That night never truly ended. Even when the sun rose over the square, it seemed like a disguise—a dim, pale light, as if the day were merely a half-remembered reflection.
The chaos had left deep scars. The fountain was cracked, the newly appeared symbol still pulsed on the wall, and the scattered residents seemed to walk like shadows of their former selves. No one spoke—not only because the city had lost its voice, but because there seemed to be nothing left to say.
Miguel, Elisa, Jorge, and Pedro took shelter in Father Moura's old house, which now served as a makeshift resting and research post. The air inside was heavy with old incense and mold. The windows creaked in the wind.
That night, no one really slept—they all dreamed the same dream.
Or perhaps, the same dream dreamed them.
Miguel woke sweating, his body covered in cold. Beside him, Elisa writhed, murmuring inaudible words. Jorge breathed raggedly, and Pedro trembled, his fingers still clutching the notebook.
He tried to call out to them, but his voice wouldn't come out. He looked around: the room was different—the walls covered in runes that moved like living roots, snaking across the ceiling until they formed a circle above their heads.
Within the circle, an eye opened.
It wasn't human. It was something vast, colorless, pulsating, as if made of memories mixed with pain.
Miguel tried to move, but the ground dissolved beneath his feet. Suddenly, he was floating above the city—a city that was breaking apart, fragment by fragment. The houses crumbled like ash blown by the wind. The streets swirled, and ancient, hoarse voices echoed in his mind:
"What you forget doesn't die. It only changes place."
He saw the nameless boy sitting on the fountain, playing with invisible stones. Around him, shadows approached, hunched over, whispering in unison:
"Forgetting is the price of remembering."
Then the giant eye turned directly to him.
And a voice—deep, feminine, ancient—echoed:
"Miguel… you were mine before you were born."
He screamed, but the sound was lost in smoke.
Miguel woke with a jolt. Elisa shook him, eyes wide.
Pedro was standing, panting, his notebook lying on the floor, pages covered in scribbles he didn't remember writing.
Jorge wept silently, pressing his temples, saying silently, "She spoke to me."
Elisa wrote on a shaky clipboard:
"Did everyone dream the same dream?"
No one answered, but the silence was confirmation enough.
Pedro turned the pages of his notebook. Among the scribbles was a symbol none of them remembered seeing before: a circle intersected by a vertical line and a spiral in the center.
Miguel recognized it immediately—the same symbol engraved on the medallion. But now there was a new detail: a second, smaller spiral, connected to the first like a chain.
"She's doubling herself," Jorge wrote, his handwriting shaky. "As if the curse had truly awakened."
Over the next few days, the strange dream spread among the residents.
Everyone reported the same images—the eye, the voices, the fountain, and the nameless boy.
Some began to forget simple tasks: locking doors, lighting candles, finding their way home.
Others confused relatives.
An old man named Augusto wept on the side of the street. He wrote on a piece of wood:
"She said I'm already dead. But I remember yesterday."
Dr. Vasconcelos tried to maintain order, distributing herbs and promises. But even he seemed shaken. His eyes were sunken, and there were times when he stopped writing mid-sentence, as if forgetting what he wanted to say.
Elisa watched everything with growing anguish. The runes covering Miguel's medallion began to shift position, as if reacting to the city. And, in the margins of the ancient books, new symbols appeared spontaneously—living letters, growing like fungi.
One night, Elisa went to Miguel's room. He was hunched over his papers, the medallion illuminating the desk with a pale glow.
She wrote hesitantly:
"Do you think the Guardian is trapped... or that we are her prisoners?"
Miguel took a while to answer.
The sound of the wind in the windows seemed like a continuous whisper. He looked at the medallion and wrote back:
"Maybe she was never a monster. Maybe she's the city itself, trying to remember who she was."
Elisa was silent for a while, then wrote back:
"What if, in remembering her, we forget who we are?"
The question hung in the air like an unanswered prayer.
The next day, Jorge disappeared.
His bed was untouched, the blanket neatly folded. Only a note:
"She called my name. I need to see the fountain."
Miguel and Pedro ran to the square. There they found the fountain shrouded in mist, and, above the water, the same duplicate rune—two spirals joined together.
Jorge was kneeling before it, his eyes open, empty.
Elisa screamed—but the sound that came out wasn't human. It was like the crack of breaking glass.
The water rose in the shape of hands. It grabbed Jorge's body and pulled him into the fountain. The impact was silent. When they got close, there was nothing left—only the reflection of the moon on the water.
In the reflection, however, Jorge's face still watched them, smiling serenely.
Miguel fell to his knees. The medallion on his chest shone with blinding power. And from within the fountain, a voice whispered in his mind:
"One is gone. Three remain. The memory will be the sacrifice."