There were moments in the life of a man that seemed to go on forever.

How much time did I spend looking into my father’s empty eye sockets, desperately searching for a hint that the skull within my hands was a clever forgery? My heart wished to believe in a lie, when my reason knew the truth well enough. I sensed no soul in this empty skull, no shadow hiding in the dark in an attempt to deceive the Lords of Terror; only the remnants of paternal warmth and the lingering scent of betrayal.

The silence would have lasted forever, had Mother not broken it.

“I did it for you,” she said quietly.

My hands gripped my father’s skull so hard I heard it crack within my palm.

“If you had killed him yourself, you would have become a Skinwalker,” Mother said. It might even be true, but her words reeked of a shamed soul’s pitiful attempt to justify her hideous crime. “They wanted to stain your soul forever, beyond repair.”

Chamiaholom’s laughter resonated across the stands, her cruelty echoed by the mocking chuckles of half her siblings.

My sorrowful heart burned with the kind of blinding fury no word could ever describe. I raised a hand at the stands in my rage and unleashed the power of the Blaze upon its spectators. A torrent of all-consuming flames devoured the Lords of Terrors as I turned the very power they taught me against them.

It failed to silence Chamiaholom and her colleagues. The fire devoured their flesh and bones, only for new ones to grow and replace the old in an instant. My flames didn’t burn so hot that they could kill the fears of men.

“It’s useless, sweetheart,” Chamiaholom said after calming down, almost kindly. “We are you. We are humanity. We are life.”

“So long as fear endures in the heart of men and gods, so shall Xibalba stand eternal,” Hun-Came added. “No spell nor prayer will end us, child.”

“Besides, why attack us, my dear?” Chamiaholom asked. “We only accepted your mother’s sacrifice. She brought him to us out of her own free will, although she was under no obligation to do so.”

“Nor the only option available,” Ahalmez added, the Lord of Control.

I was about to throw another Blaze at these monsters, if only to calm myself, when their words struck me like a slap to the face. My head snapped in Mother’s direction, whose guilty expression immediately confirmed my suspicions.

“The ball sacrifice can be anyone sufficiently close to the sorcerer,” Chamiaholom explained cheerfully. “Your consorts’ souls belong to Lord Yohuachanca by right and are out of our jurisdiction, but your father and mother were both eligible sacrifices.”

I glared at Mother, who held my gaze back. The fact she would cowardly choose to save her own life over Father disgusted me to my core, but hardly surprised me. This woman abandoned her own children to save her own skin, and then never risked her life to save us from the Nightlords. She was a craven coward; the kind only my selfless Father could love.

My predecessors were right from the start. Their marriage was always bound to end badly.

I knew Mother was capable of sacrificing Father for the sake of saving her own miserable life, but I also understood the depths of affection he felt for his family. I wasn’t enraged enough not to see through the Lords’ attempts to sow discord between us either.

“Iztac–” Mother said, though I didn’t let her finish.

“Was he willing?” I cut in, although I already suspected the answer. If she dared to callously throw him away… “Did you tell Father what fate awaited him? Did you ask for his permission before you sacrificed him?”

Mother stared at the ground. She covered her eyes, as if to hold back tears of dust.

“Yes,” Mother whispered quietly, her voice breaking. “Yes, when I told him one of us would… would need to disappear for you, he…” She sobbed. “He volunteered.”

My blood turned to ice as Mother collapsed on her knees, her nails scratching her face in bitter regret. Her wail of agony echoed across the halls with such strength it silenced my anger with compassion and shared sorrow.

Mother was no actress and saw open displays of affection as weakness. I didn’t think she was capable of faking such deep depths of grief; and neither did the Lords of Terror accuse her of lying, though it would have certainly widened the wedge between us. For all of their cruelty, they were an honest and lawful sort of evil.

Father gave away his afterlife for his family’s sake.

A wave of deep and profound grief overtook me, as cold as my anger had been warm. It sapped me of my strength until my heart-fire’s light grew quieter than embers. I couldn’t muster the might to stay angry at Mother.

I didn’t even have the strength to cry.

“You should have told me,” I muttered under my breath, my hands cradling Father’s skull. “You should have told me.”

If she had, we… we could have found another way. There had to be another option we hadn’t considered, had those two fools not acted so hastily!

“You would have become a Skinwalker either way,” Mother said, her voice so terribly weak in her throat. “I… your father and I made the best call we could–”

“The best call?” My jaw clenched. “You knew this would happen! You…” My eyes widened in horror as a dreadful thought crossed my mind. “You knew this would happen.”

Mother had passed the trials before me. She must have sacrificed someone close to her to escape it the first time too; maybe one of her surviving parents who had abandoned her, or a friend I knew nothing of–if she was even capable of forming such a bond.

She knew the Lords of Terror would force me to select either of my parents as my sacrifice to pay Xibalba’s twisted toll the moment she invited me inside this cursed city. Yet she hadn’t done anything to smuggle Father out of Xibalba, nor warn me of the danger ahead. I didn’t think that she was incompetent enough to simply forget, especially after I cleared one trial after another.

Which meant…

The fire within me glowed like the sun, my eyes alight with hatred.

“You thought I might sacrifice you, didn't you?” I asked, the words choking on my throat. “Even though you knew Father would have taken that burden out of love… part of you feared I would choose you anyway.”

Mother signed deals with the Lords of Terror to set up her small owl nest in their basement. One of the clauses likely compelled her to answer their summons or forbade her from running away. Creating a home inside the House of Fright meant binding oneself to its inviolable laws.

Since Mother couldn’t skip town to avoid risking her soul, she secured insurance.

“Yes indeed, sweetheart,” Chamiaholom confirmed my suspicions, her lips stretched into a ghastly smile of absolute joy. “Your dear mother always planned to sacrifice her beloved husband should no other soul fit Xibalba’s demands.”

“Even in this, she disappointed us,” Ahalmez complained. “The truth is that your mother found herself unable to go through with the bargain. When we asked her to sever her husband’s head from his corpse, her resolve faltered. She tried to offer us a substitute.”

A substitute?

A shiver ran down my spine. I could only think of one hypothesis.

“Astrid,” I said, the name echoing through the hall like a curse. “You tried to sell them Astrid’s soul.”

Ahalmez let out a droning sound which I took for a snort. “Why do you think she saved her life in the first place, child?”

A wave of nausea seized me over. Of course Mother wouldn’t think I would risk so much just to save Astrid on her sister’s behalf, or for the sake of protecting an innocent. If I put so much on the line to protect that child, it must have been because I cared deeply for her; perhaps enough for Xibalba to take in my parents’ place.

“We refused, of course,” Chamiaholom said. “The girl doesn’t mean that much to you, and Xibalba demands heartbreak. Even if the House of Fright had accepted her request, our brave Itzili wouldn’t let her argue her case.”

“That man sacrificed himself out of his own free will,” Hun-Came said. His cold, emotionless voice betrayed a hint of respect. “He did not fear me. He did not fear death.”

Mother didn’t even dare to look at me, nor contest their claims. She simply clenched her fists and brought them down on her thighs, struggling to suppress sobs. I had no doubt that her reaction was genuine.

It must have been a pretty new and disturbing experience for her, to feel shame.

Oh, I was sure she tried to cheat her way out of this obligation. Her obsession with a soul-transfer spell made a lot more sense as an escape plan to safeguard her and Father’s souls from Xibalba’s grasp. My mother loved her husband enough to work on saving him.

But whenever she had to choose between a loved one and saving her own skin, Mother always put herself first. She would rather weep over Father’s demise than die for him.

I had no pity for her. I was no stranger to anger and bitterness; they had fueled me long before the Nightlords had enslaved my soul. What I felt for the wretch who brought me into the world went far beyond mere wrath. My entire body shook with absolute disgust. My heart had become a depthless abyss of contempt and baleful hatred.

Mother’s obvious regret only made it worse.

“That’s what broke you, isn’t it, honey?” Chamiaholom taunted Mother, her tongue licking her lips as if she could savor our pain. “The knowledge that your husband loved you and your son so much that he was willing to bear eternal suffering on your behalf. That his affection for you was as deep as the sea, and pure like the dawn. That’s the kind of love that only comes once in a century.”

“And now, it is gone forever,” Ahalmez said, cruelly salting our wounds with his venom. “You will never find anyone willing to love you like he did, Ichtaca.”

And Mother knew it all too well. The truth cut through all of her lies and deceit, even the ones she told herself. She must have expected Father to require some convincing before agreeing to the deal, or even thought she might have to force him to go along with it. She never expected him to give his soul away for her sake without question, because the thought of doing so herself never crossed her mind. Only when he went along with it did Mother realize she had sacrificed something priceless.

She only understood Father’s true value when she lost him.

“I was wrong…” she muttered, both to me and to herself. “I was… wrong…”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

It was so easy to feel remorse or guilt after the deed was done. Feeling sorry cost us nothing. I was guilty of that sin too, of wallowing in self-pity for the crimes I’d committed to survive. Part of me supposed I ought to owe Mother some sympathy and understanding over it.

But the wound went too deep this time.

I could have forgiven Mother for sacrificing Necahual, Ingrid, even so many others whom I loved if it meant saving Father; I would have even wavered for Eztli or Chikal, even though the latter carried my child. I held great affection for all of them, but as much as I loved them, they weren’t the man who had raised me from birth. Father was blood. He had been with me since my birth, and even in death sought to alleviate my burden in any way he could. That kind of kinship ran deeper than the bond between men and women, or between friends sharing a common purpose. I would have traded any other soul for his own.

I would have forgiven Mother for sacrificing anyone else.

I knew it was hypocritical to condemn Mother for something I was guilty of. I had killed so many people in the name of my own safety and mission to take down the Nightlords. It was her refusal to seek any other alternative first, to cravenly fold under the tiniest bit of pressure rather than fight back with all her strength, that nauseated me to my core.

I was sure the Lords of Terror counted on this reaction. I had been acquainted with plots often enough to see the strings guiding us toward a fateful conclusion. The doors out of Xibalba should have already opened if there was nothing more to say.

I still had a choice to make tonight.

“What did you do with my father’s soul?” I asked the Lords of Terror, my voice quieter and sharper than an assassin’s blade.

“It now belongs to the First Fear and Xibalba,” Hun-Came replied calmly, his staff stomping stones. “Eternal terror shall be his afterlife.”

My spine straightened with purpose. “Unless I offer a substitute?”

“Yes,” Hun-Came confirmed.

Mother ceased her weeping. Her eyes stared at me with confusion, then the fear of prey who suddenly realized she was now facing the direst of dangers. My face might have been made of stone and my eyes of ice for all she knew; and when she turned to look up at the Lords of Terror, she only saw a pack of scavengers hungry for more death and despair.

“You said we would be safe,” Mother protested.

“You are both safe from us,” Cuchumaquic the Hunter replied. “One may still slay the other.”

This was the Lords of Terror’s final gamble. Either let my father’s demise go unavenged for my personal gain, since Mother had more to offer me; or sacrifice her and stain my soul with kinslaying.

Mother met my gaze. How quickly she forgot her grief when in the throes of fear. I supposed it made sense why she would find herself at home in the House of Fright’s basement; terror had always been the roots supporting the tree of her life.

“Iztac,” she said. “Iztac, this is what they want–”

I only said a Word.

“Bow.”

My power seized her heart and body. I saw her surprise when she sensed a spell unknown to her overtake her will and compel her to follow my command.

She resisted of course. Her limbs struggled against my absolute order, and she already summoned the Doll’s dark talons to defend herself. Whether she intended to fight or free herself from my compulsion I didn’t know. I didn’t care either way.

“I said…” My eyes burned with hatred as I spoke with the voice of the Godspeaker feared by millions of slaves and foes. “Bow!”

My Word shook the walls of Xibalba. Its weight forced Mother’s forehead to hit the ground with a smacking sound, her hands gripping the chalky bone dust covering the floor and her talons of darkness vanishing. All of her willpower and magic hardly amounted to token resistance before the inevitable submission.

Even the Lords of Terror shifted in their seats. Though they only had to only make a small effort to resist my compulsion, the mere fact that they had to at all filled my heart with grim satisfaction.

“Bow to your emperor, Ichtaca,” I ordered. The fact that this wench gave birth to me once would not afford her any pity. “Your life is in my hands now.”

Her hands shook with the awful dread of the condemned. So absolute was my power over her that no word nor breath escaped her mouth; she could only bow, and fear.

“Do you see her now, Iztac?” Ahaltocob the Abused asked through his stitched lips. “Do you see her for what she is?”

“Yes,” I replied, my voice brimming with contempt. “Yes, I do.”

I didn’t need the Gaze to see past the veil Mother surrounded herself with.

From the very moment I met her, she had tried to portray herself as a powerful witch with access to forbidden knowledge and talents I did not possess. She reveled in secrecy and the image of a vile thief of souls, daring and dangerous, when she was neither of these things.

She had some power, yes, but what use was power when its owner feared to wield it? Mother hadn’t used her gifts to wage war on the Nightlords who oppressed her, or carve out a kingdom of her own. She chose to hide instead. She abducted the souls of the dead who couldn’t defend themselves, terrorized civilians like Necahual, and searched for ways to steal another’s flesh to escape the icy grip of death. She had spent her entire life running.

Mother was weak.

She had always been weak. A craven soul too afraid to take the risks required to achieve true greatness. She was the kind of pitiful, fearful creature that only my father could love.

“You never dared to face Tlaloc yourself,” I guessed. “You knew the angry god would see through your lies and flatteries the moment he saw you. You were afraid he would smite you, so you put your hopes on me; the very son whom you had abandoned.”

Mother had so many ways to contact me, whether in the world of the living or the land of the dead. She could have used the Ride on a servant, called upon the Yaotzin to carry out a message, or any other method. Instead, she only met me once I entered Tlalocan and crossed into the Underworld’s second layer, when I would be of use to her.

“Speak,” I said, one Word freeing her from the other.

The tension overtaking Mother’s body didn’t abate. It simply came from within rather than without this time. She didn’t dare to meet my gaze again. She knew I would tear out her eyes if she tried.

“Iztac…” Mother gulped, struggling to find her words. Although she had given birth to me, she didn’t know me well enough to know how to talk me out of killing her. “Once we become gods, we can save your father, get him back–”

“Once we become gods?” Such foolishness would have made me laugh bitterly, if I still had enough patience left to feel joy. “You do not have what it takes to become a god, Mother. You never did.”

“You sought godhood to free your heart from fear, you foolish shadow of a witch,” Ahalmez declared with mocking condescension. “But you had it all wrong from the start.”

“Wrong,” Vucub-Came whispered in the dark. “Wrong way, the other way…”

“Only the bold may reach the heavens, either as gods or demons,” Hun-Came declared calmly. “No coward has ever become a sun.”

“To be truly evil or truly good demands unwavering determination,” Ahaltocob said. “The fearful can only aspire to mediocrity.”

“The pain of others may buy favors from the strong,” Ahalpuh and Ahalgana spoke at the same time. “But true power requires personal sacrifices.”

“Again and again you have tripped on your ascent to power,” Xic taunted Mother. “Putting your faith in your wayward son, who you had cast away in the name of your own safety.”

A voice arose from Patan the Lonely, so low I could hardly hear it. “You sought solitude not out of inner strength, but weakness,” he whispered. “You are unworthy of greatness, Ichtaca.”

“This is your true fear, sweetheart, the one you will never escape no matter how deeply you hide it,” Chamiaholom concluded. “Insignificance.”

Mother had misunderstood the heart of sorcery and the nature of power; the truth which I learned from Queen Mictecacihualt’s story of how the Fifth Sun came to be. Only those willing to sacrifice themselves could aspire to shine in the heavens. Those too scared to offer themselves to the pyre were condemned to linger in the shadows of brighter souls.

Mother bit her tongue. “My son–”

“Blood won’t save you,” I cut in pitilessly.

“I can still be of use,” Mother pleaded, her nails scratching the floor. “I know so many spells which you do not, and Astrid…”

“If you had any secret spell worth teaching me, you would have already used it to free yourself from my grip. I have the means to recover Astrid too, should you perish.” My eyes narrowed on her. “You have nothing to offer me, except prayers.”

Mother quickly found her faith.

“My son…” She sobbed in fear and powerlessness. “Please, Iztac… I…” Her voice broke in abject dread. “I don’t want to die…”

“Die?” I snorted in disdain. “You won’t die.”

An ominous silence followed my declaration. I had spooked demons and witches alike.

“If I kill you now, I will become a Skinwalker. You can still be of use to me, Ichtaca…” I marked a short pause. “And Father wouldn’t want you to die.”

I respected his memory too much to go through with this. Not after he sacrificed himself for her. For us.

Neither would I let the Lords of Terror win, no more than I would either suffer living in a world where the Nightlords could get away with their crimes.

I looked up at this charade’s true playwright, at the beating heart of Xibalba to which the so-called Lords of Terror were no more than thralls and prisoners. My trials and this parody of a game were all meant to feed this grotesque abomination.

It was the only audience that mattered.

“Xibalba! Heed my words!” I raised my father’s skull at the First Fear, not as a prayer, but a demand. “Return my father’s soul back to me, healthy and whole, and I swear to you that I shall shepherd this world to its ultimate terror! The thirteenth fear that surpasses all others!”

I clenched my free fist to the heavens.

“I am the fear of the gods!”

Some Lords of Terror emerged from their silence to laugh at me, but they were few in number. The likes of Hun-Came among them had sensed it too, same as me; that subtle imbalance in the pounding that coursed through Xibalba.

The First Fear’s heart had skipped a beat.

I had its undivided attention.

“I am the blood on the altar!” I boasted. “I am the priest who burns the heathens! I am the heavens’ judgment and the tribute of flesh! I am the prophet that foretells the doom of kings and commoners, the Godspeaker whose every miracle is a curse! I am the calamity that punishes the faithless and the faithful alike!”

I was the dread that the Nightlords made of me, the mask through which the First Emperor foretold the end of the world, the sorcerer who brought forth a Fire Dawn.

“I am the fear of the gods true and false!” I declared to the heart of terror itself. “I teach men that the gods exist, but do not care for them! I show them that the heavens relish their suffering and drink their tears! I am the fear that the world is not cruel by chance and indifference, but by design and purpose! I am the fear that we were created to be laughed at and toyed with! I am the fear that this Fifth Sun shall end like all the others before it, to be replaced at the whims of its makers and destroyers!”

I staked my claim on the House of Fright which my soul called home. In a world where the image of power carried a strength of its own, I was careful to put on a great show.

“Your slaves each embody a single fear, but I wield them all, weave them, bring them!” I dismissed the Lords of Terror, these thralls and parasites whom I had overcome one after another. “I kill in the light and plot in the dark! I bring forth calamities and lure men to sin! I wage war and spread pestilence! I starve my lovers of their strength and crush my foes! I enslave and abuse at my command! I madden the weak and cast down the strong from their thrones! Have I not fed you all well on the fruits of my kingdom?!”

Had there been any emperor since the First who had sown more terror and suffering than I did? Had any of my predecessors woken up the mountains, humiliated the Nightlords, and sowed the seeds of a war that would engulf an entire continent? What mortal could boast of causing so much destruction in the mere beginning of his year-long tenure?

And I was just starting.

“If you wish for a banquet of fear, then do as I command!” I ordered the First Fear. “For as I trample the Sapa underfoot and bring ruin to Yohuachanca, as I ascend to godhood to take my rightful place in the bloodstained skies, I shall teach mankind the folly of praying for mercy when the heavens have none! But if you do not relinquish my father’s soul…”

My free hand burned with the flames of my hatred, which had consumed so many souls and set alight so many houses.

“Then I swear to you, once I become a god—and I will become one—then I shall rise from the depths of the Underworld to slaughter every last soul on this earth,” I spoke quietly, not with passion, but with the cold determination needed to carry through a war to its conclusion. “The skies will rain fire in a spectacle that will make Tlaloc’s wrath look like a child’s tantrum. I will scorch the lands and seas so quickly its inhabitants won’t even have the time to fear their demise. I will blink, and then they will all be gone.”

The Lords of Terror had grown silent as a set of tombs by then. What would these parasites do, once the men that gave them their life disappeared, with no gods left to raise a Sixth Mankind to replace them with?

Nothing.

They could do nothing, and would return to nothing.

“And once I have buried everyone who could ever possibly feed you, once the lonely Fifth Sun shines on ashes and silence, I shall descend to watch your end. And then you will know fear.” I marked a short pause, my eyes glaring at the first of all terrors. “If you think I do not have what it takes to do that, if you think I am not the kind of player who would rather burn the board than let my opponent win… then you haven’t been paying attention.”

I concluded on these words; not with a threat, but a fact.

For a moment that seemed to stretch on forever, the First Fear appeared to have a stroke. Its bloated heart stopped pounding mist through the House of Fright. Its malevolent intelligence, born of all of mankind’s terrors and cruelty, assessed my claim. After all the crimes which I had committed, all the devastation I had caused, and all the defiance which I had shown in the face of danger, it could only reach one conclusion.

I would follow through with my promise.

And the fearful would always choose submission over death.

My father’s empty eye sockets glowed with ghostfire.

“That’s impossible…” Chamiaholom said, her shocked expression swiftly turning into tears of joy and pride. “The First Fear recognizes his claim!”

Mother dared to look up, her astonishment only matched by that of her tormentors. For the first and perhaps the only time in its entire history, the House of Fright had let go of its sacrifice. I could feel its blessing flow into my heart. It was a small tug, a single word whispered within the depths of my soul.

A name.

“You have been crowned with a new title, Iztac Ce Ehecatl, by which Xibalba shall know you forevermore,” Hun-Came said, his deep, wizened voice oozing pride. He stomped the stands with his staff, then sang my praises. “All hail Cizin, the fear of gods! All hail the thirteenth Lord of Terror! All hail the demon emperor!”

The Lords of Terror acclaimed me in front of my spooked mother and father. The demons applauded, danced, and sang, for they knew the world of the living was now in bloody hands. The scavengers rejoiced at receiving the scraps of a banquet of terror.

“Iztac…” My father whispered feebly. “I had such a terrible nightmare…”

“Don’t worry,” I comforted him. “You don’t need to be afraid anymore.”

I had conquered fear itself.