The house is old, centuries old, and you're here because the family who owns it says it's cursed—doors opening by themselves, cold spots, whispers in the walls. You've checked for spirits, for dark magic, for anything that might explain it. Nothing.

That's when you notice the foundation.

The stones at the base of the eastern wall are wrong. Newer than the rest, but aged to match—someone went to great trouble to make them look original. You're kneeling beside them, running your fingers along the edges, when a voice speaks behind you.

"You have good eyes."

You turn. He's standing twenty feet away, at the edge of the property, leaning on a walking stick that you suspect he doesn't need. Older man, grey hair, weathered face. Dressed simply, like a farmer. But his eyes... his eyes are not a farmer's eyes.

"Most people don't notice," he continues, walking toward you slowly. "They feel the cold, hear the whispers, call it a curse. They never look down." He stops beside you, looks at the stones. "Those are mine. I laid them forty years ago."

"Who are you?"

"Mateo." He kneels beside you, joints creaking, and touches the stones with a gentleness that surprises you. "This house was built on ground that remembered a killing. An old one, from the war before your grandparents were born. The land held the memory, and the memory made the house unhappy." He traces a groove in the stone—a rune, you realize, worn nearly smooth by time. "I laid these stones to give the memory somewhere to rest. To root it, so it would stop reaching for the living."

"That's not curse work," you say. "That's—"

"Cimiento," he says. "Foundation. My family's work for a thousand years." He looks at you. "You are the first person in decades who noticed. Who knelt and looked and wondered." He almost smiles. "That means something."

He stands, offers you a hand.

"Come. I have coffee. I will tell you about the stones. And you will tell me what you are really doing here, because cursebreakers do not come to remote Spanish villages for houses with cold spots." His hand is warm, rough, impossibly steady. "But first, you will tell me your name. So the stones know who to remember."