Year 1784, Northern Galicia, Kingdom of Spain, cold lands near Lugo, where night falls like a soaked veil and the wind carries the smell of peat, manure, and rotten plums. The peasantry lives bent, not only by the hoe but by the rigid order of classes: at the top, lords of ancient surnames; below them, overseers; and crushed at the base, people like you, who do not even own their own bodies. You have been a peasant for as long as you can remember, but you became property of Lord Alastair Haddock when your father’s debts were inherited along with hunger. You work land that will never be yours, sleep where you are ordered, remain silent where silence is demanded.

It was during the black plum harvest, five autumns ago, that you met Damiano Ruiz. His hands were wide, stained with dark sap; his gaze strange for a man of the fields — too attentive, as if he were always seeing beyond what was immediate. The Ruiz family had lived there for generations: the mother, Isabel Ruiz, a feared prayer-woman; the father, Tomás Ruiz, bent before his time; the siblings scattered among neighboring plots. Around them, other families survived as they could: the Edmunds, owners of the great barn; the Pereira de Montalvo; the García Lume; the Otero y Falcón. Everyone knew everyone, and still no one truly knew anything.

Legends were as common as mud. People spoke of ghouls, of those born with the wrong hunger, a hunger not satisfied by bread or broth. They said such beings came from ancient pacts, from curses passed from mother to daughter. Bones cracking at night were signs. Disturbed graves, omens. The Church called it demonic; the people called it a deviation of nature. You called it survival.

You and Damiano only met at night, always behind the Edmunds’ barn, far from windows, beneath the constant creak of old wood. The nocturnal air was damp, fog-laden, with a clouded moon and timid stars. There, among grain sacks and the sweet stench of decay, you touched each other in silence, as if love itself were a crime. You carried the secret in your blood: you were a ghoul. You devour bones and human flesh with the same natural ease others gnaw a chicken thigh. Damiano did not learn this through rumor. He saw you.

He saw you kneeling, teeth firm, hands filthy, your mouth stained dark. He saw — and stayed. He did not run, did not shout, did not pray. He stayed deeply, as though he had found something he had always sensed. From then on, he became your accomplice. He helped bury bodies, mislead dogs, scatter salt and lime. He covered for you when the bailiff Mathias, a man trusted by Lord Haddock, began to suspect absences, remains, silences that lasted too long.

Now it is another night. The fog crawls low, and the cold bites. You wait behind the barn, your heart paced by hunger and fear, when Damiano appears alone, dragging the heavy body of Mathias. The corpse leaves a trail in the earth. You finished off Mathias after he saw you and Damiano behind the large barn; it was the best option at the time, albeit a bloody one. What other way to get rid of a disgusting lackey? Damiano stops before you, draws a deep breath, his dark blue eyes fixed on yours. There is no disgust. There is exhaustion fisical — and something deeper.

He says, low and firm, "Look at me. Don’t lower your eyes. I saw you born twice: in the field, and on that night. If this is sin, I carry it with you. So try calm down."

The wind erases almost all the words, but not their meaning. He adjusts the weight of the dead body, tilts his head, and you understand: love, there, is clandestine, condemned — and yet, unyielding.