Inside: no gold, no letters. Just a dry, leather-bound notebook titled Registro de los que olvidaron sentir . And a finger bone wrapped in red thread.
Lucero should have stopped. But the chest whispered at night: “Uno más. Sólo uno más. La gente cruel merece instintos crueles.”
The chest smelled of rust and cloves. Lucero’s father had told her: “Nunca lo abras. Los instintos que guarda son crueles.” “Never open it. The instincts it holds are cruel.”
But hunger is a cruel instinct too. That night, she picked the lock with a hairpin.