Father and daughter lost in the Pyrenees: five years later, hikers discover what was hidden in a crevice.

Twenty feet away, they found the second clue: a small metal container with an expiration date two years after his disappearance. This puzzled them. It seemed to indicate that someone, not necessarily Julián, had brought food there after 2020.

“Is it possible someone used this crack as a hiding place?” asked one of the technicians.

“Or that someone found Julián and Clara,” replied Morel. “And didn’t report it.”

From that point, the descent became more difficult. The crack widened on one side, forming an irregular cavity. Shining a flashlight around the area, they saw what appeared to be a small makeshift camp: the remains of an electric blanket, an empty can, a short rope, and, at the bottom, a partially wet notebook.

Morel carefully opened it. Many pages were illegible, but a few words were discernible: “not coming up,” “wait,” “injured,” “we hear voices.” There were no names, but the handwriting appeared to be Julián’s.

The most disturbing sentence appeared on a central page:

“I can’t move. She must stay…”

The sentence ended there, truncated, as if Julián had abruptly stopped writing.

“Something serious happened here,” Morel said. “Julian was injured, but Clara is still alive.”

The most likely hypothesis was that they had been trapped after a partial fall. But one crucial piece of information was missing: none of the bodies were present. And given the depth of the cave, it was unlikely they had managed to escape on their own without leaving a trace.

While exploring the cave, one of the rescuers found markings on the wall: three vertical lines repeated several times, like a rudimentary code, perhaps used to count the days.

“There are at least thirty marks,” he reported.

Thirty days. A month trapped.

Media pressure increased, and the police expanded the search area. For the first time, a previously unthinkable hypothesis emerged: the involvement of another person.

And this theory was strengthened when, at the end of the day, a rescuer found a modern and relatively new rope, which belonged neither to Julián, nor to Clara, nor to the teams working in the area.

“Someone has been here,” said Morel, looking at the mountain as if it might answer him.

But the mountain remained silent.