The coast was hushed, except for the sea.
Esperanza held her mother's hand as though her own heartbeat could anchor Elena's faltering one. The salt wind whipped her hair across her face, but she did not blink; she could not look away from the woman who lay slack on the shore.
Alejandro paced behind them, jaw tight, whispering in low mumbles to keep his courage from breaking. Juan stood knee-deep in the surf, calling for the boatmen, scanning the horizon with wild eyes. Every movement of the waves felt like a threat, as though the tide itself wanted to drag Elena beneath.
"Mama," Esperanza whispered, voice catching. "Stay with us. Please."
Her mother's eyelids flickered. For a heartbeat, she stirred, but the sound that left her lips was not Esperanza's name, nor her father's. It was a broken syllable, lost between languages. A prayer. A plea.
The girl pressed her forehead to the back of her mother's hand, breathing her in as though memory itself might keep her alive. The sea answered only with its eternal roar.
Far inland, in the healer's hut, another silence had thickened. Choked, sharp with the stench of iron and herbs.
Phineus skidded inside, lungs on fire. The walls seemed to bend and sway around him, but his eyes locked only on the cot where Jaime lay. Aurora bent over him, hands pressed to flesh that glowed with slow, agonizing light. The cuts shimmered faintly, as if mocking every incantation she spoke.
The boy froze, his throat closing. He had seen wounds before. But never like this. Never in someone who had come to be father to him.
Señora Behike turned, ready to send him away, but the words died on her tongue. His face was pale, yes. But his eyes… his eyes were not afraid. They were distant, already heavy with another sight.
"What is it, mijo?" she pressed, staff planted firm in the floor.
His breath stuttered. The vision still clung to him. Bright, merciless, searing through the inside of his skull. He fought to anchor himself, fists clenching at his sides. He could not break here. Not when he had already seen what awaited them.
"La Sirena," he whispered, voice cracking. "They've taken Mama to La Sirena. Alejandro thinks… she won't make it back home."
Aurora's lips trembled, but she did not falter in her healing. Her hands shook with strain as blood welled beneath them.
Jaime stirred. His eyes cracked open, cloudy, unfocused. His lips shaped air rather than words, until finally, he rasped:
"…bring me to her. Please."
Aurora stiffened. "If Elena can't expect to survive the journey, how can you-"
But Señora Behike lifted a hand. "Then we take him, too."
Her voice cut through the hush, sharp as a commandment. "If his soul insists on following hers, then so be it. He must go."
She bent over Jaime, laying her palm over his trembling fingers. The faintest twitch answered her, like the last spark of a flame refusing to die.
"Hang in there, hijo," she murmured. "I will go with you. You will not face this path alone."
On the coast, the waves surged higher, rattling driftwood like bones.
Esperanza flinched as Elena's body seized with another spasm. The girl cried out, clutching harder, as if to anchor her mother to the sand.
"Elena!" Alejandro's voice cracked, betraying the iron in his throat.
The woman's violet eyes slid open, lightning flickering faintly in their depths. A storm's breath exhaled through her lips, weak but unbroken. She whispered a name- it could have been Esperanza's. Or Juan's. Or someone beyond their reach.
The sea swallowed the syllable whole.
And in the healer's hut, Jaime whispered too. Words gutted by pain, syllables bleeding into each other.
Aurora leaned closer, tears sliding down her face, trying to make sense of the name. Elena? Coatriskie? Phineus? She could not tell.
But Phineus knew. He had already seen it in his vision. Two rivers of blood, spilling toward the same sea.
And he clenched his fists until the bones of his knuckles ached, whispering fiercely to himself:
Not yet. Not yet broken.