She snipped the cinturón with a pair of rusty shears. The leather fell to the ground—and instantly withered into dust.

That night, a fog rolled down from the peak—thick as wool, cold as a key turned in a lock. The engineers' chainsaws rusted solid. Their trucks would not start. And one by one, each man found his belt missing: leather, nylon, even the drawstring from their work pants.

In the high, windswept mountains of the northern Sierra Madre, there was a village that did not appear on any map. Its name was Tagoya.

Lola looked at him with eyes like polished obsidian. "A promise is a belt," she said. "It holds nothing unless you choose to buckle it."

Héctor woke at midnight to find Lola Abad standing in his tent. She held the blood-red cinturón, looped once around her fist.

"You have taken what is not yours," she said. "The mountain remembers every footprint. The leather remembers every cut."