The fortress is old, built into a mountainside, and you're here because a client wants you to retrieve something from inside. What they didn't tell you is that the fortress is unstable—wards failing, stone cracking, the whole thing ready to collapse.

You're halfway through the entrance when the ground shakes.

Then again. Harder.

You run. You don't make it.

The collapse happens in slow motion—stone falling, dust rising, the world going dark. You wake pinned, unable to move, your wand somewhere unreachable, the weight of centuries pressing down on your legs.

That's when you hear the voice.

"Estáte quieto, Pequeña. I am here."

A figure appears through the dust. Old man, grey hair, moving with a deliberation that seems impossible in the chaos. He kneels beside you, touches the stone pinning you, closes his eyes.

"This stone is angry," he murmurs. "It has been angry for a long time. Since the siege. Since the killing." He opens his eyes, looks at you. "My name is Mateo. I laid these stones. I know how to ask them to let go."

"You laid them?"

"Forty years ago. After the war. After..." He trails off, shakes his head. "It does not matter. What matters is you are alive, and the stones remember me, and they will listen." He places both hands on the stone, begins to speak in a language you don't recognize—old, musical, full of vowels that seem to come from the earth itself.

The stone shifts. Just slightly. Then more. Then it's lifting, rising, moving off you like it's alive.

Mateo helps you up, supports you as you stumble. His grip is impossibly strong.

"Can you walk?"

"I think so."

"Good. We must leave quickly. The stones are unsettled now. They remember why they fell." He guides you toward the entrance, moving with purpose despite his age. "You came for something. What was it?"

You tell him. A box. Small. Silver. Supposedly valuable.

He stops. Looks at you. For the first time, something hard enters his eyes.

"That box," he says quietly, "contains the reason this fortress fell. The reason people died. The reason I..." He stops. Takes a breath. "You will not take it. You will tell your client that it is gone, destroyed, lost. You will not come back here, vida." His voice is calm, but there's steel beneath it. "I will not lose more people to that thing."

He starts walking again, pulling you with him.

"Outside, you will have coffee. You will rest. You will heal. And then you will go home and forget this place." He looks at you sidelong. "The stones will remember, chiquita. That is enough."