesture. It formed its own seat opposite him and took place.
“Begin,” Candado ordered, with the coolness of someone granting permission.
A brief pause.
“Why do you hate yourself?”
Candado did not answer immediately. He leaned back, staring at the suspended lights.
“Because I’m closed off,” he said at last. “Because I tend to push away those who get close. Because I hurt the people I care about. Because I feel trapped inside what I am… and what I might become.”
A short pause—not for emotion. For calculation.
“It’s lonely being this age and seeing things no adult should see. It’s lonely not being able to enjoy simple moments without analyzing them until they fall apart. It’s… exhausting.”
His voice lost only a fraction of its firmness.
“And because my sister died because of me. Next.”
The blue presence leaned forward.
“Why do you say it like that?”
“Like what?”
“Quickly.”
Candado gave a brief laugh, devoid of humor.
“Let’s see…” he said, feigning disinterest. “Maybe because I’m trapped in a dream-constructed space answering obvious questions about my own internal functioning. Questions that lead nowhere.”
His gaze hardened.
“There are things that cannot be fixed by talking. Not in my case. Words do not undo a death. They do not rewrite decisions. They do not erase consequences.”
The blue presence remained silent.
Candado continued, more tense now.
“And by the way, my friend Sara…” His fingers tightened slightly against the armrest. “I discovered she’s probably responsible for acts that could be classified as genocide.”
The word lingered.
“And she’s still one of the most important people in my life. She carries thousands of lives under her responsibility. If she fails, thousands die. If she succeeds, she carries the weight of what she’s done. And I… promised her I would find a way to help her. In case she fails, of course.”
He leaned forward.
“A way that does not yet exist.”
A deep breath.
“But sure. It’s nothing. I’m bored and I want this over with.”
The blue presence studied him.
“Why do you use sarcasm?”
Candado tilted his head.
“I don’t know. Maybe because it’s the most efficient way to communicate with an entity that can read my mind. Or because if you already know the answers, you could ask more complex questions. Or maybe because I didn’t sleep well.”
He shrugged.
“Who knows.”
The blue presence did not respond immediately. It watched him more intently.
“I can see that you try to make me perceive you as what you are… or at least as what you want to be. Why?”
“I’m not trying. It’s natural. Don’t confuse habit with intention.”
The figure tilted slightly.
“And isn’t that ‘habit’ a social construction? Why do you think the way you think?”
Candado exhaled through his nose, almost a silent laugh.
“Oh. We’re going structural?”
He adjusted himself in the chair, crossing one leg with deliberate calm.
“Why do I think the way I think? Because no one thinks in a vacuum. I’m not a spontaneous anomaly. I am a result. I am context.”
The presence remained silent.
“You don’t wake up closed off or sarcastic. You learn. You learn that transparency is dangerous. You learn that if you reveal too much, something gets taken from you. You learn that if you depend, you lose.”
His eyes hardened.
“Identity is not pure. It’s adaptation. It’s social survival.”
“So you admit your way of thinking is shaped by your environment.”
“Of course. Who isn’t? Family, losses, expectations, early responsibilities. When you mature too soon, you internalize a different logic. You see patterns where others see emotions. You see consequences where others see impulses.”
His voice lowered slightly.
“And when you lose someone because of what you believe was your mistake… you never think the same again.”
The lights above trembled faintly.
“So yes. I am a social construction. Not in the trivial sense. Not an ideological trend. I am the sum of pressures and demands—some imposed, others accidental. I am the optimized version of someone who learned not to break in public. At least, I think so.”
The blue presence spoke with precision.
“Then you admit you are the result of your context.”
“I already said that.”
“But you are describing social determinism. Isn’t that too comfortable?”
Candado raised an eyebrow.
“Comfortable?”
“Yes. If everything is adaptation, then nothing is choice. If you are a product, you are not responsible. If everything is prepared, you do not choose. It is imposed—or you impose it upon yourself using what has been imposed, creating a false idea of freedom.”
Candado smiled faintly.
“I didn’t say there is no choice. I said no one chooses from zero. The base is not pure.”
“The base explains tendencies,” the presence replied, “not concrete decisions. You say you analyze before you feel because you learned that feeling is dangerous. Fine. That explains the origin. But each time you choose to respond with coldness… that is no longer structure. It is action.”
Silence.
“You are not only a product,” the figure continued. “You are also a reproducer. If the environment taught you distance, you reinforce it in others.”
Candado held its gaze, but his jaw tightened.
“Are you suggesting I perpetuate what damaged me?”
“I am saying adaptation can become personal ideology. You are not born with ideology. You build it from what surrounds you—family, culture, region, society. And when you turn it into identity, you stop questioning it.”
Candado replied with measured calm.
“Coherence is not idolatry. It’s stability.”
“Or is it control? You speak of ‘controlling the narrative of what you are.’ That is not only defense. It is symbolic power. You want to define the frame before others do.”
“All human interaction is a dispute over interpretation,” Candado answered without hesitation. “If you do not define who you are, someone else will.”
“Correct. But you do it even when there is no threat.”
That made him blink.
“Prevention.”
“Chronic anticipation.”
The presence leaned forward slightly.
“And constant anticipation is not only social learning. It is structured fear.”
Candado lowered his voice.
“Fear is rational.”
“Yes. But not always proportional.”
Silence.
“You say the world rewards coherence,” The blue presence continued. “That is true. But it also punishes rigidity. When you reduce everything to analysis, you turn relationships into variables. And when you do that, you reduce people.”
“I don’t reduce anyone.”
“You reduced your pain to functional guilt. You reduced your grief to mental structure. You reduced your conflict with Sara to a strategic equation. Even now, you reduce this conversation to a procedure.”
That struck.
Candado leaned back. The star-lights flickered.
“I don’t romanticize chaos.”
“No. You administer it.”
A dense silence followed.
“If you are so aware that you are a social construction,” the presence asked, “why do you cling to that construction as if it were essence?”
Candado took longer to respond.
“Because if I let it go…”
He stopped.
The presence did not finish the sentence.
“If I let it go,” he continued, softer now, “I don’t know how much of me remains.”
The figure nodded.
“Then it is not only adaptation. It is fear of the dissolution of the self.”
Candado lifted his gaze.
But The blue presence was no longer there.
The opposite armchair had vanished. The space returned to that neutral expanse—without edges, without reference.
Only him… and the suspended lights above his head.
He turned slowly.
Nothing.
He stood up. Walked a few steps. The ground did not tremble. The air did not shift. There was no trace.
Then the voice returned. Not from a specific point.
From everywhere.
“So… why does it hurt to do all this, and even knowing it hurts, you keep doing it?”
Candado did not answer.
“Why,” the voice continued, “despite the way you are, do you want them there? Even when you don’t treat them the way someone should normally be treated. Why do you hurt them and at the same time need them? Why don’t you want to be alone… and yet you choose it?”
Candado closed his eyes for a second.
“They’re basic desires. The human being is a social animal. It cannot be alone. It either dies. Or goes mad.”
The voice responded without delay.
“Is that all? If it were merely gregarious instinct… you would seek functional company. Replaceable. Interchangeable.”
Silence.
“Why not pursue something false instead of something authentic?”
Candado opened his eyes.
That question forced him to think more slowly.
“Because what’s false doesn’t withstand tension,” he answered at last. “When the structure is weak, it collapses under conflict. Superficial relationships work as long as there’s no friction.”
“And do you create friction?”
“Constantly.”
The voice seemed to draw closer, though there was no way to locate it.
“Then you know authenticity implies risk. It implies the possibility of loss. It implies real pain.”
“Yes.”
“And yet you seek it.”
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Candado walked a few steps, without clear direction.
“Because what’s false is useless to me.”
“But what’s authentic exposes you.”
“Yes.”
“And you hate being exposed.”
Silence.
Candado pressed a hand to his forehead.
“It’s not a contradiction,” he said. “It’s hierarchy. I prefer real pain to artificial stability.”
“That sounds noble,” murmured The blue presence, its voice serene in the air.
“It isn’t. It’s practical.”
“Is it? Explain.”
Candado sighed.
“If I build false bonds, everything is simulation. And I…” He made a vague gesture. “I can’t stand incoherence. If I’m going to connect, there has to be something real. Even if there’s the smallest chance it will hurt.”
The voice lowered in tone.
“But when something real appears… you strain it. You analyze it. You test it. You push it to the limit. Why?”
Candado did not deny it.
“Because authenticity must hold.”
“Or because you need to verify it won’t leave?”
Silence.
“You say you don’t want to be alone,” the voice continued, “but you create conditions that push others away. You say you prefer real pain, but you produce the pain before it can happen on its own.”
Candado clenched his jaw.
“It’s… anticipation. It’s necessary for me.”
“Necessary? It is preventive sabotage. Why?”
“Reduction of uncertainty.”
“It is fear of being abandoned without control.”
The lights above his head flickered more intensely.
Candado spoke more quietly.
“If I push them and they stay… it means they chose to stay.”
“And if they leave?”
“Then they were never solid.”
The voice did not soften its reply.
“Or perhaps they simply grew tired. No matter how good someone is, no matter how much they want the best for you, they are not obligated to remain with someone who refuses to progress.”
The phrase was not aggressive.
It was surgical.
Candado turned slowly.
“A bond is mutual choice,” he said. “Not obligation.”
“Correct. But you raise the cost of that choice—prioritizing your own fear over their experience.”
Silence.
“You claim the human being cannot be alone,” the presence continued. “Then why do you make being with you difficult?”
Candado inhaled deeper.
“Because I don’t know how to relate without defense. My pain was traumatic. Early depression nearly cost me my life.”
“But you want closeness.”
“Yes.”
“And closeness requires vulnerability.”
“I know.”
“Then you are operating against your own desire.”
Candado did not respond.
“You are aware of the contradiction,” the voice insisted. “This is not ignorance. It is sustained choice.”
“Not everything one understands can be executed,” Candado murmured.
“Then it is not structural incapacity. It is internal conflict.”
Candado remained still.
“You want authentic companionship,” the voice continued, “but you fear that authenticity will dismantle you. You want them to stay, but you test their resistance. You don’t want to be alone, but you maintain enough distance to avoid dependence.”
Silence.
“Is that also adaptation?”
Candado took longer to answer than before.
“Yes.”
“Or is it pride?”
No immediate reply.
“Or is it guilt?” the voice added with lethal softness. “Do you believe you do not deserve a bond without tension? Worse… do you know you don’t deserve it? Not because of what you are—because of what you do.”
Candado closed his eyes.
That question did not offer a comfortable logical structure.
“I don’t know.”
“Interesting,” whispered The blue presence. “You can analyze complex social systems. But when the question points to your right to be loved… there is no theory. No procedure. Only confusion—tinged with pain and frustration.”
The lights dimmed.
“If man is a social animal,” the voice concluded, “then your partial isolation is not structural coherence. It is conscious contradiction.”
Silence.
“And the most interesting part,” it added finally, “is not that you contradict yourself. It is that you know you do.”
The light shifted. No visible transition, yet the space ceased to be neutral and thickened with expectancy. The blue presence materialized again, but no longer as an undefined shape. It took the silhouette of Gabriela.
Not a perfect replica. Not a living body. But the Gabriela he carried in memory: upright posture, serenity in her eyes, that inherent calm that seemed to order chaos around her.
The voice, however, retained the undertone of the blue entity.
Candado stopped short. Surprise crossed his face for a fleeting second before he regained firmness.
“She’s dead,” he stated evenly. “This is only a construction of what I knew of her. It’s not her.”
“That is correct,” the voice replied from within that familiar form. “She had schedules you did not share. Secrets. Thoughts of her own. Regions of her mind you never accessed. That is normal.”
Gabriela’s image remained almost still.
“Is that why it hurts more?” the voice pressed. “Knowing that what you remember is not the whole?”
Candado did not answer. He stepped closer and reached out, brushing her hand.
“It’s cold,” he murmured. Not the cold of ice—but the cold of absolute absence.
“Because what you recall most vividly is her departure, not her constancy,” the voice replied. “You do not evoke her daily presence. You evoke the rupture. You remember the ending more than the continuity.”
After a blink, Gabriela’s figure began to fade. Instinctively, Candado stepped forward, fingers tightening in the air as if to grasp something intangible—but he forced himself to stop. The image vanished completely.
When the emptiness settled again, Hammya appeared.
Candado turned slowly.
She stood there as he had seen her countless times: light green hair, wide smile, that awkwardly luminous expression that always unsettled him. She smiled at him—but her eyes began to darken. Not magic. Bruises. Purple spread beneath the skin as her cheek swelled from an invisible blow. Her raised hand began to bleed. The wound opened on its own, as if memory itself were tearing from within. Red blood—human, raw—poured without stopping.
“It’s all right,” she said with excessive sweetness, almost wounding in its gentleness.
A sharp pain struck Candado’s chest—physical, real—but he remained standing.
“I caused this. That’s what you think,” said the formless blue voice.
He closed his eyes, but the scene imposed itself in his mind. He saw himself in that room, facón raised, the blade grazing his own throat. He saw Hammya stepping between, her bare palm intercepting the steel; the edge slicing flesh, green blood first, then deeper as she gripped the blade to halt it. He saw her forced smile, pain carving her features, and finally her body collapsing.
“Enough,” Candado muttered through clenched teeth. “I’ve seen it many times. It changes nothing. She saved my life. I’m grateful. I lowered my guard.”
“Why did you lower it?”
The space shifted again. Three figures materialized before him: Gabriela. Hammya. And Odadnac.
The last possessed neither serenity nor gentleness. He was a compact shadow, contained rage—the distorted reflection of Candado himself. His equal.
“Who did it?” the voice asked. “Love, pain… or hatred?”
“Does it matter?” Candado replied, gaze steady.
“To me, no. To you, yes.” The voice drifted toward Odadnac. “Look at your dark part—the personification of anger born from hatred, but shaped by the love you both felt for Gabriela.”
Odadnac remained silent.
“When the truth about her death overwhelmed you,” the voice continued, “you decided to transfer that memory to him. To the part that could hold rage without breaking.”
Candado lowered his gaze for a second, feeling the weight.
“One question,” the presence insisted. “Was that not an act of bad faith? Transferring your guilt to another part of yourself so you would not carry it. What were you truly thinking?”
Shame flooded him—not before the entity, but before the three figures watching him.
“At the time…” he confessed with difficulty, “I thought that since he feeds on my anger and pain, storing those memories wouldn’t harm him.”
“Anyone can feel anger,” the voice replied. “But implanting a memory in which both of you are protagonists is not distribution. It is delegation of guilt.”
“I know!” Candado exploded. “It was wrong. I was arrogant. I just didn’t want that memory in my mind all the time. It held me back. It paralyzed me.”
“You hid your error to keep functioning?”
“No! I just… hid it. That’s all.”
Silence reigned again—heavy, suffocating.
Then a different voice spoke behind him.
Not The blue presence.
His own.
Candado turned and saw himself in that dreamlike room. Alone with Hammya.
“I’m a murderer.”
“You’re not a murderer,” Hammya said softly.
He mocked her.
“What would someone who’s only known me five months know?”
“It’s true, I’ve known you five months. But in that time, I’ve seen you. I’ve seen what you are and what you do when someone is in trouble—financially or life and death. I’ve seen someone who works hard for the well-being of others, who carries heavy responsibilities. I’ve seen someone who, despite his fragility, was strong enough to deliver justice. I’ve seen someone who loves his family and protects his friends. That’s the Candado I want.”
“I DIDN’T DESERVE THAT!” he screamed, his face twisted in pain.
Hammya stepped closer, but Candado recoiled instantly.
“STAY AWAY FROM ME!”
The scene dissolved like suspended dust. The figures, the room, the facón, the blood—everything evaporated until only the open expanse remained, and the lights above his head.
But they were no longer static.
They began to move—slowly at first, then faster, crossing like erratic shooting stars across the dark.
Candado stood still, breathing heavily. He was not angry. Not crying.
He was stunned.
And that was worse.
The voice returned, formless.
“That is what you said. That is what you felt. But in practical terms, according to what you preach… it is not coherent. You feel it, yet it is not your direct fault. So how can you experience guilt for something that does not entirely depend on you? And likewise, why do you seek acceptance unilaterally without accepting that you must also change?”
Candado did not answer immediately. He watched the sky shift as though the universe were being reconfigured.
A few meters away, a vertical mirror appeared, held by nothing.
He approached.
In the reflection, he did not see emptiness.
He saw ruins.
His reflection stood within what had once been his home—collapsed walls, burned beams, remnants of former structure.
His face was expressionless.
Too expressionless.
“You look into the reflection,” the voice said, “and you see the risk. The danger of becoming more machine than alive.”
Candado clenched his fist and struck the mirror. The glass shattered into fragments that did not fall. They remained suspended around him, each shard reflecting his image multiplied.
“You fear change,” the presence continued. “Not only changing. Being changed. That everything you suffered will end up reduced to statistical factors. Coincidences that could have happened to anyone.”
Candado drew a deep breath.
“They weren’t coincidences.”
“No. But they weren’t absolute destiny either. And that unsettles you.”
One of the floating shards showed his reflection with a thin crack running across the face.
“The morality you claim to hold,” the voice continued, “dissolves the moment you submit it to calculation. You analyze, you observe, you dismantle systems. Politics. Society. Power. You see the gears turning. You understand the price of every decision. But when everything has structure… where does humanity go?”
Candado lowered his gaze toward one of the fragments.
“I walk between logic and truth,” he murmured, almost to himself. “In a world where everything has its place. I analyze because if I don’t, it overwhelms me. I observe because if I don’t observe, I get deceived.”
“And yet,” the voice cut in, “you fear that in that constant observation you’ll lose something essential.”
Candado didn’t deny it.
“I see how the system turns. I see society decomposing. Every decision has consequences. Every movement has a cost. If I don’t think about that, I’m irresponsible.”
“But if you only think about that,” the voice asked, “what are you?”
Silence.
“Where is the line you must not cross?” the voice asked calmly. “Kill to save? Destroy to build? You say you understand moral complexity. But when you reduce it to calculation, morality stops being a principle and becomes an equation.”
Candado clenched his teeth.
“Morality can’t ignore consequences. Life isn’t moral—these are concepts given value depending on culture and society.”
“Correct. But it also can’t be absorbed by them. If everything is justified by a greater outcome, then any action becomes valid under the right argument.”
The stars continued moving above him, faster now.
“Your mind is your fortress,” The blue presence said, “but it’s also your prison. You retreat into rationality because it gives you structure. But every time you decide with absolute coldness, a part of you wonders if you’re eroding what makes you human.”
Candado looked at his hands. They weren’t stained with blood.
But they felt heavy.
“Being pragmatic is my shield,” he said.
“And your prison.”
He lifted his gaze.
“What do you prefer?” the voice replied. “Ignore that the world is unequal? Act on emotion when emotions cloud judgment?”
Candado walked through the area, scanning the space—searching for The blue presence.
“It isn’t a binary choice,” the voice answered. “The problem isn’t that you’re aware. It’s that you fear you won’t feel fear when you should. You fear that the absence of fear will turn you into something that no longer understands.”
One shard showed his reflection with empty eyes.
“Society is a broken puzzle,” the presence continued. “You try to rebuild it through reason. But you wonder if, in doing so, you’ll disappear inside it.”
Candado closed his eyes for a moment.
“I don’t know what I want to be anymore,” he admitted, quieter than he would have allowed before. “I know what I can do. I know what the world can do. I’m tired of knowing—of thinking—of seeing.”
The stars slowed.
“Then the question isn’t whether you’re a machine,” the voice said, unexpectedly gentle. “The question is why you fear becoming one so much.”
Candado opened his eyes.
“Because if morality dissolves into cold calculation…” he whispered, “then anything can be justified.”
“And you know you’ve already crossed lines.”
It wasn’t an accusation. It was a statement.
The space went still again.
“Contradiction doesn’t destroy you,” The blue presence concluded. “It keeps you human. What would destroy you is stopping the questioning.”
Hammya’s figure appeared before him.
She had no face—only the familiar silhouette: light green hair falling over her shoulders, posture slightly inclined forward as if she were always on the verge of stepping closer.
Beside her, The blue presence materialized again, this time refusing any human shape—only a luminous outline, as though it preferred to observe without symbolic interference.
“She… matters to you?”
Candado answered without thinking.
“Yes.”
The firmness was there, but underneath it, something refused to settle.
The presence didn’t look at him. It looked at the faceless silhouette.
“When she arrived, she seemed like a nuisance. Loud. Insistent. Too close. She didn’t respect your distances. She didn’t understand your silences. And yet, as days passed, you stopped seeing her as interference and started seeing her as constant. And when you needed it most, she was the one who entered your mind when no one else could.”
The space began to transform around them—not abruptly, but with gradual reconstruction: the ruined house, the forest, the place where Candado repeated his sentence against Gabriela as if punishment could rewrite the past.
“She submerged herself in your trauma,” the presence continued. “She walked through your memories without asking permission. She endured insults, shouting, rejection. She didn’t debate your logic or try to win you over with moral superiority. She did something harder: she stayed.”
Candado lowered his gaze. He didn’t need the scene replayed to remember it.
“She didn’t run when you called her stupid. She didn’t step back when you screamed that you were a murderer. She didn’t release the hug when you struggled to push her away. She chose to remain in the darkest place in your mind.”
The faceless silhouette stepped toward him.
The blue outline spoke with almost clinical precision.
“That isn’t romanticism. It’s emotional resistance.”
The setting shifted again. The room. The raised facón. The irreversible moment.
“When you decided to end everything, you had already accepted the label ‘murderer.’ The motion was final. No one reacted in time. She didn’t either—at least not with speeches. She didn’t shout. She didn’t hesitate. She put her hand in the way.”
Candado said nothing. He just kept looking.
“She turned her body into a shield,” the presence said. “Not for drama. Not to create debt. She did it because she didn’t want to lose you.”
Candado walked to the faceless figure and took her hand. The scar was there. He traced it with his thumb as if he could still measure the depth of the cut.
“Afterward, when you woke up, she didn’t judge you,” the voice continued. “She didn’t accuse you. She didn’t manipulate you with guilt. When you asked, ‘Why did you do it?’ she didn’t give you a heroic speech. She returned the question: ‘Would you do it?’”
Candado closed his eyes briefly.
“That forced you to accept that you care about her too. That you’re not only calculation. She didn’t save you physically alone. She restored the possibility that you could see yourself as human—that you could see beyond pain, that you deserve more than you claim to believe.”
The presence’s tone shifted, more reflective.
“On that night walk, you showed your fire. You defined yourself as dangerous, as cruel. She didn’t retreat. She didn’t deny your darkness or romanticize it. She called it warm. Beautiful… and sad. She touched what you feared to touch yourself.”
Candado’s breathing grew more difficult.
“When you let go of her hand, she grew sad. When you took it again, it was you choosing the bond. That gesture marked something you didn’t even want to admit.”
The space stabilized again. The faceless silhouette remained in front of him.
“You told her things almost no one knew,” the presence went on. “The promise to Gabriela. The guilt for lying. The training in that universe where you died hundreds of times. Only Héctor and Clementina knew those details. You handed her your most intimate, vulnerable core.”
Candado didn’t deny it.
“She became the guardian of your deepest pain.”
A brief silence—then the voice added:
“When you called yourself a monster, she didn’t correct you with empty phrases. She asked for a promise: that you wouldn’t despise yourself again in her presence. That wasn’t moral correction. It was an emotional boundary.”
Candado pressed the scar harder.
“After nearly losing her hand and her eye, she didn’t blame you. She didn’t turn sacrifice into debt. She didn’t demand payment. She held your hand.”
The blue presence watched his expression before asking what it knew was inevitable.
“And when she was abducted, she changed. She grew firmer, more aware of your darkness. Do you think you lost her?”
Candado didn’t answer right away.
“I understand,” the presence said softly. “I’ve already seen—”
“I’m not optimistic,” Candado said at last.
The presence regarded him with something close to surprise.
Candado held the faceless figure’s hand with both of his, and he spoke without looking away.
“I’ve said horrible things. I’ve been unpleasant—cruel—unnecessarily harsh. I use sarcasm to hurt. I hate myself for that. I hate myself for not being able to hate enough when I should, and for needing her when I know I’m not easy to love. When they told me she was gone, I panicked.”
He inhaled deeply.
“When I found out she was gone…” he repeated, quieter, “I didn’t think about strategy. I didn’t think about consequences. I didn’t think about the mission. I thought I was too late.”
The word hung in the air.
He felt something rise from his stomach to his throat. It wasn’t rage.
It was contained, retroactive panic—the kind of fear that appears after the danger is over, when the mind replays it as if it could still prevent it.
“There’s something that terrifies me more than any enemy. I didn’t lose her physically. I have her in front of me. She speaks. She looks at me. She asks me to trust.”
He lifted his gaze toward the faceless silhouette.
“And yet… I feel like I lost her.”
That was the first real fracture in his voice.
The tears didn’t fall at once. It wasn’t a dramatic break. They were small, slow—like the body hesitating, unsure whether it had the right to release them.
“She entered my mind when no one could. She stayed when I pushed her away. She saved my life. She gave back the little humanity I had left when I’d already condemned myself. And now… now she’s the one carrying something I didn’t see coming.”
He blinked. The tears finally slid down.
He reached out and touched the place where Hammya’s face should have been.
“Five times,” he whispered. “She lived it five times. She broke five times. She said goodbye five times.”
He leaned forward slightly, still holding the scarred hand.
“What did she have to see? What did she have to lose to reach this point? How much did she have to harden?”
The fear was no longer abstract.
It was concrete.
“I’m afraid she stopped being herself in order to save us. I’m afraid the version I want… doesn’t exist in any timeline anymore. That the awkward laughter, the childish stubbornness, the way she got angry over stupid things… was sacrificed so she could become this.”
He squeezed his eyes shut.
“And the worst part is I can’t blame her. Because I would have done the same.”
That cut deeper than any accusation.
“I would have changed her too if it meant she survived. If it meant none of you died. I would have made that cold decision. And that scares me.”
His breathing turned uneven.
“It scares me that she didn’t ask my permission. It scares me that she suffered alone. But it scares me even more that, in her place, I would’ve acted the same. Because then… this isn’t only her sacrifice.”
He opened his eyes. He wasn’t trying to stop the tears anymore.
“It’s my reflection.”
He fell silent for a few seconds, breathing with difficulty.
“When I said ‘I want her back,’ it wasn’t caprice. It wasn’t rejection of this version. It was fear. Fear that time stole her while I was still trying to understand what I felt for her.”
He swallowed.
“I’m afraid that when this is over… the Hammya I knew won’t return. And if she does… I’m afraid she’ll look at me differently. That after living five timelines where I failed—where I was too late—where I wasn’t enough… she won’t be able to see me without remembering.”
His voice finally broke.
“And if she decides to stay… will it be love? Or habit? Or because she’s already invested too much in saving me?”
A tear fell onto the scar he held.
“I don’t want to be her mission. I don’t want to be her project. I don’t want to be the person she had to rescue five times until it worked.”
His breathing steadied slowly, but the trembling remained in his hands.
“I always thought the fear was losing her physically. Now I understand it’s worse. It’s losing what she was when she looked at me without carrying the weight of the future.”
He looked up once more, fully exposed.
“And I don’t know how to save her from something she did to save me.”
The silence that followed wasn’t emptiness.
It was recognition.
Everything had changed.
Candado was no longer reasoning.
He was feeling.
The blue presence approached without a sound.
It watched as Hammya’s figure—until then only a silhouette without a defined identity—began, slowly, to acquire a face. It wasn’t the face of the firm version that had just confronted him, nor the girl who laughed with clumsy brightness; it was a serene face, almost asleep, as if she were at peace somewhere he could not reach.
Candado didn’t see it.
His eyes were closed, brow faintly drawn, fighting the urge to break entirely.
The blue presence noticed something else.
The mirror fragments still floating around them began to vibrate softly and, one by one, took on recognizable forms. They were not exact copies, but evocations—memory rendered into shape.
Héctor appeared first, wearing that calm expression that always came before his most uncomfortable truths. Then Declan, rigid, loyal to the bone. Clementina, with that exaggerated tenderness he pretended to tolerate. Lucas, restless with kinetic energy. Erika and Lucía, determined and trembling at once. Natalia, distant—but present. And others, too.
They didn’t speak.
They didn’t interrogate him.
They didn’t demand coherence or explanations.
They simply walked toward him.
And one by one, they hugged him.
The gesture wasn’t invasive or dramatic. It was firm. It was real.
Each embrace felt different: Héctor’s was warm and steady; Declan’s, protective; Clementina’s, almost desperate; the twins’, clinging; Natalia’s, contained but sincere.
And after each embrace, the figure dissolved into light—like a function completed.
The blue presence watched in silence, surprised.
It hadn’t caused any of it.
When the last hug vanished, Hammya stepped forward.
This time her face was fully formed. Not sad. Not euphoric.
Soft.
She lifted her hand and touched Candado’s cheek.
He opened his eyes, startled. He hadn’t expected contact.
Hammya didn’t speak. Her fingers slid to the scar by his eye and traced it with care, like someone acknowledging a wound without judging it. She smiled—barely. Not a wide smile. One that simply said, I’m here.
And she disappeared.
Candado stayed still for a moment. Surprise gave way to a deeper breath. The pain hadn’t vanished, but it was no longer crushing him. A small smile—almost imperceptible—appeared on his face.
It wasn’t happiness.
It was acceptance.
Above his head, the stars stopped moving chaotically. They stabilized, forming clear constellations—beautiful, recognizable. No longer erratic fragments, but figures that made sense when seen as a whole.
Candado turned toward the blue presence.
It smiled, with something like pride.
“I’ve seen enough,” it said.
Candado shook his head gently.
“No. I’ve seen enough.”
The presence held his gaze for a few seconds, then clapped once.
The space dissolved.
Candado woke with a sharp inhale. The mansion room surrounded him. His friends were leaning over him, a circle of tense, expectant faces.
“What…?” he murmured, disoriented.
“He woke up!” Clementina cried, gripping his hand. She threw herself on him and hugged him without restraint. “He woke up, young master—he did.”
Still dazed, Candado muttered:
“I told you not to call me that.”
Only then did he notice the moisture in his own eyes. It wasn’t illusion.
Declan, ever attentive, produced a handkerchief and offered it with almost ceremonial courtesy.
“Here.”
Candado took it and nodded his thanks. Héctor appeared at his side, wearing that half-smile that mixed relief with analysis.
“We’re glad to have you back. I knew you’d pass the test.”
Candado returned a dry smile, more sincere than it looked.
“Yeah… I suppose.”
His gaze swept the room, and at last he found her.
Hammya was reclining near the window, slightly apart from the group. She didn’t look triumphant or restless—just watching him. When she noticed him looking, she raised her hand in a small gesture.
Candado thought about ignoring her. For a fraction of a second, the impulse was there.
But instead of looking away, he nodded.
The gesture surprised her. He knew because her expression shifted, just slightly.
“Did everyone wake up?” Candado asked, returning to the practical.
“Not everyone,” Héctor replied, pointing to the side.
Sara remained motionless.
Declan frowned.
“What do we do?”
Candado looked at Sara for a few seconds. Then he answered calmly:
“Wait.”
There was no hardness in his voice.
Only decision.
Clementina finally loosened her embrace and picked up the beret she had kept carefully on a nearby table.
“Here. I kept it safe while you were gone,” she said, offering it with pride.
Candado looked at the beret for a moment. He took it slowly, holding it as if it weighed more than it should.
He put it on and looked up at the ceiling, releasing a sigh—
a sigh of continuity.
