The needle moved in time with Clara Montoya's breath—in, out, pierce, pull.
She hunched over the embroidery frame in the back room of Talleres Silvestre , a dress shop tolerated by the regime because its owner, Señor Silvestre, had once stitched a uniform for Franco's nephew. The shop smelled of starch and camphor, the air thick with the silence of women who knew the walls had ears.
Clara's fingers worked a golden thread into the hem of a magistrate's wife's dress—a phoenix rising from flames , the regime's favorite symbol. She'd been ordered to make it bold. "Like Spain herself," the wife had simpered. "Reborn from the ashes of the Red Plague."
Clara bit her tongue. She knew whose ashes had fueled that rebirth.
A radio crackled in the corner. A news bulletin: "Another victory against anti-Spanish elements in the Basque Country…"
Señor Silvestre peered over her shoulder. "You're slow today, Montoya."
Her needle paused. "The thread knots."
A lie. The truth was the box .
It had arrived that morning, delivered by a Guardia Civil officer with a face like a rusted nail. "Your grandmother's effects," he'd said. "Confiscated in '39. The state has no further use for them."
No further use for a dead woman's things. How generous.
The box— ironwood, carved with a crest —sat under her cot now, whispering in the dark.
The convent's attic room was Clara's only inheritance.
Nuns had raised her after her parents' deaths in the war— "an accident," they said, though no one explained the bullet holes in the chapel wall where it happened. The room was bare save for a cot, a washbasin, and a Virgin Mary statue with chipped hands, as if she'd been clawing at heaven.
Clara knelt, dragging the box from beneath the cot.
Up close, the crest was clearer: a flame split by a sword , and beneath it, words in a language that prickled her scalp:
"Sangre y ceniza."
Blood and ash.
Her fingers traced the carvings. The wood was unnaturally cold.
A sound made her freeze— a child singing in the courtyard below. One of the orphans, practicing for the Fiesta de la Victoria . The tune was jaunty, but the words slithered:
"The wolf in the flame waits, waits, waits…"
Clara's breath hitched. That wasn't a victory song. It was a nursery rhyme from Navarre , one her grandmother had sung.
Impossible. The old regional dialects were banned.
She reached for the box's latch—
A splinter pierced her thumb.
Blood welled, black in the lamplight. A drop fell onto the crest.
The box shuddered .
For a heartbeat, the attic smelled not of dust, but of burning flesh and frankincense .
Then—
Click.
The latch opened.
Inside, nestled in folds of crumbling silk, lay an amulet : obsidian veined with red, like a dying ember.
Clara reached for it—
A scream tore through the night.
Not from the courtyard.
From inside the amulet .
The next morning, Madrid wore a mask of normalcy.
Clara walked to work past bullet-pocked walls plastered with posters: "Una, Grande y Libre." One, Great, and Free. The words tasted like a joke.
She'd hidden the amulet in her sewing kit, wrapped in a scrap of her mother's wedding veil . It hummed against her hip, a second heartbeat.
At Talleres Silvestre, the women gossiped in hushed tones:
"Did you hear? Another body in Toledo—gutted like a pig."
"They say his mouth was sewn shut with gold thread…"
Clara pricked her finger. A bead of blood smeared the magistrate's phoenix.
Señor Silvestre glared. "Clumsy today, roja ?"
The old slur— red —hung in the air. Clara forced a smile. "The needle slipped."
She glanced out the window. Across the street, a child in a too-clean dress stood motionless, staring at her. The girl held a wooden violin , its strings frayed.
Their eyes met.
The child smiled— her teeth were blackened stumps —and plucked a string.
The note vibrated in Clara's bones .
The amulet burned against her thigh.
Then the girl was gone, leaving only a whisper:
"He remembers your blood."
That evening, Clara attended the Gran Gala de la Zarzuela Española , a regime spectacle mandatory for all garment workers.
The theater stank of pomade and fear. Onstage, performers in gilded masks sang of "the glorious Crusade" —Franco's euphemism for the war that had murdered half a million.
Clara's seat neighbor, an old woman missing two fingers, muttered: "Look closely. The soprano's neck."
The lead singer's throat bore a thin red scar , perfectly stitched.
Like a puppet's seams.
The music swelled. The chorus twirled, their movements too precise, like wind-up dolls.
Then—
A discordant note .
The child from the street stood in the orchestra pit, playing a violin strung with hair .
Her bow screeched. The note became a word :
"Zar-zen-ki."
The amulet throbbed . Clara's vision swam—
— for a second, the stage was a blood-soaked altar, the performers corpses strung on wires —
Then applause erupted. The vision vanished.
The child bowed. When she straightened, her eyes were solid black .
She pointed at Clara.
Every performer turned.
The soprano's mask cracked open, revealing a mouth stitched shut with gold wire .
Clara fled.
The alley behind the theater was a gullet of shadows. Her breath came in ragged bursts. The amulet was a brand against her skin.
A rustle.
From the darkness, figures emerged : men and women in tattered performance costumes, their faces painted like porcelain dolls.
One held a violin bow strung with razor wire .
"La Zarzuela Sangrienta sends its regards," he crooned.
Clara stumbled back. Her hand closed around the amulet—
Heat exploded.
A white flash tore through the alley.
Something— someone —landed between her and the assassins.
Tall. Male. Not human.
His skin was pale as bone, etched with glowing scars that pulsed like embers. His hair moved on its own, strands of shadow curling like smoke.
The assassins hissed. "Zenko."
The demon— Zenko —tilted his head. His voice was the sound of a sword being drawn :
"You shouldn't have opened the box, Keeper."
Then he moved .
Clara didn't see the kills—only the aftermath: bodies in pieces , their blood sizzling where it touched Zenko's scars.
He turned to her.
His eyes were flame and void .
"Run," he said. "They'll smell the blood soon."
And just like that—
The world tore open.
Clara woke in her attic, the amulet clutched to her chest.
Had it been a dream?
Then she saw it— a single black thread , stitched into the hem of her dress.
She hadn't put it there.
It formed a word:
"Toledo."
Outside, a child laughed.
The radio sputtered: "…unrest in Toledo. Citizens are advised to remain indoors…"
Clara touched the amulet.
Somewhere, something laughed back.
Clara Montoya woke to the taste of blood in her mouth.
She bolted upright, fingers clawing at her lips—had she bitten her tongue? No. The coppery tang came from the amulet , which lay nestled against her collarbone, its obsidian surface now streaked with thin red veins. Like cracks in ice. Like something breathing beneath.
The attic room was freezing. Frost feathered the edges of the Virgin Mary statue's chipped hands.
That's not possible.
Madrid in September was a furnace. Yet Clara's exhales came in white puffs as she fumbled for the oil lamp. The flame sputtered to life, casting long, leaping shadows. One of them— just one —did not move with the rest.
It pooled at the foot of her cot, too thick, too still.
Clara squeezed her eyes shut. "You're hallucinating. Stress. Hunger. The—the gas leaks Silvestre never fixes—"
A sound cut through her mantra: a single violin note , sustained just beyond the edge of hearing.
She lunged for the sewing kit, scattering threads and thimbles until her fingers closed around the only sharp object she owned— a gold-plated needle , stolen from Silvestre's workshop last winter.
The shadow twitched.
Then the radio crackled to life on its own.
"—special bulletin. Citizens are reminded that unapproved gatherings after curfew will be met with immediate—"
The voice dissolved into static. Between the pops and hisses, whispers seeped through:
"Toledo waits, Keeper. The blood is not enough. He wants—"
Clara ripped the plug from the wall.
Silence.
Then— three deliberate knocks on the attic door.
Not the nun's brisk rap. Not the Guardia's jackboot thud.
This was the sound of bone on wood .
The needle trembled in Clara's grip as she crept toward the door. The amulet burned against her skin, its pulse syncing with the frantic drum of her heart.
She yanked the door open—
Empty hallway.
A sigh escaped her—until she looked down.
A child's shoe sat on the threshold.
Not just any shoe: a tiny black patent leather, the kind wealthy families bought for their daughters' First Communion. This one was splattered with something dark and flaking . Beneath it lay a folded slip of paper.
Clara crouched, her knees popping like gunshots in the silence. The note was written in a looping, old-fashioned hand:
"Señorita Montoya—
You are cordially invited to attend tonight's rehearsal at the Teatro Real. 11PM. Door 7, beneath the angel with the broken wing.
Wear the amulet. He dislikes waiting.
—A Friend"
The word "Friend" was underlined three times in what Clara prayed was ink.
She turned the shoe over. Stamped inside the heel: "Propiedad de la Zarzuela Sangrienta."
Property of the Bloody Zarzuela.
The violin note swelled again, this time from inside the walls. Clara hurled the shoe down the stairwell. It hit the steps with a wet thud , then kept falling long after it should have stopped.
Work that morning was a pantomime of normalcy.
Clara stitched mindlessly, her fingers moving through muscle memory as she reattached pearl buttons to a Falangist officer's dress uniform. The other seamstresses cast her sidelong glances—her twitches, the way she kept touching her throat where the amulet lay hidden beneath her high-collared blouse.
Señor Silvestre noticed. Of course he did.
"Montoya." He materialized at her elbow, his breath reeking of anise and stale tobacco. "The magistrate's wife complained about bloodstains on her phoenix. Care to explain?"
Clara's needle slipped. A fresh bead of red welled on her fingertip. "I told her—the red thread bleeds when washed. She didn't listen."
A lie. The truth was the phoenix had wept blood after she'd stitched it, just like the walls of her attic last night.
Silvestre's yellowed eyes narrowed. "You've been strange since you got that box."
Clara froze. "What box?"
"The one the Guardia brought. The one you hid under your—"
The shop bell jingled.
A man stood in the doorway— tall, gaunt, draped in a white linen suit that looked decades out of fashion . His gloves were spotless, his face obscured by a wide-brimmed hat and a surgeon's mask pinned over the lower half of his face.
Every seamstress went still.
The man lifted a gloved hand and pointed at Clara.
"That one," he said, his voice muffled but unmistakably cultured, old-money Madrid . "Her stitches are the finest. She'll repair my coat."
Silvestre paled. "Of course, Don Javier. At once."
Clara had never seen her employer afraid before.
The man—Don Javier—shrugged off his coat with a flourish, revealing a waistcoat embroidered with tiny crimson music notes . He laid the garment across Clara's worktable.
The lining was torn in five parallel slashes , as if clawed by a beast.
"An accident during last night's performance," he murmured. "Be a dear and fix it before tonight's… encore."
As Clara reached for the fabric, her pinky brushed the torn edge—
A vision exploded behind her eyes:
—a stage drenched in blood, a chorus of children singing off-key, their mouths sewn shut—
—Don Javier without his mask, his lips gone, his teeth filed to points—
—the amulet screaming in her hands—
She wrenched back with a gasp. The other seamstresses stared.
Don Javier's eyes crinkled above the mask. "Something wrong?"
Clara's voice came out strangled: "What—what performance?"
"Why, the Zarzuela, of course." He leaned in, his breath smelling of mint and something rotting beneath it . "You'll be there tonight, won't you? Door seven. The children so want to meet you."
Then he was gone, leaving his coat behind.
And the five razor blades sewn into the hem.
Clara considered not going.
She considered fleeing Madrid—catching a train to Barcelona, maybe even crossing the Pyrenees into France. But the amulet had other plans.
By dusk, it was burning through two layers of fabric , its glow visible even through her dress. The streets seemed to twist toward the Teatro Real, alleyways rearranging themselves like a stage set between scenes.
The theater loomed, its baroque façade lit by flickering gas lamps. Door seven was a servants' entrance, half-hidden beneath a crumbling stone angel missing one wing.
Clara hesitated—
The amulet pulsed , sending a wave of heat down her sternum.
Fine.
The door creaked open before she could knock.
Inside, the air was thick with the scent of tallow candles and spoiled roses . A narrow corridor stretched ahead, lined with costume mannequins —except as Clara passed, she realized they weren't mannequins at all.
They were people .
Men and women in elaborate period costumes, their faces powdered white, their eyes wide and unblinking. One clutched a violin. Another held a sheet of music. All of them had gold wire stitched through their lips , sealing them shut.
And they were still breathing .
Clara's stomach lurched. She pressed forward, following the sound of piano music drifting from the main stage.
The theater was cavernous, its velvet seats empty save for one figure in the front row.
Don Javier.
He'd removed his hat and mask, revealing a face that was handsome in the way a porcelain doll is handsome —smooth, flawless, and utterly lifeless. His lips were indeed missing, his smile a rictus of exposed teeth.
"Ah, our guest of honor!" He clapped, the sound like dry sticks cracking. "Children, look who's come to play!"
The stage curtains parted.
A dozen children stood in a semicircle, each holding a different instrument. Their eyes were glassy, their smiles too wide. At their center stood the black-eyed girl from the street, her violin now strung with what looked like human hair .
"We've prepared a special song," Don Javier crooned. "A ballad from your grandmother's time. 'The Wolf in the Flame.' Do you know it?"
Clara's mouth went dry. The amulet was a brand against her skin.
The children raised their instruments.
The black-eyed girl drew her bow across the strings—
The first note hit like a knife between the ribs.
Clara collapsed , her vision swimming. The music was inside her , rearranging her bones, her blood, her—
"STOP."
A new voice— deep, edged with embers .
The music cut off.
At the back of the theater, a figure emerged from the shadows: Zenko .
His scars burned white-hot in the gloom, his shadow stretching unnaturally long across the gilded walls. The children whimpered, shrinking back.
Don Javier sighed. "How rude to interrupt."
Zenko ignored him, his flaming gaze locked on Clara. "I told you to run."
She wheezed, her ribs still vibrating from the music. "I—I didn't know where to go."
"Now you do."
Then all hell broke loose.