The cold silence of the Puebla central morgue felt heavier than ever. Doctor Esteban Fonseca stood frozen before the stainless steel table, staring at the unsettling words inked onto the young nun’s skin. Beside him, his assistant Camilo clutched a pair of surgical scissors, his breath coming in shallow gasps. Just moments ago, the body of Sister Beatriz—a young, devout member of the secluded Convent of Santa Clara—had been delivered under mysterious circumstances. Her sudden demise at the cloister had baffled local authorities, prompting an urgent mandate for a full autopsy. But as Esteban prepared his scalpels, a tear in her heavy black habit revealed a deliberate, written warning etched directly onto her back: Do not perform the autopsy. Wait two hours. What you need is in the pocket of my habit.
Esteban stared at the message, feeling a chill that had nothing to do with the refrigeration units lining the room. His fifteen years of medical practice had prepared him for gunshot wounds, horrific accidents, and complex homicides, but never for a direct plea from a corpse. Camilo took another step backward, his eyes wide with a mixture of fear and reverence. The young assistant reached into his pocket and pulled out his rosary, his knuckles turning white as he began muttering frantic prayers.
“Doctor, we need to call the director,” Camilo stammered, his voice quivering. “This isn’t normal. This is witchcraft, or worse. The police said her heart just stopped, but look at her! Someone wrote on her before she died!”
“Calm down, Camilo,” Esteban said, though his own heart beat loudly in his chest. “If someone wrote this on her body, it means she was alive when it happened, or someone had access to her immediately after her death. Look at the handwriting. It’s erratic, shaky, as if it were written in extreme haste or under immense physical pain.”
Esteban looked down at the young woman’s face. Sister Beatriz looked remarkably peaceful, almost as if she were in a deep, undisturbed slumber. Her skin had a strange, translucent quality, entirely uncharacteristic of a body that had been lifeless for hours. There were no signs of trauma, no lividity, no rigidness setting into her muscles. She appeared almost preserved, wrapped in a silence that seemed to hold a heavy secret.
Recalling the message on her back, Esteban slowly reached out with a gloved hand toward the deep pocket sewn into the side of her heavy wool habit. Camilo flinched, stepping forward as if to stop him, but held his tongue. Esteban’s fingers plunged into the dark cloth, feeling around until they brushed against a hard, rectangular object wrapped in thick parchment. ✉️…
