Lo Que Deseas — Ten Cuidado Con

Mateo should have been terrified. Instead, he was ecstatic.

He carried the sphere to his studio, feeling a thrum of power up his arms. That night, half-asleep and drunk on cheap wine, he held the obsidian and whispered to the empty room: “I wish for a masterpiece. Something that will make the whole world remember my name.”

“I wish I had never found you.”

The town elder declared it a relic of the old gods. But to Mateo, it was a miracle. Ten cuidado con lo que deseas

That ancient warning has echoed through folktales and whispered warnings for centuries. But for Mateo, a young, restless sculptor in the rain-soaked mountain town of Valverde, it was just a phrase his abuela muttered when he complained about the village’s slow, quiet life.

She set down her mortar. “Careful. That is another wish.”

“I wish something exciting would happen,” he’d sigh, chipping away at a block of local limestone. “I wish my work mattered.” Mateo should have been terrified

Desperate, he ran to his abuela.

He called the town. Word spread. Art critics from the capital took the winding mountain road to Valverde. They called it “The Caged Scream.” They called it “a visceral masterpiece of existential dread.” They paid him sums he’d never dreamed of.

Mateo would roll his eyes and return to his sculptures—twisted figures of saints and monsters, dreams carved in stone that no one in Valverde wanted. The village preferred practical art: functional water fountains, plain crosses for the cemetery. Mateo’s feverish, emotional pieces gathered dust in his tiny studio. That night, half-asleep and drunk on cheap wine,

One stormy October night, lightning split the ancient oak at the edge of town. The next morning, the villagers found something strange embedded in the splintered roots: a flawless sphere of obsidian, cool to the touch despite the lingering heat of the strike. Inside it swirled faint lights, like trapped fireflies.

Mateo woke in his studio. Morning light streamed through the dusty window. The obsidian sphere was gone. So was the sculpture. His hands were clean, his chisels untouched. For a moment, he dared to hope.