Madrid, they say, is a city of souls, a melting pot of light and shadow where time is chewed slowly at the bar counters and swallowed quickly on the highways. A city that embraces you and suffocates you, that sells you the sky in its fiery sunsets and drags you to hell in its dead ends. The city has many faces, but none lie as much as the one it reveals in broad daylight. Because beneath the asphalt, beneath the roar of cars and the chatter of rushing, Madrid keeps secrets. Old secrets, with a damp smell, like the bones of a city that has bled a lot and has yet to finish licking its wounds. Sometimes, those secrets stir, seeking air, and when they do, the city writhes, and the night becomes blacker than usual.

This story began in an abandoned and ruined hermitage, a stony scar on the skin of the outskirts, where the past clung to the walls like ivy. There, in a niche dedicated to a missing saint, we find a man. Hanging. By his feet. As if the world had turned upside down just for him.