The King in the Dark.

The night began like any other in the southern stretch of San Tercero, that labyrinth of cracked pavements and flickering streetlights where dogs barked at nothing and the air always smelled faintly of rust and smoke. The Flinch family lived in a narrow row house that leaned against its neighbor as though too tired to stand alone. Inside, thirteen-year-old Harold sat by the window with a pencil stub and a piece of torn paper, trying to copy the shape of the moon. His older brother, Diego, fifteen and restless, tossed a tennis ball against the wall again and again until their mother told him to stop.Outside, a car idled for too long.“Someone’s out there,” Harold murmured, peering through the cracked blinds.Diego rolled his eyes. “You and your ghosts again. Probably the night watch, that’s all.”But Harold had a way of seeing danger before anyone else did. He noticed things-the slight glint of metal beneath a man’s jacket, the way silence sometimes pressed harder than sound. When the

Years passed like shadows crawling across broken walls—slow at first, then gone before either brother noticed. The docks had given them a name, but the streets beyond gave them purpose. By fifteen, Harold and Diego were no longer just survivors; they were fixtures in the city’s underbelly, half-known faces in a hundred whispered stories.The slums stretched out from the harbor like a bruise—alleys choked with smoke, markets where voices rose over the stink of meat, the constant rhythm of a city too tired to sleep. The brothers lived in a shack made of stolen tin and plywood, tucked behind an auto repair shop whose owner didn’t ask questions as long as they didn’t steal his spark plugs.Diego had grown taller, shoulders broad, voice roughened by smoke and arguments. He ran errands for small-time dealers, carried packages, sometimes guarded backroom card games for a few coins. Harold stayed quiet, working his mind like a blade, writing in his black notebook every night under the flicker

The city had a cruel rhythm that didn’t stop for pain. Somewhere in the south blocks, under a flickering streetlamp, Diego Flinch learned that lesson with his face pressed against wet concrete, his ribs cracking under a boot.“Where’s our cut, kid?” growled one of the extortionists—a thick-necked man with yellow teeth and eyes that glittered like broken glass.Diego spat blood, refusing to speak. His defiance made them laugh, a harsh chorus echoing down the empty alley. They beat him until the laughter turned bored, and then they left, kicking over a trash bin as if to punctuate the insult.He lay there for a while, tasting iron and dust, watching the orange glow of a distant window where someone else was safe, warm, and far from this kind of night.When Harold found him, dawn had started to bleed through the clouds.“Jesus, Diego…” Harold knelt, touching his brother’s bruised jaw. “Who did this?”“Doesn’t matter,” Diego muttered, half-conscious. “They just… wanted to remind me we don

The city was never quiet, not even at night. It breathed through the cracks of every broken streetlight and hummed under the sound of sirens far away. For Harold and Diego Flinch, that hum became the rhythm of survival.It began small — a series of daring robberies, no one expected from two teenagers. They didn’t hit banks or armored trucks. They hit the people who thought no one would dare — dealers too greedy to share, corrupt cops who skimmed extra from their own, low-level gangsters drunk enough to brag about their cash.Harold planned every move with surgical precision. Diego executed them with fire. Together, they created something the streets hadn’t seen before: discipline.--------One humid night, Diego crouched behind a stack of crates near the old freight yard, his breath fogging in the moonlight. Across from him, Harold knelt with a map spread over a crate, tracing lines with the tip of a pocketknife.“Three guards,” Harold said quietly. “Two by the gate, one in the office

The rain hadn’t stopped for three days. It fell in heavy, gray sheets, turning the back alleys into streams of mud and oil. The city felt quieter now, as though the fire had burned not just a warehouse, but a piece of its own heart.At the edge of Saint Rose Cemetery, under a crooked tree that dripped water like tears, Diego Flinch stood in a soaked black coat, staring at a small wooden box half-buried in the mud. The coffin was too small for truth. It was empty - everyone there knew it.Only four people stood with him: Luis, Cruz, an old priest whose eyes were too tired to ask questions, and Salgado’s replacement from the port, a man named Ramos who smoked through the service. The priest’s voice trembled through the downpour.“From dust we came, and to dust we shall return…”Diego wasn’t listening. His thoughts wandered back to the warehouse, to the blast, to Harold’s voice shouting Go! right before the light swallowed everything. He hadn’t seen any body. He hadn’t found a trace. But