The same dream again.
For two weeks, I have been falling into this place.
Two weeks of waking with empty hands.
Two weeks of opening my eyes soaked in sweat, my throat raw and my chest tight as though I had spent the entire night screaming.
Two weeks of telling myself I should already be used to it.
And two weeks of discovering that a mother never gets used to losing her child.
I am standing in that black place.
Always the same.
There is no sky.
No walls.
No doors.
Only a dark floor beneath my feet.
Cold.
Smooth.
Wet like rain-soaked stone.
And the chains.
I feel them before I look at them.
They coil around my ankles, my legs, my waist and my arms. Thick, black, heavy. They are attached to nothing I can see, and yet they hold me in place as though the darkness itself has decided I am not allowed to move.
I try to take a step.
I cannot.
I raise an arm.
The chains tighten.
Metal bites into my skin.
I clench my teeth.
It is not the first time.
At first, the dream was only this.
Me.
The chains.
The darkness.
The silence.
Nothing else.
Then came footsteps.
Then a voice.
Then crying.
Now I hear him before I see him.
"Mommy!"
The scream cuts through the darkness.
My heart stops.
No.
Please, no.
I look up.
Something small is running toward me from the distance. At first, he is only a trembling shadow in the blackness, a figure too short, too fragile, too desperate.
But I know that voice.
I would know it even if it were broken.
"Mommy! Mommy!"
It is Jhosep.
My son.
He runs toward me with a red face, tear-filled eyes and terror written plainly across his expression.
He does not run like a child looking for comfort after a nightmare.
He runs like someone fleeing.
Like someone who knows that if he does not reach me in time, he may never come back.
"Mommy, no!" he cries, reaching toward me. "Don't let it take me!"
I pull against the chains.
The metal tightens around my body.
It steals my breath.
"Jhosep!"
My voice comes out broken.
He keeps running.
Three meters.
Two.
One.
I pull with everything I have.
The links groan and the metal digs into my wrists. Blood begins to run down my arms.
The pain comes afterward.
Hot.
Sharp.
It does not matter.
Jhosep is too close for me to lose him again.
I pull until one of the chains gives just enough for me to lift a hand.
Then I reach for my mana.
I call it from my core, from that deep place in my chest where energy exists before refinement.
Before magic.
Before aura.
Raw mana.
Pure.
Alive.
I feel it ignite beneath my sternum like a blue flame.
Normally, I would breathe.
Guide the current through my channels.
Refine it carefully.
Now I do not have time.
My son is screaming for me.
I release the mana.
Pale blue light forms around my fingers, trembling and unstable.
It is not a technique.
There is no elegance in it.
It is fear turned into energy.
I throw it against the chains.
The light strikes the black metal.
For one moment, I think it will work.
Then pain explodes inside my chest.
I fall to my knees.
It is not pain in my skin.
Nor my bones.
It is deeper.
Inside the core.
As if someone has reached directly into my mana and squeezed until it deforms.
The blue light shatters.
The chains remain untouched.
If anything, they tighten.
Jhosep is still coming.
Still crying.
Still begging me not to leave him.
I cannot stop.
I force the mana into a new form, refining it badly, desperately, shaping it into a thin, unstable blue blade.
I bring it down on the link around my arm.
The instant the edge touches the metal, pain tears through my core.
The blade breaks.
The chain remains.
It closes harder over my skin.
"Mommy!"
I look up.
Jhosep is reaching for me.
I stop trying to cut the chains.
I stretch out my arm and let the mana take another shape.
A translucent blue hand forms from my palm, trembling like liquid flame.
It extends from my fingers.
Crosses the distance between us.
"Almost…" I whisper. "Almost, my love."
Jhosep sees it.
He reaches for it.
For one second, I believe I will reach him this time.
Then the darkness behind him opens.
Black hands emerge from everywhere.
No bodies.
No faces.
One grabs his shoulder.
Another his back.
Another his clothes.
Jhosep screams.
"Mommy!"
The mana hand reaches his wrist.
Wraps around it.
Holds him.
I feel his weight through the magic.
Small.
Warm.
Real.
The black hands pull.
The force strikes my core.
The connection stretches like a rope on the verge of snapping.
Still, I pull.
With my arms.
With my mana.
With everything I have left.
"Don't take him!"
The chains react.
They climb my legs.
Wrap around my waist.
One presses directly over the place where my core burns.
The pain turns white.
Absolute.
My mana flickers.
The blue hand trembles.
Jhosep grabs it with his other hand.
"Mommy!"
"I'm here," I say. "I'm here, my love. I've got you."
But I do not.
Not really.
The shadows pull him.
The chains pull me.
I force more mana into the hand.
Its blue fingers tighten around his arm and I manage to draw him closer.
One step.
Only one.
Jhosep reaches with his free hand.
So do I.
Our fingers almost touch.
Then a chain wraps around my throat.
The air disappears.
Another climbs over my mouth.
The metal splits my lip.
Blood fills my tongue.
I try to say his name.
Only a muffled sound comes out.
I cannot speak.
I cannot move forward.
All I can do is hold him.
And even that is not enough.
The black hands pull harder.
Cracks appear across the mana hand.
The fingers.
The wrist.
The arm.
Blue light fractures like glass.
I force more energy from my core.
The pain becomes unbearable.
I cannot let him go.
It is Jhosep.
My son.
The hand lasts one second longer.
Then it breaks.
Blue light scatters between us.
Jhosep falls backward, dragged away by the shadows.
My hand is empty.
The chains yank me down and throw me against the floor. I claw at the wet stone, but my nails leave only marks that vanish almost instantly into the darkness.
I want to call him.
I cannot.
He becomes smaller.
Farther away.
Crying.
One hand still reaching for me.
Not with my hands.
Not with my voice.
Not with my mana.
I cannot reach him.
And then I understand why this dream returns every night.
It is not showing me something that might happen.
It is showing me what already did.
I let him go.
Not because I did not love him.
Not because I wanted to lose him.
But because I could not stop it.
Jhosep's voice becomes smaller.
Distant.
"Mommy…"
And I wake.
I sit upright sharply.
Air enters my lungs badly.
I am drenched in sweat.
Crying.
I touch my throat.
Then my chest.
Then my mouth.
For a moment I can still feel the metal across my lips.
A broken sound escapes me.
Something that does not sound like my own voice.
Manuel and Liora wake almost at the same time beside me.
The bed shifts.
Liora reaches me first.
"Joha?" she asks, still half asleep. "Again?"
I try to answer.
I cannot.
I only nod.
Manuel moves to my right side and wraps his arms around me from behind.
That contact breaks what little control I have left.
The crying comes all at once.
Messy.
Deep.
"He was there…" I manage. "He was there again."
Manuel does not let go.
"I'm here."
I shake my head.
"Jhosep was there. He was running toward me and I couldn't move."
I cannot breathe properly.
"He was calling me… telling me not to let them take him."
My voice breaks.
"He called me Mommy."
Liora moves closer.
Her face is pale, her eyes wet.
"Breathe with me, Joha."
"It was real," I whisper. "I felt his arm. I felt him trying to hold on."
I look at my hands.
Empty.
"And I lost him again."
"You didn't let go," Manuel says.
His voice is low.
Firm.
"Johana, look at me."
I do not want to.
But eventually I do.
His face is calm.
Far too calm for someone who has just woken this way.
His eyes are not.
Red.
Fierce.
Exhausted.
"You didn't let go," he repeats.
Liora sits in front of me and takes one of my hands.
"Breathe first. We'll talk after."
I inhale.
My chest trembles.
Exhale.
Again.
The crying does not disappear.
It only weakens little by little.
Manuel remains behind me.
He does not cry the way I do.
He does not shake.
But his calm is not peace.
It is restraint.
A wall he forces himself to keep standing because someone has to.
When I can finally breathe without choking, I look down at my hands again.
"I tried to break the chains," I whisper. "I used mana. I tried to reach him. Nothing worked."
Manuel closes his eyes for a moment.
"Johana…"
"I couldn't stop it. Not in the dream. Not that day."
Liora squeezes my fingers.
"What happened that day wasn't abandonment."
The word cuts through me.
"It may have felt like it to him."
Liora pauses.
"Yes."
She does not deny it.
That hurts more.
"And that means we have to accept that the decision had a cost," she continues. "But we didn't send him away because he was a burden."
Manuel lowers his gaze.
"We sent him because too many people were already asking about the child without mana."
He does not need to explain the rest.
We all know.
If they found his face.
His name.
Where he lived.
They would stop seeing a child.
"He's too little," I whisper.
"I know," Manuel says.
This time his voice cracks slightly.
Liora rubs her thumb over my fingers.
"Cael told us from the beginning."
Manuel says nothing.
"And my father warned us too," I add.
"I know."
There is no need to repeat that entire argument.
We already had it.
More than once.
Cael opposed the way it was being done.
My father never accepted that distance would come without consequences.
And still, those of us who ultimately had to decide accepted that risk because the alternative seemed worse.
It does not make the pain smaller.
"He cried," I say. "He called me Mommy and I didn't go after him."
Manuel tightens his hold.
"Because running after the vehicle wouldn't have stopped it."
"What kind of mother agrees to stand still?"
Liora meets my eyes.
"One who believed standing still might keep her son alive."
I hate the answer.
And yet I cannot say it is false.
Liora moves closer.
"I miss him too, Joha."
Her lips tremble.
"I think about his room. Whether he's eating. Whether he sleeps. Whether he asks about us."
Manuel stays silent for several seconds.
"So do I."
Nothing else he could say would fix it.
So he does not try.
I am grateful for that.
We remain together.
I do not know for how long.
There is no correct sentence.
No explanation capable of erasing Jhosep's voice calling for me.
Little by little, the dream retreats.
It does not disappear.
It simply settles behind my eyes.
When I lie down again, Manuel stays beside me with one arm around me. Liora settles on my other side, holding my hand beneath the sheets.
None of us falls asleep immediately.
Neither do I.
The guilt does not leave.
It only learns how to stay quiet.
•••
Morning comes.
Pale light slowly enters through the window.
Cold.
Manuel barely sleeps.
His face looks calm, but not peaceful. His brow is slightly furrowed, one hand closed over the sheet.
Liora is still beside me.
I do not want to move.
Morning comes anyway.
Cruelly normal.
To the world, Jhosep has been at the Unit for two weeks and three days.
To the world, it is a decision already made.
An identity hidden.
A child kept beyond the reach of those looking for him.
To me, it is still the same moment.
The same vehicle.
The same closing door.
The same voice calling to me through the glass.
Mommy.
Don't leave me.
•••
I do not know when I finally get up.
My body moves before my will does.
A while later, I am in Selene's room, helping her dress.
My little girl stands in front of me while I straighten a light blouse. Her hair is still messy from sleep.
"Mommy, you're squeezing me."
I blink.
I am holding the fabric too tightly.
"Sorry, sweetheart."
I loosen my grip immediately.
Selene looks at me for a second.
Then stays still.
One button.
Then another.
Smooth the sleeves.
Small things.
Things that should not hurt.
"Are we going to the garden today?" she asks.
"Yes. Later."
"And Nii?"
My fingers stop.
"What?"
I heard her.
Perfectly.
Selene looks up.
"Why hasn't Aunt Lauren brought my brother back?"
I do not answer.
"It's been a lot of days," she continues. "Does Nii not want to come home?"
Jhosep's voice returns to my head.
Mommy.
Don't leave me.
I stare ahead.
"Mommy?"
I open my mouth.
Nothing.
The door opens softly.
Liora appears in the doorway.
She looks first at Selene.
Then at me.
She understands.
"Selene, sweetheart. Come here. I'll finish."
The little girl turns toward her.
"Mom, is Aunt Lauren bringing Nii back today?"
Liora approaches.
"I don't know, love. Your brother is there to learn some things and to stay safe."
Selene frowns.
"But he already learned for lots of days."
Liora kneels in front of her.
"I know."
"Then he should come back."
The sentence is simple.
Terrible.
Liora looks at me.
"Joha, I'll finish."
I nod.
Selene follows me with her eyes as I move away.
"Mommy?"
I stroke her hair.
"I'll be back, sweetheart."
I leave the room.
In the hallway, I rest a hand against the wall.
I do not cry.
I only breathe.
Once.
Then again.
And I keep walking.
•••
Manuel stood in the inner garden.
He was beside one of the stone paths, hands clasped behind his back, staring at the trees.
The wind stirred the leaves.
His face remained calm.
Anyone watching from a distance might have thought he was enjoying the silence.
Anyone who truly knew Manuel would know better.
His calm was a wall.
Since Jhosep had left, Manuel had become quieter.
Not colder.
Quieter.
An employee approached.
"Sir Manuel."
"Speak."
"Mrs. Silvia has arrived."
Manuel turned.
"My mother?"
"Yes, sir. She's in the sitting room."
The employee hesitated.
"She brought luggage."
Manuel fell silent.
That changed things.
His mother had not come simply for coffee.
"Tell my mother I'll be there shortly."
"Yes, sir."
Manuel remained in the garden a few seconds longer.
Then returned to the house.
•••
When he reached Selene's room, he knocked twice.
"What are you doing?"
Selene recognized his voice.
"Daddy!"
She ran to him.
Manuel lifted her and settled her against his chest.
"Are you ready?"
Selene nodded.
"Mommy was helping me, but she got weird."
Manuel looked at Johana.
Then at Liora.
He did not need to ask.
"My mother is here."
Liora looked up.
"Silvia?"
"She's in the sitting room. She brought luggage."
Selene raised her head.
"Grandma is here?"
"Yes."
"Did she come to see us?"
"It seems so."
Manuel looked at Johana and Liora.
"Let's go."
As Johana passed beside him, Manuel lowered his voice.
"Can you?"
She understood.
"Yes."
Manuel held her gaze.
"I'm here."
The four of them walked toward the sitting room.
•••
Silvia was sitting with a cup of coffee in her hands.
Several pieces of luggage stood beside her.
Selene reacted first.
"Grandma!"
Manuel set her down and she ran to Silvia.
"My little one. How have you been?"
Selene hugged her.
"A little sad."
Silvia leaned back enough to see her face.
"Why?"
"Because I can't be with my brother."
Johana looked away.
"I want to play with Nii."
Silvia stroked her hair.
"I know."
"Is Aunt Lauren bringing him back soon?"
A brief silence followed.
Silvia did not make promises.
"He's somewhere they can take care of him and teach him some things."
Selene frowned.
"But I take care of him too."
"I know, love."
"Then I can go with him."
"Not now."
Selene lowered her head.
"That's what everyone says."
Silvia hugged her.
"You can show me your flowers later."
"One turned yellow."
"Then we'll have to look at it."
"Now?"
"In a little while."
Selene accepted that.
Once she had left with an employee, the atmosphere changed.
Manuel looked at the luggage.
"Mother."
"Son."
"You arrived without warning."
"I warned you."
"Less than two hours ago."
"And yet here you are."
Liora looked away.
Johana could almost imagine the reply Manuel was holding back.
He breathed slowly.
"What's going on?"
Silvia set down the cup.
"I'm going to the Unit."
Johana looked up.
"Today?"
"Today."
Manuel glanced again at the luggage.
"That doesn't look like an afternoon visit."
"It isn't."
"Does Lauren know?"
"She knows I'm coming."
Manuel watched her.
"That's not the same as knowing why."
Silvia did not deny it.
"Lauren will survive the distinction."
Liora released a short breath.
Manuel looked at his mother.
"Mother."
"Manuel, I didn't come here to argue with you."
The answer was not sharp.
Only final.
"I'm visiting my daughter. Officially, I'll review a few things at the Unit as well. There is nothing strange about me being there."
"And actually?"
Silvia looked at the three of them.
"Actually, I'm going because my grandson has been away from his family for two weeks and three days."
Johana lowered her gaze.
Silvia continued.
"I understand why you sent him. I'm not reopening that argument. But you cannot keep appearing at the Unit without risking Jhosep's identity."
"You can," Liora said.
"Yes."
Johana leaned forward slightly.
"Are you going to see him?"
"I'm going to try."
"Lauren may stop you."
Silvia lifted her cup.
"She may try too."
Manuel intervened before the conversation drifted.
"Mother. Discretion."
Silvia looked at him.
"I know."
"It can't look like you have a particular interest in him."
"I'm not going to walk the halls announcing that he is my grandson."
"Only a few people know who he really is."
"Pedro already explained the situation."
Manuel fell silent.
"My father knows you're going?"
"Yes."
"Does he agree?"
Silvia took a sip.
"He knows I'm going."
Manuel watched her for several seconds.
"I'll assume that's all you're going to tell me."
"Good choice."
The tension eased by a fraction.
Then Silvia turned to Johana.
"I need you to tell me what you want me to say to him."
That ended any chance of continuing the argument.
Johana clasped her hands.
"Tell him we love him."
Silvia nodded.
"That we miss him."
"I will."
Liora added,
"Selene asks about him every day."
Manuel remained silent for a few seconds.
Then said,
"Tell him he did nothing wrong."
Johana looked at him.
Manuel continued.
"We don't know what he thinks happened. He may believe he was taken there because of something he did."
"Yes," Johana whispered. "Tell him it wasn't because he misbehaved."
Silvia nodded.
"That I can tell him."
"Without explaining things he shouldn't have to carry yet," Liora added.
"I'm not going to talk to him about family secrets or enemies."
Johana swallowed.
"He might ask when we're coming."
Silvia did not answer immediately.
"I won't invent a date."
Johana nodded.
"But I won't let him think you forgot him either."
That was enough.
For now.
"Hug him," Johana said.
Silvia looked at her.
"If he wants… hug him for me."
Liora squeezed Johana's hand.
"For both of us."
Manuel lowered his gaze for a moment.
"And for me."
Silvia nodded.
"I will if he lets me."
She promised nothing more.
Perhaps that was why Johana believed her.
Manuel stood.
"I'll prepare the vehicle."
"One."
"And security."
"Discreet."
"Two people."
Silvia looked at him.
"Two is fine."
Selene's voice sounded from the distance.
"Grandma!"
Silvia turned.
"It seems my business in the garden is still waiting."
Before she left, Johana called her.
"Silvia."
She turned.
"Tell him his mommy loves him."
"I will."
Liora added,
"And that his mom Liora does too."
Silvia nodded.
Manuel took a little longer.
"And that Daddy thinks about him every day."
Silvia held her son's gaze.
Then left.
Jhosep was still far away.
That had not changed.
But someone was going to him.
And for that morning, it would have to be enough