Story: Manuel Losada | Illustration: Santipérez | Based on an idea by Luis M. Rosales

THE HOUR OF THE THRESHOLD

The Compostela Beach promenade filled up early, with a studied cheerfulness.

It wasn’t a crowd, but rather that calm gathering that forms when people decide to do the same thing at the same time: families with cardboard glasses, kids recording videos before anything happens, couples joking around to mask an awkwardness that’s hard to explain. The city, for once, seemed to be moving in sync.

The day was clear, an August day of the kind that leaves everything exposed: the shimmer of the sea, the salt on the skin, the facades without mystery. If anyone wanted to convince themselves that nothing strange could happen under such brightness, they would have had plenty of reasons.

I went down without any desire to look at the sky.

I said it was out of curiosity, out of routine, to kill time. The truth is simpler: lately, Vilagarcía had a strange pulse to it. Not a noise, not an alarm; something subtler, an unhearable vibration that nevertheless conditioned every movement. As if the body remembered a danger the mind refused to accept yet.

A man was repeating eye safety rules in a firm voice, handing out instructions like someone handing out order. People nodded and laughed. The scene had the look of a festival, but there was tension in the shoulders, too much caution in the gestures.

When the light began to change, no one identified it immediately.

It didn’t drop the way a cloud descends, nor the way dusk falls. It lost intensity slowly, as if someone were reducing the world to a smaller version of itself. The colors lost that excessive summer saturation. Voices dropped a notch. Footsteps sounded drier against the stone.

The first anomaly was minimal. Precisely for that reason, it was unbearable.

The shadows stopped matching up.

It wasn’t a dramatic twist, but a small deviation: just enough for the brain, without knowing it, to take a step back. The shadow of a tree pointed toward the ria with too much insistence. That of a bench didn’t follow the expected angle. Mine, glued to the ground, stretched further than permitted, as if an invisible hand were pulling it from the water.

Someone commented that it was “just perspective.”

Another person laughed, but the laughter died halfway.

The eclipse advanced and the city fell silent without any command. Not because there was no noise, but because an involuntary respect imposed itself. Even the children lowered their volume, as if an adult presence—and a non-human one—were asking them to be careful.

In the distance, the ria began to lose its reflection.

It wasn’t a sudden change: first it turned opaque, like frosted glass. Then, at a specific point, a compact, oily stain appeared, like a film on the surface. The water, for the first time, seemed to have skin.

At that instant, the Compostela Beach promenade ceased to be a friendly place.

It turned into stands.

Into front-row seats.

People raised their phones. The screens responded for a second and then went blind, one after another, as if refusing to translate what was happening. It wasn’t a typical shutdown or a battery failure: it was a clean absence, noiseless, like a refusal.

A boy persisted, pressed buttons, moved his phone searching for coverage. Nothing.

—It’s not recording… —someone murmured.

And that sentence, spoken without drama, did more damage than a scream. Because it confirmed what everyone suspected: what was happening didn’t want to be recorded.

A deep sound settled into the air.

It didn’t come from a specific point; it seemed to be part of the atmosphere itself, as if the entire promenade were a soundbox. It was felt more in the chest than in the ears. It wasn’t music, nor was it wind: it was an ancient, insistent, emotionless vibration.

The clarity kept dropping to its maximum limit.

And then the sky adopted a shape impossible to forget.

The sun didn’t seem to hide behind the moon. It seemed covered by a perfect lid: a disk with no texture, no vibration around it, too exact to be natural. It didn’t convey beauty; it conveyed intention. A closed eye.

The Compostela Beach promenade stood motionless.

And in that silence, the ria moved.

Not the way waves move. There was a deep, slow undulation, as if something enormous were repositioning itself at the bottom. No body or clear silhouette was seen; only the sensation of volume and mass, a certainty of size that defies words. The water behaved as if it felt fear and discipline at the same time.

I understood something with a cold clarity: the sea wasn’t responding to the sky. It was responding to the decrease in light, to that drop in intensity that left the world more vulnerable.

And then a phrase appeared in my head that I didn’t feel as my own thought. It was more like an ancient instruction activating itself:

Do not look. Project.

The word project fell with mechanical weight, like an order that needs no convincing. A protocol.

In that second I saw, among the streets leading from the Compostela Beach promenade toward the center, a rectangular, brief, clean flash. A white light that didn’t belong to streetlamps or cars.

The light of a screen.

A screen turning on where nothing should be lit.

The Salón García.

I wasn’t standing in front of it, but I recognized the gesture. The reflection was too pure to be casual. As if, at some point in the city, someone were fulfilling their part of the ritual: providing light when reality loses it.

The vibration grave cut out.

The oily stain on the ria retreated slowly, as if something were withdrawing to the depths after verifying that the door remained closed. The clarity returned little by little. Colors regained their strength. Voices went back to their normal volume. There were sighs, nervous laughs, some canned phrase to wrap the matter up.

Someone applauded.

The applause sounded out of place, as if celebrating a happy ending without understanding the plot.

People left commenting on how pretty it had been, sharing emotions that fit well on video. The Compostela Beach promenade recovered its mask of normality.

I stayed a few more seconds, looking at the sea.

The ria was calm, but it was no longer innocent. It was the calm of an animal that had decided to wait.

As I walked back toward the center, down a narrow street, I heard something very low and irregular: the startup of ancient machinery, that hum that precedes a projection when everything is still in the dark.

And for the first time all day, I felt true fear.

Not of the eclipse.

Of what came after.

Because the eclipse hadn’t been a spectacle.

It had been a warning.

As long as there is light, they sleep.