Lucia's fingers left blackened fingerprints on the gilt-edged invitation.
"He wants you to see," she whispered, her voice layered with echoes of other children. The orphanage escape had left her half-transparent at the edges, her form flickering between solid and shadow.
Clara turned the heavy card over. The blood-red wax seal bore Franco's personal insignia —but when she cracked it, the scent of burnt hair and bergamot wafted out.
"GRAN GALA DE LA RECONQUISTA"
Teatro Real, Midnight
Dress Code: White (Stains Preferred)
Zenko growled low in his throat. "They're not even hiding it anymore."
Clara's chest scar pulsed in time with Lucia's flickering—a sickening syncopated rhythm. "We're going."
Lucia grabbed her wrist. Her touch left frost patterns on Clara's skin. "First, you need the weapon."
She pressed something into Clara's palm:
A single piano wire , coiled like a noose.
The Teatro Real's backstage area stank of spoiled rosewater and formaldehyde . Clara and Zenko moved through the maze of costume racks, each outfit stained with old blood at the cuffs and collars .
"There," Zenko pointed to a door marked "PRIMA DONNA" in flaking gold letters.
Inside, a woman who wasn't a woman sat at the vanity. Her reflection showed a different face than her body —younger, terrified, mouth moving in silent screams.
"Ah." The thing smiled with stolen lips. "The Keeper finally comes to the opera."
Clara raised the piano wire. "Where's the Maestro?"
The false singer laughed, her neck elongating unnaturally as she turned. "Conducting, of course! Though..." She tapped her hollow cheek. "...you might know him better as Papi ."
The mirror shattered.
Twenty Lucias crawled from the shards, their gold collars glowing.
The singer sighed. "Do try to die beautifully, won't you? The audience hates messy deaths."
The performance had already begun when they reached the balcony.
Below, hundreds of Madrid's elite sat mesmerized as children in white communion dresses danced across a stage made of interlocked skeletons . The orchestra played instruments carved from human bone , their music making the candle flames burn blue .
At the podium stood the Maestro —his face still Clara's father's, his hands moving in elegant sweeps. With each downbeat:
- A dancer split open at the seams
- The audience sighed in pleasure
- The chandelier dripped something thick and dark
Lucia whimpered. "He's feeding them."
Then the Maestro turned. Looked directly at Clara .
"Ah! Our special guest!" His voice boomed without a microphone. "Tonight we perform The Reckoning of Little Red Riding Hood —with you as our star!"
The audience turned as one.
Their eyes were all glass.
Chaos erupted.
Zenko threw himself at the Maestro while Clara sliced through thralled aristocrats with her piano wire. Each severed head burst into moths , but more kept coming.
Lucia climbed onto the stage and began singing —a wordless lullaby that made the dancer's stitches pop like gunshots .
The Maestro laughed as he dueled Zenko, parrying claws with a conductor's baton that hissed like a snake.
"You could join us, daughter!" he called to Clara. "Imagine—a world where we decide who burns!"
Clara reached the podium. Up close, she saw the truth :
This wasn't her father.
Wasn't even human.
The face peeled back like a mask, revealing Franco's personal secretary beneath—the same man who'd stabbed his own eye at the last performance.
"Disappointed?" he sneered.
Clara wrapped the piano wire around his throat. "Just relieved."
The theater burned beautifully.
Clara watched from the street as blue flames licked at gilded boxes , the screams inside forming a perfect chromatic scale .
Lucia leaned against her, more shadow than girl now. "He got away."
She meant the Maestro. The secretary had been just another puppet.
Zenko emerged from the smoke carrying THE ASHES OF ZARZUELAN BLOOD
The stolen Guardia Civil truck rattled through the night, its headlights cutting through fog that clung like cobwebs . Clara gripped the wheel with bandaged hands—the piano wire had left holy burns no ointment could soothe.
In the back, Zenko sharpened kitchen knives while humming a Moorish lullaby from his childhood . Lucia slept fitfully between them, her form blurring at the edges whenever they passed a church.
Then the radio crackled to life.
"—confirmed attack in Burgos. Authorities report gas explosion at the orphanage—"
Lucia's eyes flew open. Black liquid oozed from her tear ducts.
"Liar," she whispered. "They're burning the evidence."
The truck swerved as Clara jerked the wheel. Through the fog, a line of children materialized on the roadside—each holding a glass eye in their outstretched palms.
Zenko's knife bit into the dashboard. "Don't stop."
But Clara was already braking.
The children weren't children at all —just scarecrows in communion dresses, their straw-stuffed limbs stitched with gold thread.
One had Lucia's face.
Its mouth unstitched itself to whisper:
"Too late for Burgos, sister. But not for her ."
A small hand reached from the fog— real flesh this time —and clutched Clara's door handle.
She called herself Luna , but her wrists bore the same identification tattoo as Lucia's clones.
"They took us from the fires," the girl murmured as Zenko disinfected her wounds with stolen whiskey. "Said we were special ."
Clara studied the child's mismatched eyes —one brown, one clouded white. "How did you escape?"
Luna touched the scarecrow's face. "I died first."
The revelation came in broken pieces:
- The Burgos orphanage was a front for soul fracturing
- The Maestro had hundreds of "vessels" across Spain
- Franco himself had visited last summer to select "choristers"
Lucia began shaking. "They're making a new amulet . Bigger. For him."
Zenko went very still. "Not an amulet. A crown ."
Luna nodded and produced a shard of bone from her pocket— engraved with part of a larger pattern.
"Found this in the Maestro's office," she said. "There are eleven more."
Clara's scar burned. The bone shard fit perfectly against it.
Burgos Cathedral bled shadows as they approached.
Instead of guards, puppets in priests' robes stood sentry, their strings leading up into the bell tower. The stained glass windows showed normal biblical scenes —until Clara dripped holy water in her eyes.
Then the images changed:
- Franco as Herod slaughtering innocents
- The Maestro as Judas kissing a child's forehead
- Clara herself as Lazarus , rising from a grave of bones
Luna tugged her sleeve. "They're already inside."
They entered through the crypt. The air thickened with incense and something fouler — the scent of preserved organs Clara remembered from Toledo.
Below the main altar, a horror unfolded :
Twenty children stood chained to a massive wheel of iron and bone , their mouths stitched shut. At the center, the Maestro (now wearing a general's uniform ) conducted their silent screams with a batón made from a human spine.
"Right on time!" he called without turning. "We're just rehearsing The Fall of Barcelona —your favorite, isn't it, Keeper?"
The wheel began turning.
The children's eyes rolled back in unison.
And from the crypt's darkest corner, Franco's personal guard stepped forward , their rifles aimed at Clara's group.
Luna moved first.
With a scream that shattered glass , she plunged the bone shard into Lucia's back.
"I'm sorry!" the girl sobbed as Lucia stiffened like a marionette , her limbs snapping upright. "They have my real sister!"
The Maestro laughed. "Meet our new soloist!"
Lucia's head jerked toward Clara. Her eyes were now pure glass.
"Run," she whispered with the Maestro's voice. "I'll so enjoy hunting you."
Then the chains broke.
The bone wheel spun faster.
And Lucia attacked.
Zenko grabbed Clara as Luna's form melted away , revealing a grown woman with Lucia's features —the original, perhaps, or another clone perfected.
"Next time," the woman sang, "don't trust anyone with our face."
Then she was gone, taking the remaining bone shards with her.
Lucia's puppet body collapsed mid-leap.
The Maestro sighed. "Well. That was dreadfully off-key." He snapped his fingers.
The cathedral doors slammed shut.
The rifles cocked.
And Clara realized:
This had been the plan all along.
Not to kill her.
To make her choose between saving the children—
—or stopping the ritual.