The Cobalt Monastery of San Ermete

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Rafito el Varado arrived at the Cobalt Monastery just after sunrise, when the cliffs were still holding their breath and the sea below looked like a sheet of hammered blue metal. He had come with nothing but a frayed backpack, a half-written postcard, and the sort of curiosity that makes a man wander into places polite travelers simply photograph and avoid.

San Ermete had been carved into the cliffs a thousand years ago by monks who believed heaven was somewhere between sea-salt air and high stone. The place still smelled of cypress resin and old bells. Rafito liked that. He often said that bell towers were the ribs of forgotten giants, still humming with memory.

The monks accepted him without questions, which was unsettling. Usually someone asked why he had arrived, what he wanted, whether he planned to stay. Here, they simply nodded and showed him where the olives dried, where the manuscripts were illuminated with gold leaf, where the wind passed through the broken parapets like a soft-spoken ghost.

Each night he climbed the oldest tower—the one that leaned slightly toward the sea, as if eavesdropping on the tides. From there, Rafito could see the distant islands, pale as sleeping whales. He tried to write his postcard, but the words kept changing shape, slipping into something more like a confession.

On the third night, a monk named Brother Lirios told him the monastery had been built around a hollow space, a chamber no one entered anymore. “It’s not forbidden,” Lirios said, “just discouraged. Some places keep their own time.”

That, of course, guaranteed Rafito would go.

He descended at dawn, past echoing stairwells and empty kitchens, until he found the iron-bound door. It yielded to him like it had been waiting centuries for the right hinge of curiosity. Inside was a round chamber, windowless, lit only by a thin beam of light that slipped through a crack in the ceiling and touched the center of the floor.

There, drawn into the flagstones, was a map—not of land or sea, but of possibility. Spirals, constellations, strange symbols that resembled both wave patterns and musical notation. As he stepped closer, Rafito realized the entire chamber vibrated ever so slightly, like a plucked string.

When his shadow crossed the beam of light, something changed. The chamber exhaled. The map brightened. For a moment, Rafito felt the unmistakable sensation of falling upward—into memory, into prophecy, into some unseen room inside himself.

Then it was gone.

He returned to the courtyard with dust on his hands and a new steadiness in his stride. Brother Lirios looked at him and smiled knowingly, though Rafito said nothing.

That evening he finally finished the postcard.
It read: “I found a place where the world leans closer to listen. I think I might stay until it answers.”