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It refuses to stop. As we sit inside the prison chamber, bound by chains, the horrific scene replays over and over in my head.
The thunderous sound—the kind of noise that splits the world in two—still echoes in my ears. Not the deep rumble of a storm, nor the crash of waves against a jagged shore, but something harsher, more alien. A crack of fire and iron.
Teqosa’s body jerking backward, the bright red blooming like a cruel flower against his tunic, the force of it knocking him to the ground as though Pachil itself had reached up to claim him. The look on his face—not pain, not fear, but something worse. A hollow shock, the realization that his body had betrayed him, that even his strength could not stop what had happened.
I didn’t even see the warrior who did it. A flash of motion in the chaos, a strange weapon pointed, then… the sound. And then Teqosa was falling.
I close my eyes, but the image doesn’t leave me. It never does. Every time I blink, it’s there again, as vivid and raw as if it’s happening all over again.
Around me, the prison chamber is oppressively still. The only sounds are the faint clinking of chains as my companions shift uncomfortably, the distant drip of water, and the occasional echo of footsteps far above. The air is stale, carrying the faint scent of ash and something metallic, like rust.
Paxilche lies crumpled against the far wall, still unconscious. His breaths are shallow, his face pale, his normally restless energy snuffed out. For once, he’s silent, and the absence of his voice feels almost as unnerving as the silence itself.
Síqalat quietly sits cross-legged near the door. She hasn’t spoken since we were thrown in here, hasn’t even looked at me. Her stoic silence feels like a judgment, though I can’t tell if it’s aimed at me, at herself, or at the situation we’ve found ourselves in.
Saqatli paces near the corner, his amber eyes flaring like trapped fire. His movements are restless, his hands clenching and unclenching as though he’s holding an invisible weapon. He looks like a caged animal, his frustration and fear barely contained. Every so often, he glances at the door, his gaze sharp and questioning, as though trying to calculate the odds of escape.
I wonder if he’s thinking the same thing I am: that we’re not getting out of here. That this is it. The end of the journey. The end of us.
I shift slightly, and the chains around my wrists clink softly. My arms ache, my shoulders stiff from being bound for so long. The metal is cold against my skin, biting into my wrists with every movement, a constant reminder of how powerless we are.
Reflexively, I glance at the others again. My gaze lingers on Teqosa. He’s still, too still, his chest barely rising and falling. The makeshift bandage I’d pressed against his wound is already soaked through, the blood seeping through the fabric and pooling on the stone beneath him. The sight of it makes my stomach twist.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. None of this was supposed to happen. We were supposed to be the ones who brought hope, who made things better. Instead, we’re here, broken and chained, waiting for whatever comes next. At the hands of… him.
I think of the amulets—the symbols of our mission, of our connection to the Eleven, and to Pachil. The ones we thought would guide us, protect us. Foolishly, naïvely, I thought they meant we were chosen, that we had a purpose. But now, as I sit here in the darkness, I can’t help but wonder if they were a curse instead of a blessing.
The crone’s prophecy rings in my mind, cutting through the fog of despair. Unite them, or destroy them. The words that once felt like a guiding star now feel like a noose tightening around my neck.
The silence stretches on, broken only by Saqatli’s pacing and the faint, labored breaths of Paxilche. I close my eyes again, trying to will the memories away, trying to ignore the questions clawing at the edges of my mind. But they won’t go. They never do.
What if this is what the prophecy meant? Not unity, not triumph, but this—failure, defeat, destruction. What if we were never meant to save Pachil? What if all we’ve done is hasten its end?
A change stirs in the room before he arrives.
It’s subtle at first—a faint vibration in the stone beneath us, a chill that seeps into the room despite the stifling heat of the torches. Then it deepens, grows heavier, as though the mountain is bracing itself, tensing like a body waiting for the strike of a hammer. Even Saqatli stops pacing, his movements arrested mid-step, his amber eyes darting to the door.
And then he is there.
Xiatli doesn’t enter; he unfolds into existence, filling the room as though the universe itself is bending to make space for him. He moves with a deliberate, unhurried grace, and his footfalls are somehow soundless against the stone. The torchlight flickers as he passes, shadows rippling like water disturbed.
His slow and meticulous gaze surveys the room. His eyes are dark, fathomless, and when they meet mine, it’s like staring into the void. Cold. Indifferent. Endless.
He speaks, his voice a low rumble that seems to reverberate through the very walls. The words are sharp and unfamiliar, guttural and clipped. I glance at Síqalat, whose expression tightens at the sound. Whatever he’s saying, she doesn’t recognize it either.
Then his voice changes, and the words that follow freeze me in place. He speaks in Merchant’s Tongue. Fluent. Effortless. Impossible. My mind stumbles over itself, trying to reconcile the sound of my own language in his mouth.
“Interesting,” he says simply, the words simple but laced with something that feels like mockery. “You are not what I expected, I will grant you that. And you hold onto them so tightly, as if they’re yours to keep.”
He gestures, and my stomach twists as I see what he means: the amulets. Their dull glow flickers faintly in the torchlight, almost like they’re alive, pulsing with a slow and steady rhythm. They feel heavier now, pressing against my chest like dead weight, as if his presence has drained them of whatever life they once held.
Almost animalistic, Saqatli growls low in his throat, but he doesn’t move. None of us do. Xiatli’s heavy and suffocating presence seeps into the room, like the air has thickened into oil, clinging to our skin and lungs, slowing even the smallest motion.
He moves first to Teqosa’s lifeless form. His steps are slow and deliberate, as though savoring the moment. His hand reaches out, fingers closing around the amulet still faintly pulsing at Teqosa’s neck. For a moment, nothing happens. Then he pulls.
The effect is immediate. Teqosa’s body seems to deflate ever so slightly, as though some unseen energy had been holding him together. The faint color in his cheeks begins to drain, leaving his already-pallid skin almost gray.
“No,” Síqalat breathes. She takes an involuntary step forward, her hands curling into fists at her sides. But she’s stopped abruptly by the chains that bind her. “Don’t—” she starts, but the words die in her throat. Her jaw tightens, and she takes a deliberate step back, retreating back into the shadows.
Xiatli doesn’t react. He holds the amulet in his hand, turning it over as though inspecting a trinket. The faint glow intensifies for a moment, then fades. He mutters something under his breath, a word or phrase I don’t understand, and tucks the amulet into the folds of his golden robe.
He moves next to Saqatli. Saqatli balls his fists, looking ready to punch this ethereal stranger, but he doesn’t fight. When Xiatli reaches for the amulet, Saqatli flinches, and a low hiss escapes his lips. But in the end, he puts up no resistance.
When the amulet is pulled free, Saqatli collapses to his knees with a strangled cry. The sound is raw, like it’s been torn from deep inside him. His hands claw at his chest as though trying to tear something loose, his amber eyes wide and unfocused, darting as if searching for something that isn’t there.
For a terrible moment, I think he’s dying. His breaths come in jagged gasps, his entire body trembling like a bowstring stretched too far. Then, like a storm breaking, the tension floods out of him. His shoulders sag, his hands fall limp to his sides, and the tight lines of pain etched into his face begin to ease.
His breathing slows to something more uneven and shallow, and his head hangs low. His expression is stricken, haunted. The fire that’s burned inside him since we came here is gone, extinguished, but it’s left a hollowness behind. Relief, yes, but not without cost. It clings to him like a shadow, as though some piece of him has been stripped away with the pain, and he’s only now realizing what he’s lost.
And then it’s my turn.
Xiatli approaches, and something primal seizes me. My chest tightens, my breath comes in shallow bursts. Every instinct howls to run, to lash out, to do anything—but my body refuses to obey. My legs feel heavy, as though they’ve been poured full of molten lead, and a cold, electric current courses through my veins, locking me in place.
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It’s not fear—it’s something deeper. The kind of terror that roots prey to the ground when a predator’s shadow falls over them. His gaze pins me like a blade through the chest.
His hand brushes the amulet at my neck, and the connection I’ve always felt to Pachil—the warmth, the pulse, the life—trembles. My breath catches, my heart pounding in my chest as he grips the cord. When he pulls, it’s like a part of me is being ripped away. The room tilts, the air thinning, and I feel a hollow ache in my chest, like an old wound reopened.
I watch as the amulet hangs in his hand, still faintly glowing. They felt like the means with which we could save Pachil from the likes of people—of beings—like him. And yet, in his grasp, they feel like something else entirely. Was this what the Eleven intended? To leave behind tools of power that could be twisted and stolen? Or did they, like us, believe they were doing the right thing, except in our pursuit, we allowed evil to seep in? The thought churns in my stomach like sour fruit. If even the Eleven—saviors, legends, gods—could falter, what hope do we have?
He studies the amulet for a moment, then mutters another word in that unfamiliar language. The glow dims and fades, and I feel the loss like a physical blow. My connection to Pachil—the land, the rivers, the sky—it’s still there, but muted, distant, as though I’m trying to hear a voice through a thick stone wall.
“You’ve carried these,” Xiatli says coldly, blankly. “But it appears you were mere messengers, delivering the good news to Me.”
He steps back, holding all the amulets now, their glow pulsing weakly in his hands. “They are pieces of something greater. A power beyond you. Beyond your kind.”
Suddenly, the glow fades completely, and the amulets are still. In that moment, Xiatli’s expression darkens. Without a word, he turns and strides out, his departure as silent as his arrival. The iron door slams shut behind him, reverberating like a grim toll.
I force myself to crawl toward Teqosa’s body, the chains binding my wrists dragging along the cold stone floor. He lies unnaturally still, his skin pale, almost ashen, in the dim torchlight. His once-vibrant form now seems small and fragile, as if the life has already bled out of him.
My hands tremble as I press them against the wound at his side. The sticky warmth of his blood is jarring, a cruel contradiction to the chill that radiates from his skin. I’ve never seen an injury like this before. There’s no jagged tear, no familiar mark from a blade or arrow—just a small, brutal hole surrounded by bruised and broken flesh. Whatever those strange weapons were, they are nothing short of monstrous.
“Wasting your time,” Síqalat says, her voice cold and distant. She’s sitting against the far wall, her head tilted back and her gaze fixed on the ceiling. “He’s gone, Walumaq.”
I shake my head, more to myself than to her. “We don’t know that,” I say, though the words sound hollow even to my ears. I pull a strip of cloth from the edge of my tunic and press it against the wound, trying to stem the bleeding, though a part of me knows it’s futile.
Síqalat exhales sharply, her lips curling into a bitter frown. “You saw what those weapons did to him. There’s no coming back from that.” Her tone is pragmatic, almost clinical, but there’s an undercurrent of something else—something rawer, angrier, that she’s trying to bury beneath her stoic façade.
From the shadows, Saqatli paces restlessly, the chains on his wrists rattling softly with each movement. His wild amber eyes dart between the door and Teqosa’s body. He mutters something in the tongue of the Auilqa—low, urgent, like a prayer or a curse.
Then, he stops abruptly, his gaze locking on Síqalat. “Qa'maq chutza!” he spits the words forcefully, though their meaning is lost to us. His frustration is palpable, his fists clenching and unclenching as though he’s itching to strike something—or someone.
Síqalat meets his glare with a cold, steady gaze. “You think pacing like a trapped beast will change anything?” she snaps. “What would you have us do? Break these chains and fight our way past him?” She gestures toward the door. “You’d be dead before you took the first step.”
Saqatli growls low in his throat, his eyes narrowing, but he doesn’t reply. Though he doesn’t speak our tongue, perhaps, somehow, he knows she’s right. Or perhaps he simply doesn’t have the words to argue. Either way, his pacing resumes, more restless and erratic than before.
“Enough,” I assert. They both fall silent, their gazes snapping toward me. My hands are still pressed against Teqosa’s wound, though I know it’s pointless. The bleeding has slowed, not because I’ve stopped it, but because there’s nothing left to give. His body feels colder now, the faint warmth of life slipping away.
“We can’t afford to fight each other,” I say, my tone softer now but no less firm. “Not here. Not now.”
Saqatli mutters something low and unintelligible under his breath, as though in direct response to me. But, ultimately, he resumes his pacing, occasionally kicking the stone ground as his chains clink softly with each step. Síqalat exhales through her nose, her lips pressing into a thin line, but she also doesn’t speak.
Resigned, I lean back, my hands falling away from Teqosa’s still form. My wrists burn where the chains have rubbed the skin raw, and my shoulders ache with every movement. I close my eyes, letting out a slow, unsteady breath. Everything—the prophecy, the journey, the lives we’ve lost and those we still stand to lose—crashes down at once, pressing into my chest like a vise, stealing the air from my lungs and leaving me hollow.
Unite them, or destroy them. The crone’s words repeat in my mind, as haunting as the day she spoke them. I thought I understood what they meant. I thought I knew my path. But now, with Teqosa’s blood on my hands and the shadow of Xiatli looming over us, I wonder if I’ve been a misguided fool all along.
The door creaks open, and the air grows heavy once more.
Xiatli’s return is neither sudden nor loud, yet it pulls every breath from the room. His movements are unhurried, but there’s an unmistakable finality to them. The torchlight dims as he enters, as if even the flames cower in His presence.
None of us speak. None of us move. Even Saqatli, who had been pacing restlessly just moments before, stands frozen, his chains limp in his hands. Xiatli’s cold and oppressive gaze sweeps over us once again, like a predator deciding which prey to devour first.
He stops just beyond Teqosa’s body, his gaze sweeping over each of us in turn. His eyes are like an empty abyss, and I feel as though he sees everything—every doubt, every weakness, every crack in the facade I’ve tried to maintain. My heart pounds in my ears, and I force myself to meet his eyes, though it feels like staring into an endless void. Don’t look away, I tell myself. Do not let him see your fear.
“You’re the leader, are you not?” Xiatli asks, his voice calm, almost consoling, as though offering some kind of perverse kindness. “The one they follow. The one they believe in.” His gaze lingers on me, studying me as if I’m an insect pinned beneath his thumb. “Tell me, did you think it would be worth it? All this pain? All this loss?”
I open my mouth, but the words falter before they form. My throat is dry, my tongue a dead weight. His question coils around my mind, probing every corner of my thoughts, dredging up every doubt and failure I’ve buried. Did I think it was worth it? To unite Pachil? To find answers in the amulets? Or was I just chasing the impossible—hoping to stand against something like him, a force of nature wearing the mask of a man?
Xiatli doesn’t wait for me to respond. His tone sharpens, cutting through my silence like a blade. “You came here crawling toward answers you were never meant to have, didn’t you? Toward a victory that was never yours to claim. And look at you now.” He gestures faintly toward Síqalat without turning his head. “You’ve dragged them all with you, broken and empty-handed. Tell me… was it worth their lives, Leader?”
“Don’t,” Síqalat snaps, her voice low but razor-edged, trembling with the effort to keep it steady. “Don’t you dare—”
Xiatli doesn’t so much as glance at her. His hand rises, palm outward, and the faintest ripple of energy hums through the air. It’s barely visible, like the shimmer of heat above a fire, but the force of it jerks Síqalat back as though she’s been struck. Her words cut off, her breath comes in short, ragged gasps, though she doesn’t fall.
“I wasn’t speaking to you,” Xiatli says. He remains calm, indifferent. He turns back to me, taking a step closer. “You, however… you interest Me.”
My nails press into my palms, the chains around my wrists biting into my skin. I force myself to breathe, to push back the rising tide of panic. Stay composed. Do not give him what he wants. But it’s easier said than done. Every word he speaks, every apathetic glance my way feels like it’s unraveling me, stripping away the veneer of strength I’ve tried so hard to maintain.
“Do you even understand what you once possessed?” Xiatli asks condescendingly. He raises the amulets, still clutched in his hand, the spectrum of colors from the glowing stones casting eerie shadows across his face. “These relics were never yours. They belong to something greater than you, something you cannot even begin to comprehend.”
He pauses, his gaze boring into me. “And yet, here you are. Pretending to be saviors. Pretending to be anything more than children playing with fire.”
I think of the prophecy, the crone’s words, the promise of unity—or destruction. Were those words meant to guide us? Or were they a warning, a shadow cast by the mistakes of those who came before us? The Eleven, the amulets, the fragments of power we thought would save Pachil—they were all pieces we never truly understood. Did they know what they were leaving behind? Or did they, too, believe they were doing the right thing?
Xiatli’s fingers tighten around the amulets, and for a brief moment, it’s as if the chamber itself reacts. The air grows denser, vibrating with an energy I can’t see but feel in my teeth, my bones, the tender hollow of my throat.
The amulets glow brighter in his hand, the colors bleeding into each other, wild and uncontrolled, like a storm trapped inside a cage of glass. He doesn’t flinch. His gaze remains fixed on me, dissecting, searching.
“I see it in your eyes,” he says, tilting his head, his voice as soft as a lover’s whisper, but sharp enough to cut through stone. “The doubt. The fear. You’ve felt it since the moment you took them. Deep down, you’ve known that this wasn’t your path, but you followed it anyway. Why? Because of some prophecy?” He laughs, a low, grating sound that makes my stomach churn. “Prophecies are for the desperate. They’re stories we tell ourselves when we can’t bear the truth: that our lives are small. That we are small. You built your hope on lies. And now you’ve come here to drown in them.”
The prophecy.
How does he know? The crone’s words were spoken only to me. Yet here he stands, speaking as though he’s always known. My thoughts stumble over themselves, trying to reconcile what’s in front of me. Is he all-knowing? Is he—can he be what he seems? A god?
I want to ask. To demand answers. To challenge him, to tell him he’s wrong. But my mind only churns, wild and chaotic. How does he know?
He watches me, and the faintest curl of amusement tugs at the edges of his mouth. It’s as if he can hear every thought racing through my mind. And maybe he can. Maybe he doesn’t need me to speak at all.
“You think you’re here to save Pachil,” he says, his gaze flicking to the others behind me, their faces pale and drawn. “But you’re not. You’re here to watch it burn.”
“No,” I whisper, the word dragging itself from my throat like a wounded animal. “That’s not—”
His hand rises again, silencing me with a casual flick of his wrist. The ripple of energy that follows is subtle, surreal. I stagger, and the chains around my wrists pull taut. But I barely manage to catch myself before I fell.
“You still don’t understand,” he murmurs. “But you will. Soon, all of Pachil will.” He turns, his gaze sweeping the room, his shadow stretching long and uneven against the stone walls.
“But before then,” Xiatli says, his voice dropping low, “you will tell Me everything. The relics. The journey. The ones who sent you.” He takes another step forward, and his vast and cold shadow stretches over me, swallowing what little light remains, what hope remains.
Xiatli tilts his head slightly. “We’ll start with you,” he says. His lips curl into the faintest semblance of a smile, and the words that follow are a dagger sliding between my ribs. “Let’s see how long it takes Me to break you.”