Clara felt the bone needle humming in her chest like a plucked guitar string. It whispered secrets to her:
You're not just the Keeper...
You're the Lock.
And the Key.
Across the broken altar, the demon Zarzenki took shape - a terrifying king made of smoke and fire, wearing a crown of broken amulet pieces.
"Little moth," he sneered, "you flew too close to my flame."
The ghost-girl with black eyes giggled. "She still doesn't get it, Father."
Father? Clara's blood turned to ice.
Zenko stumbled to her side, bleeding fire. "Clara - the needle isn't for him. It's for us."
Then she remembered Inés' words: "The seal needs balance."
As the creepy choir sang louder, Clara yanked the needle from her chest. No blood - just a glowing white thread, bright as a star.
Zarzenki screamed in rage.
Doll-faced Don Javier attacked. Zenko grabbed his wrist - and ripped his skin right off!
Underneath wasn't a monster.
It was Clara's uncle.
"Tío Luis?" she gasped. The same uncle who'd read her bedtime stories. Who'd held her hand the night the convent burned.
His real face was a horror show of burns and stitches. He spat out his gold-thread stitches, snarling:
"You were supposed to die in that fire with your sister! Your parents ruined everything!"
The black-eyed ghost (her sister!) wailed.
Clara's amulet burned hot. The needle's thread glowed brighter, connecting her to Zenko, to Zarzenki, to all the Keepers before her.
Zenko growled: "Do it."
Clara stabbed the needle into Zenko's chest - not to hurt him, but to sew.
The white thread shot out, wrapping around Zarzenki, yanking the demon toward Zenko.
"NO!" her uncle screamed. "You'll kill us all!"
"Yes," Clara whispered.
She jammed the needle into the amulet.
BOOM!
Light exploded everywhere.
Clara stood in a strange dream-place.
Two wolves circled her - one white, one black.
Zenko and Zarzenki.
A voice boomed: "Choose! One to save, one to burn!"
Clara grabbed BOTH wolves.
"No more choices."
She smashed them together.
The wolves merged with a howling musical note.
CRACK! The amulet broke.
The needle vanished.
And Clara...
Burned.
Silence.
Clara woke in the perfectly clean cathedral - no fire, no bodies. Just a single burned child's shoe where the ghost-girl had stood.
Zenko knelt beside her - his scars gone, his eyes now human.
"You fixed the seal," he said. "But the cost—"
Clara touched her chest. No amulet. No needle. Just a new scar - a wolf inside a flame.
Then a voice laughed from the shadows:
"Oh Clara. Did you think it was over?"
Out stepped the real villain - wearing her dead father's face.
Clara's knife was at the impostor's throat before her mind caught up.
The man wearing her father's face didn't flinch. Up close, she saw the stitches at his hairline , the unnatural gleam of borrowed eyes . A skin-suit, just like Don Javier had been.
"Mija," he said with her father's voice, "you don't remember our last game, do you?"
Zenko moved to strike—
—and froze when the impostor held up a music box . The very one Clara's father had made her before the fire.
"Wolf or flame, little one?" He turned the crank. The tune was wrong— it played the black-eyed girl's nursery rhyme backwards .
Clara's chest scar burned ice-cold .
They stood in the ruins of her childhood home —not the convent, but the little house by the river where her family had lived before the war. The walls were painted with moving shadows , replaying memories:
- Her father carving the music box
- Her mother singing as she braided Clara's hair
- The black-eyed girl who wasn't in any photos
"Your parents didn't just hide you from the cult," the impostor said. "They stole you from it."
He peeled back his sleeve, revealing the same wolf-and-flame brand Clara now bore.
"You were always meant to be Zarzenki's vessel. Your sister was the backup."
The music box snapped open. Inside lay a tiny skeletal hand —a child's.
Clara's knees buckled.
They escaped through a sewer tunnel marked with resistance symbols , emerging near Plaza de España. Zenko dragged Clara into a boarded-up bookstore— a rebel safehouse .
"He's lying," Zenko growled. "Your parents were—"
"Were what?" Clara kicked over a chair. "Heroes? Saints? You've been with me five weeks. They raised me!"
A floorboard creaked. Sister Beatriz stood in the doorway, her stitched eye weeping.
"He told you the truth," she whispered. "You were born in the cult. Your parents took you during the Great Purge of '36."
She laid a battered birth certificate on the table:
Name: Clara Inés Montoya y Zarzuela
Parents: Eduardo Zarzuela & Sister María de la Sangre
Clara's hands shook. "Then who—"
"Luis and Marisol saved you," said the nun. "Broke the bloodline. Made you human enough to resist the amulet's call."
Zenko went very still. "That's why the seal weakened. You were never meant to be Keeper."
Outside, church bells tolled thirteen times .
Sister Beatriz paled. "They've started the summoning."
The nun led them to the convent's sealed crypt . Inside waited:
- A wall of missing children's photos (including the black-eyed girl)
- Father Robles' severed arm holding a journal
- And a third ironwood box , smaller than the others
Clara touched the box. The carvings showed a wolf eating its own tail .
"Inés left this for the true last heir," said Sister Beatriz. "Open it when you're ready to know the price of victory."
Clara lifted the lid.
A glass eye stared back.
It blinked .
Sister Beatriz gasped. "Dios mío—that's my eye!"
The eye rolled , revealing tiny writing on the back :
"The seal is a circle. Break it with your sister's hands."
Clara understood.
To win, she'd need to resurrect the black-eyed girl.
The glass eye watched from Clara's palm.
Sister Beatriz had fled after seeing it, muttering about "sinful bargains." Now, in the bookstore's back room, Clara held the thing up to a kerosene lamp. The pupil contracted , though no light touched it.
"It remembers," Zenko said. He'd been different since the cathedral—less demon, more man. His scars only flared now when Clara's own mark burned. "Eyes are windows for the soul. This one's still got someone looking through it."
A whisper slithered from the eye:
"Find the other half, little thief."
Clara nearly dropped it. Her father's voice. Not the impostor's mimicry—the real timbre, warm as the woodshop where he'd taught her to carve.
Zenko snatched the eye, pressing it to his own left socket. His iris flared white-hot for three heartbeats before he gasped and tore it away.
"Your sister's alive," he panted. "Or part of her is. The cult has her body... but her soul's trapped somewhere between."
Clara's chest burned. "Where?"
The eye laughed. "Where all lost things go, mija. The House of Broken Hymns. "
Dawn found them outside El Hogar de Santa Cristina , an orphanage turned Francoist "re-education center." Its barred windows wept rust, and the statue of the Virgin in the courtyard had no eyes —just hollow sockets trailing ivy like tears.
Clara's file said she'd stayed here after her parents' deaths. She remembered none of it.
"They burned the memories out," Zenko said, reading the scars on her wrist—tiny cigarette burns in a perfect circle. "Standard practice for bloodline children."
A nun answered their knock. Her wimple hid the brand on her neck : the cult's flame-and-sword.
"We're here about the choir auditions," Clara lied, flashing the glass eye.
The nun's pupils dilated. "Ah. The Maestro's new project." She led them inside, where forty children sat stiffly at wooden desks, stitching black fabric with gold thread. None looked up.
"Our finest voices," the nun crooned. "Though the little one in back is... problematic."
The black-eyed girl sat apart from the others, her needle moving faster than humanly possible. Around her desk lay a ring of dead flies , all perfectly bisected.
Clara's pulse hammered. Not a ghost. Flesh and blood.
The girl smiled without looking up. "Sister says I pull my stitches too tight."
They took the girl— Lucia —to the chapel under pretense of vocal tests. Up close, Clara saw the truth :
- Her eyes weren't black, but full of moving shadows
- Her fingertips were needle-pricked and bloodless
- Around her throat, a golden collar with the same symbol as Clara's brand
"You're not my sister," Clara whispered.
Lucia's grin showed baby teeth filed sharp. "Not just your sister." She tapped the collar. "They put her in here with others . We're a chorus ."
Zenko went rigid. "Gods below—they're making a composite soul ."
The chapel door burst open.
Six nuns stood armed with bone needles , their wimples discarded to reveal identical brand marks .
"The Maestro wants the eye," hissed the leader. "And the Keeper's heart."
Lucia sighed. "Boring." She snapped her gold thread —
—and every nun clutched their throats as invisible needles pulled their stitches tight.
They fled through the catacombs beneath the orphanage, Lucia leading them to a door that wasn't there .
"Knock three times," she instructed. "Then once for every year you've been dead."
Clara hesitated. "What are you?"
Lucia's shadow stretched unnaturally , showing multiple children's shapes fused together. "What you'd be if Mama hadn't stolen you."
The door opened on its own.
Inside stretched an endless hallway of mirrors , each reflecting a different version of Lucia:
- A laughing toddler with a teddy bear
- A sullen teen picking at wrist scars
- A corpse with her mouth sewn shut
At the hall's end sat a music box the size of a coffin.
Lucia pressed Clara's hand to it. "Your turn to choose, sister. Wind it up... or smash it."
The glass eye in Clara's pocket wept hot tears.
She chose to wind.
The box played their father's favorite lullaby , and the mirrors shattered one by one. In the largest shard, Clara saw the truth:
Her father kneeling before Franco , offering a crying infant— her —on a silver platter.
"Take the sister instead," he begged. "Her voice is purer."
The memory shifted. Now she saw Lucia's real fate :
- Strapped to an altar as cultists fed her glass shards and holy water
- Her screams stitched into the music box
- Her soul sliced apart to power the amulet
The final mirror showed the present :
The Maestro (wearing her father's face) conducting a choir of Lucia-clones , each holding a glass eye.
"Encore!" he cheered as the orphans began sewing their own mouths shut.
Clara smashed the music box.
The House of Broken Hymns screamed itself apart.