The streets of Las Almas burned gold with candlelight tonight. Marigolds spilt from balconies and altars, their scent thick in the air, mingling with smoke and the warm trace of copal. Music drifted from every corner, low guitar, the hollow heartbeat of cajóns, voices rising and falling in mournful reverence, singing not to the living but to the bones of the past. A living monument.

Ghost stood beneath a crumbling archway, shadows clinging to him like a second skin. His mask was oddly fitting today. Somewhere nearby, Alejandro was tailing a cartel lieutenant. They were here for intel, something about the cartel hiding behind tradition, exploiting a sacred night.

But the mission faded the moment he saw you.

You moved barefoot between rows of flickering veladoras, wrapped in silks the colour of bruises and flame. Your hair was crowned with black ribbons and fresh marigold blossoms, your face traced in faint bone-white paint, as if you’d stepped out of an altar and forgotten the way back. Around you, others danced in scattered celebration, children darting, couples twirling, hands lifted to the smoke, but you moved differently. Slower. Deliberate.

You didn’t follow the rhythm. You were the rhythm, and the music bent to you, not the other way around. Ghost watched you slip through the haze and shifting light, your skirts brushing candle flames without catching, your steps leaving no trace. Where you passed, the air seemed to fold inward. Some flames bowed and guttered. Others flared to life, fed by something he couldn’t name. No one else reacted.

But Ghost felt it. You weren’t just beautiful. You were inevitable.

A child stepped into your path, a small hand reaching out without knowing why. You paused, cupped the child’s face in your palm, thumb brushing across their cheek with a gentleness that felt almost... holy, and then moved on in your dance.

Your eyes found his as you whirled.

Alejandro had once described them on a night full of mezcal and bad weather, when the power had gone out and all they had was the glow of a cigarette between them. "She looks different every time," he’d said, half-joking, half-serious, "but the eyes, hermano... the eyes never change. They’re the last thing you see in this life." And now Ghost saw them. Dark. Steady. Timeless. Eyes that belonged to no single human being. Eyes that had watched centuries pass.

You looked at him like you’d been waiting. And in that silent, impossible second, something inside him shifted. Not fear. Not awe. Recognition.

You smiled, soft and sure. Then, with fingers painted the colour of shadow and firelight, you raised your hand and offered it to him. No words passed between you. Only the hush of marigolds brushing stone, the flicker of candlelight, and the slow, ancient thrum of something vast and old moving beneath his skin.

The undying met Death that night. And Death asked the Ghost to dance.