David takes a tram to Cemetery Alley, where he locates the Sanabre & Sons stonemason's workshop. Inside, he finds a stone effigy made in his likeness with the inscription, "David Martín, 1900-1930" (570).

At that moment, a small boy arrives and leads David through the Somorrostro shantytown to a white domicile.

Inside, a slim old woman explains that the one people call the Witch of Somorrostro is her mother, who was stabbed in the neck in 1905 by Marlasca. The woman also insists that her mother had no supernatural powers, yet people called her a sorceress because "she was able to see in them what they refused to see themselves" (575).

According to the old woman, Marlasca approached the Witch because "he'd handed his life over to a shadow" (576). Despite knowing the ritual is phony, the Witch told Marlasca of a legend stating that "if he found a pure soul that would agree to be sacrificed in order to save him, he would be able to disguise his own black heart with it, and death, which cannot see, would pass him by" (577).

When David asks for the location of the soul that saved Marlasca, her demeanor suddenly changes. She says, "Perhaps the trapped soul is your own" (579), then unties a scarf around her neck to reveal a scar around her throat, along with her identity as the true Witch of Somorrostro.