Chapter 1 - The Dark Awakening beneath the Earth
The cold was absolute, heavy, and smelled of freshly turned dirt.
When Mariana’s eyes fluttered open, there was no light—only a suffocating, pitch-black void that pressed against her face. For a terrifying, disoriented moment, she tried to breathe, but her lungs dragged in air thick with the metallic taste of dust and carbon dioxide. Her head throbbed with a relentless, jackhammer pulse.
Where am I?
She tried to lift her hands, but they brushed against a hard, smooth wooden surface just inches above her nose. She turned her head to the left, her fingers grazing soft cotton and cold skin.
“Mateo?” she rasped, her voice sounding like dry paper tearing.
No answer.
Panic, sharp and electric, surged through her veins. She shoved upward with her right hand, her knuckles striking solid pine with a dull thud. The realization crashed over her with the weight of a physical blow.
A coffin.
She was locked inside a coffin.
Memories flashed backward like a fractured film reel: the birthday cake, Victoria’s sweet, venomous smile, the overly sweet frosting with its bitter, chemical aftertaste, Mateo and Santiago collapsing to the floor, her own chest tearing open with pain, and Rodrigo standing by the window, watching with cold, dead eyes.
They hadn't died of heart conditions. They had been poisoned.
And then she remembered the rest—the rapid, suspicious rush to bypass the medical examiner, the closed-casket funeral pushed through before the sun had even set, and the hurried sound of shovels throwing dirt over her head.
Beside her, a faint, weak cough broke the suffocating silence.
“Mom...?”
It was Santiago. His voice was a thin, shivering thread in the dark.
“Santiago! Mateo!” Mariana wept, the adrenaline overriding her terror as she began to claw frantically at the wood above her. “I’m here! Don’t stop breathing, babies, I’m here!”
“It hurts, Mom... it’s so dark,” Mateo whimpered from the other side, his voice cracking.
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Anger—hot, blinding, and lethal—replaced the despair in Mariana’s chest. Victoria and Rodrigo hadn't just tried to murder them; they had buried them alive to get them out of the way. Whatever was waiting for them up there, whatever vile scheme Rodrigo and his mother were executing, Mariana swore on her life that she would crawl out of this grave and tear their world apart piece by piece.
Using her wedding ring, she began to scrape furiously at the wood grain near the lid’s seam, her nails bleeding, her muscles screaming, driven by the primal, unyielding fury of a mother fighting for her children.
