I knelt. The ruda pouch burned in my palm. I reached for the thread.
“You forgot,” it whispered, “that the path goes both ways.”
And then I heard her.
I didn’t turn. I didn’t call out. I just closed my fingers around the black thread and pulled.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
It leaned close. I felt its breath on my neck—cold, then hot, then cold again. And it whispered, not in Lucia’s voice anymore, but in its own. A voice like splintering wood.
“The Three Knocks?”
And if you rested, you never left. Not wholly. Your body might continue down the mountain, but your ánima —your deep self—stayed behind, shackled to a stake on the Ruta, moaning in the wind forever.