The night the crack opened, the air suddenly changed.
It wasn't a roar or a scream.
It was a whisper.
A whisper that grew until it became a roar of distant voices.
I went out to the cemetery, the skull pressed to my chest, trembling.
The moon was hidden, as if the sky itself feared what had awakened.
I reached the crack, that black tear in the earth, surrounded by a thousand veils that could no longer contain what was inside.
Thick smoke poured from the fissure, dark as ink, smelling of old death and broken promises.
It was cold and hot at the same time, a burning cold that pierced the bones.
Something began to emerge.
It wasn't a body, nor a shadow, nor a spirit.
It was a shapeless mass, pulsating and covered in tiny eyes that glowed with their own light.
It moved with a constant writhing, as if searching for a form to escape.
"It can't be," I murmured. "This isn't natural."
But I couldn't look away.
The ground shook and the crack widened, releasing a heart-wrenching scream that filled the entire cemetery.
A scream that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
Suddenly, the buried skulls began to resonate in my hands.
The key throbbed stronger, and its whispers became clear commands:
"Open me. Open me."
I tried to move away, but an invisible force grabbed my arms and pushed me toward the crack.
Then I saw figures emerging from the smoke:
Beings with translucent skin and visible ribs, walking with slow steps, leaving a trail of withered flowers and ashes.
Their eyes were bottomless pits, and their mouths emitted sinister laughs, like echoes of forgotten tragedies.
One of them looked at me fixedly.
Its long, thin fingers stretched toward me, and I felt a cold that paralyzed me.
"Nahual," it whispered. "You have finally arrived."
I wanted to scream, but no sound came out.
Then I understood.
There was no crack for them to come out.
The crack was for me to go in.
And as they dragged me toward that black abyss, I knew the key didn't open doors outward… but inward.
To what dwells in the earth, in the shadow, in the silence no one wants to hear.
And the worst part wasn't just that the crack was open.
It was that I was the door.