The zone of silence is calling for them

Threshold of the Zone of Silence, Chihuahuan Desert, Mexico

With a mixture of awe and a desperation that drowned out all other considerations, Seraphina and Rafael followed Don Elías and the young shaman toward the dark mouth of the canyon the old man had indicated as the entrance to the Zone of Silence. The air emanating from the fissure in the rock was noticeably cooler, and it carried with it a silence so profound that it made the previously imperceptible ringing in their ears almost a clamor.

They took their first steps into the canyon, and the outside world seemed to fade behind them, not so much because of the physical distance as because of a subtle but undeniable alteration in the atmosphere. The desert sunlight, which had previously filtered between the rocks, here became diffuse, strange, as if passing through an unknown medium. The shadows were deeper, the colors more intense, and yet, somehow, muted.

Rafael, out of instinct and years of experience navigating dangerous terrain, pulled a small survival compass from his pocket, a reliable instrument that had guided him countless times. Instead of pointing magnetic north, the needle began to spin erratically, first slowly, then with frantic speed, like a crazed ballerina, until it was vibrating aimlessly.

"Seraphina... look at this," he murmured, showing her the instrument. "The magnetic fields here are... completely messed up. Or, they simply don't exist as we know them in the outside world."

Seraphina nodded, feeling a knot of apprehension in her stomach. She tried to activate her small encrypted satellite communicator, a device the White Brotherhood had provided them and that had worked even in the most remote corners of the Sierra Gorda. The screen flickered weakly once, displayed a series of meaningless symbols, and then went dark completely. "So is mine," she said quietly. "No signal. Completely dead. We are... cut off from the world we left behind." The feeling of being irrevocably separated, of having crossed a threshold into the truly unknown, grew stronger.

But the most profound, the most unsettling, alteration was that of time.

They advanced through the canyon, whose rock walls seemed to whisper with the breath of eons, revealing veins of minerals that glowed with impossible internal lights. They walked for what seemed to Seraphina only a few minutes, perhaps ten or fifteen, absorbed in the strangeness of the place and the tension of their quest. Yet when Rafael, out of a deep-rooted habit as a soldier and explorer, glanced at the chronometer of his sturdy survival watch—an analog model that, miraculously, still worked—he stifled a gasp.

"Impossible," he said, showing the dial to Seraphina. "It's barely... barely sixty seconds since we entered the canyon."

Seraphina looked at him, then at her own watch, which confirmed the incredible discrepancy. The minutes here stretched, grew dense, each second seeming to contain an infinity of moments. A brief conversation felt like a long speech. A fleeting thought took on the weight of a deep meditation. They noticed with growing amazement how the minutes in that place lasted much longer than usual, or perhaps, more frighteningly, their very perception of the flow of time was crumbling, being rewritten by the incomprehensible laws of the Zone of Silence.

Time... folds upon itself here, Seraphina thought, the memory of Don Elías's words echoing in her mind. As if we had entered a lucid dream, or the heart of a petrified memory. What kind of power resides in this place, capable of altering the very stream of existence? And what truths will a sanctuary where clocks lie and moments become eternal teach us?

Rafael, at her side, struggled to maintain his pragmatic composure. This defies all logic, all the physics I know, she thought, feeling the hair on the back of her neck prickle. The compass, the satellite, time... everything breaks here, becomes malleable. Are we walking toward the wisdom we seek... or toward the dissolution of our own fragile reality in a sea of ​​paradoxes?

Don Elías and the young shaman, however, walked with imperturbable calm, their steps sure and rhythmic, as if perfectly attuned to this altered temporal flow. The old man even turned around once, and in his dark eyes, Seraphina thought she saw a flicker of understanding, perhaps even compassion, at her obvious disorientation.

They continued deeper into the canyon, each step taking them further from the known world and deeper into mystery. The Zone of Silence was calling to them, and with each minute that stretched into an eternity, the promise of answers mingled with the growing terror of what lay ahead These answers could reveal something about Eleonora, about Aria, and about the very nature of the reality they thought they knew.