The rain fell all night.
It wasn't an ordinary rain—it was thick, almost oily, and carried a metallic smell that seeped into the skin.
The streets seemed to bleed slowly, the water running reddish across the cobblestones.
In Father Moura's house, the silence was a body.
Miguel sat before the medallion, his gaze lost in space.
Elisa slept in brief intervals, always waking with the same start: the sound of water swallowing Jorge.
Pedro, in the background, scribbled endlessly, drawing and erasing the same symbol—two joined spirals—as if trying to capture it on the paper before it slipped from his memory.
The medallion pulsed steadily, emitting a faint, rhythmic light, like a heart.
At dawn, Doctor Vasconcelos arrived.
Wet to the bone, his face pale, his eyes feverish.
He brought with him an old map, wrapped in cloth and secured with leather cords.
He placed it on the table and wrote quickly on his slate:
"There are more symbols scattered throughout the city. Jorge only awakened the first. We need to find the second before she does."
Elisa looked at him suspiciously.
"She?" he wrote back. "The Guardian?"
The Doctor nodded, his expression grave.
"Each seal is a link in the curse. The Guardian isn't trapped—she's asleep. And we're being used to awaken her."
Miguel stared at him, trying to gauge the truth behind those words.
— "And you, doctor, how do you know that?"
For a moment, Vasconcelos hesitated. Then he turned his arm and rolled up his sleeve.
On his forearm, burned runes formed the same duplicate symbol.
— "Because the first seal chose me before you arrived in the city."
The silence that followed was almost tangible.
Pedro stopped drawing. Elisa took a step back.
Miguel, however, simply approached the map.
The paper was old, almost translucent.
It showed the city in its original form, before the expansions, before the ruins.
But there was something else: beneath the streets and squares, red lines outlined an incomplete circle, formed by seven main points—each marked with a rune.
The first point was the square's fountain.
The second, a building on the edge of the forest, partially erased by time.
"The second seal," the Doctor wrote. "The Guardian's beating heart is hidden there. And if it is activated, the entire city could disappear."
Elisa looked at the map and frowned.
"What if it is already active?"
The question hung in the air, and the thunder that followed seemed to echo it back.
They decided to leave before nightfall.
But as they crossed the streets, they realized something had changed.
The houses were no longer where they should have been.
Streets doubled back on themselves, creating alleys that ended in nothing.
And familiar faces—neighbors, children, the elderly—now looked at him with complete strangeness, as if they had never seen them before.
Pedro stopped in front of a moss-covered wall.
There, the name "Ferreira's House" was engraved in stone—but Ferreira had died ten years ago, and his house had been demolished.
Time seemed to have turned back, reconstructing memories that had already been erased.
Miguel began to feel the weight of her presence—the Guardian.
It wasn't a sound, nor a vision. It was a memory imposing itself on his mind, like a story he had always known but chosen to forget.
Suddenly, the ground vibrated.
A voiceless scream pierced the air—the same whisper of the collective dream.
Elisa fell to her knees, covering her ears, and the medallion glowed with unbearable force.
The nearby walls began to contort, as if breathing.
From these deformations, faces emerged: faces of those who had disappeared, of those forgotten.
They whispered fragments of memories: names, dates, songs, broken prayers.
Pedro screamed—but the sound didn't come from his throat.
It was the symbol he had drawn that screamed, trembling on the paper and burning his hands.
Dr. Vasconcelos grabbed him and shouted at the slate:
"Don't look at them! They're echoes—trapped memories!"
And he pulled them into the next corridor.
The building was an old mansion, hidden beneath thick roots and vines that seemed to pulse.
The windows were boarded up, and the doors were covered in knife marks—futile attempts to seal something inside.
Miguel touched the wood and felt the warm, living surface.
"It's breathing," Elisa wrote, trembling.
Inside, the air was dense, almost liquid.
There were mirrors on the walls—dozens of them—but none reflected reality correctly.
In one, Miguel saw himself as a child; in another, Jorge smiled; in yet another, the city in flames.
In the center of the room, the second seal: a circular rune etched into the floor, pulsing red.
Above it, a kneeling figure—the stranger.
He slowly raised his head, his eyes filled with golden light.
"You're late," he said, and the true sound of his voice echoed in the room, like thunder.
The floor shook.
The walls cracked.
And from the symbol on the floor, an arm made of shadow began to emerge, stretching toward Miguel.
Dr. Vasconcelos threw his staff to the ground, drawing a protective line, but the symbol reacted, growing, distorting like a hungry mouth.
Miguel held the medallion, screaming voicelessly, and an intense light exploded, sweeping everything away.
When the light faded, the hall was empty.
The rune had disappeared.
The stranger too.
The floor, now cold, showed only ash.
Pedro looked around, confused.
Elisa, staggering, wrote:
"What happened?"
Dr. Vasconcelos, pale, answered with difficulty:
"The second seal was opened... and something awoke with it."
Miguel felt the medallion pulse one last time—and this time, instead of warmth, he felt cold.
A cold that came from within.
As if a part of himself had been taken with the seal.
And, far away, in the heart of the city, the fountain began to bleed.