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You don’t remember closing your eyes, but you awaken to warmth. Not the comforting kind, like the embrace of woven blankets or the padded grass of the hills. Something unnatural, something slightly unnerving. The ground beneath you shifts as though it’s breathing, rising and falling, up, then down, in a slow, steady rhythm.

The air shimmers with an iridescent haze that bends the light into colors you’ve never seen. Vast arrays of indescribable spectrums.

Your gaze drifts upward, and you see it—the jacaranda tree.

Its canopy is as vivid as you remember. A cloud of violet blossoms sways gently in the breeze that doesn’t brush against your cheeks. The branches twist and weave into gnarled, disturbing patterns. The bark is split in several places, cracks glowing faintly with an inner light that pulses like a slow, faltering heartbeat. The blooms lazily drift to the ground. You expect them to land softly, but the moment they touch the land, they shatter with the harsh sound of clay breaking.

The shards liquefy instantly, pooling into dark streams that slither away. They carve jagged paths across the withering land. Veins of decay split the ground open, as the cracks spread and spider outward. You’ve seen this before—this crumbling world, this endless rot. But this time, it doesn’t feel as ethereal as before. Rather, it feels final, definitive.

Amidst the ruin, the jacaranda stands untouched, defiant. Soon, its petals fall faster and faster, the discordant crashing is all you can hear. Without warning, the sky suddenly droops, and the colors leach away. First, it’s the gold of the sun, then the violet of the blossoms, until all that’s left is gray. You remain tethered to this unraveling place, as if it refuses to let you go. Or perhaps it’s you who won’t let go.

“Brother.”

The voice is soft, familiar.

You turn your head, and there she is. A young woman stands beneath the tree, her dark hair hanging in loose waves over her shoulders and tattered black and gold cloak. Her form is exactly as you remember—or it would be, if not for the glaring distortions that prickle your skin.

Her red and orange dress is frayed, as though it’s been dug up and pulled from the depths of a grave. Her face is pale, and her lips move in slight delay to the words that spill forth, the synchronization just barely off.

“I’m glad you’ve returned,” she says, sounding slightly muffled like she’s speaking underwater.

You try to speak, but your voice catches in your throat, swallowed by the air that thickens like syrup. As she steps closer, you notice her movements are almost jerky, disjointed, like a puppet on strings you can’t see.

“You’ve been gone too long,” she continues. “I feared you wouldn’t find your way back.”

You find your voice, but it feels distant, as though it doesn’t belong to you. “Back to what?”

Her smile flickers, there and gone in an instant. “To what matters,” she says. “To what’s left.”

You take a step forward, but the ground ripples beneath your feet, rebelling against your movements. Her strange, quicksilver eyes meet yours, and you feel exposed, as if she sees something in you, as if she’s staring deep into the essence of your being.

“The tree,” she says, gesturing to the jacaranda. “Even when the world around it dies, it blooms still. An amazing thing.”

You glance at the blossoms again. Even more fall now, more than any one tree can possess. The sound of their shattering echoes louder. The liquid they leave behind snakes closer, and the smell of rot rises with it.

“What is this place?” you wonder aloud.

“This place?” She tilts her head, and for a moment, her expression softens, becomes almost childlike. “It’s ours. It’s always been ours. Haven’t you seen it before? Haven’t you felt its pull?”

The haze thickens, and the dreamscape ripples like a mirage. The ground beneath you seems to sway, the rhythm no longer comforting, but erratic.

“This isn’t real,” you mutter.

Her face darkens, and the air grows heavier. “Real? What does that mean to you?” With each step, her body flickers slightly like a flame about to go out. “Does it matter? It breathes, it waits, it listens. Isn’t that enough?”

The blossoms fall faster now, shattering in a cascade of sound that feels like it’s burrowing into your skull. The liquid spreads, rising in thin streams, reaching for you.

“Do you hear it?” she asks, whispering almost conspiratorially. “Do you hear the voice? The one that calls even now?”

This woman is not making sense. What voice? you question. The only sound filling your ears are the shattering blossoms. But before you can respond, the ground beneath you lurches. The tree creaks as its branches twist into something grotesque, something like an open maw, reaching for the sky.

The jacaranda tree groans deeply like a beast is contained within it. Now the petals begin to fall in a sudden, violent cascade. They shatter against the soft, breathing ground. Instinctively, you reach out. But the moment your fingers graze the bark, it splits open beneath your touch.

The branches twist in on themselves, curling like claws. The tree bends, its form buckling inward as if collapsing under its own weight. The once-vivid purple blossoms darken, and their hues seep into the air like spilled dye, staining the shimmering haze around you.

“Brother,” the young woman says again, but her voice cracks and fractures, splitting into two, then three, then a dozen overlapping voices. Her face fractures and reforms, each iteration slightly different, distorted. Her lips move, but the words reach you out of sync, layered with otherworldly whispers that don’t come from her mouth.

“You must listen,” she pleads. “The threads are breaking. They’re unraveling faster than they can be mended.”

“Threads?” you think you hear yourself ask. “What threads?”

Her form blinks again, and she’s no longer standing in front of you. Instead, she’s farther away, beneath a vast sky that has turned discolored and disorienting. Mountains now hang inverted above you, with their peaks mirrored by roots that reach down toward the ground like searching fingers. River currents flow upward, carving jagged lines across the fractured sky.

The ground beneath your feet trembles, splitting into fragments that shift and tilt. The dark void between each segment faintly pulses like the beat of a distant drum. The young woman’s voice comes from everywhere and nowhere all at once.

“It was never whole,” she says, layered with regret. “Not even then. You’ve always seen only the pieces.”

You stumble forward as the ground tilts dangerously beneath you. “I don’t understand! What are you talking about?”

She doesn’t answer. Instead, the jagged cracks spread wider, revealing bizarre shapes within the void. They twist and writhe, coalescing into forms that are barely human, distorted faces with mouths full of rotting and decaying teeth that open and close without sound, features smudged as though wiped by an unseen hand.

It’s subtle at first, the pull. Like a gentle tug at the edge of your consciousness, a nudge. Then it grows stronger, more insistent, dragging your unwilling body toward the void. You fight against it, your breath quickening as your feet skid across the trembling ground, hands clawing at whatever they can grab.

Instinctively, you reach for your chest. Your fingers search for the reassuring presence of the amulet. But it’s gone. Panic rises within you like a tide, .

“Where is it?” you whisper, your hands clutching at empty air. “Where is it?”

The young woman’s voice echoes faintly, so far away now it’s barely more than a memory. “You’ve always seen only the pieces.”

The pull grows stronger, and you can feel it now. There’s a dark presence, watching. The faces in the void twist and stretch, their mouths forming silent words that somehow burn into your mind: He is here. He has always been here.

You stagger backward, your heart pounding against your ribs as if trying to escape your body. Your foot slips, gravel and pebbles cascading down the face of the cliff and into the abyss. As you try to regain your footing, the ground beneath you splinters further, leaving you teetering on the edge. The young woman appears again, flashing in and out of focus.

“The balance has tipped,” she says, barely audible over the roar of your own heartbeat. “And it will fall further still.”

“What are you talking about?” you shout, though your voice feels small against the vastness surrounding you. “What balance? What do I do?”

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Her gaze meets yours, and her eyes hold a glint of pity. “You’ll know soon enough,” she says softly, her voice trembling like the ground underfoot. “Soon enough.”

Her form dissolves entirely this time, dissipating into the haze like smoke. The void surges forward, swallowing your surroundings—the tree, the mountains, the rivers, and everything else. You fall upward, and the last thing you hear is the rhythmic thrum of a far off heartbeat.

The air clings to you like wet fabric. It envelopes you, constricting your movement and closing in until you think your ribs might snap. The strange, cracked ground drags at your feet, whipping you to and fro. Shadows loom on the periphery, just outside your vision. Their slithering forms shift and twitch as though alive, before falling apart into a mist.

The jacaranda tree is gone now. There’s no sign of the young woman or the strange voice that taunted you moments before. Ahead of you, a faint glow shimmers like a distant torch. You’re helplessly drawn to it. You find you’re not so much stepping toward it as you are floating above the fractured ground.

Figures begin to emerge from the darkness. At first, they’re nothing more than vague and formless silhouettes. But as you move closer, they take a more defined shape. The first is a man. His broad shoulders and steady posture are unmistakable to you, except his weathered face is a pale reflection of what you remember. He wears ceremonial robes of deep red and black with gilded edges that somehow shimmer faintly in the dark. His long hair spills down onto his shoulders like a waterfall. With great sorrow and unbearable grief, he watches you.

You try to call to him, but the sound dies in your throat.

Then, beside him, the light shifts, and she appears.

A woman steps forward into the fractured glow. She moves gracefully, as though soaring above the ground like an eagle. Her skin is traced with deep black tattoos, forming elaborate patterns that spiral across her collarbones, coil around her arms, and bloom like jagged wings across her chest. Her headdress gleams like a sunburst, with circular stones that are etched with ancient symbols, symbols you feel must come from some familiar place. Could they be Atima? Some other lost faction? Around her forehead, there’s a band of deep green that glimmers, and ghostly pale feathers are ethereally illuminated against the darkness.

You don’t know her, and yet somehow, deep within your bones, you do.

She tilts her head, watching you as though she’s studying something inexplicable. The air ripples and bends around her like heat off sun-scorched stones. When she speaks, her voice splinters like cracked clay, reverberating within the air that surrounds you, attacking you from every possible and impossible angle.

“So you’re the one of whom she speaks, eh?” she says, assessing you. The voice fractures and folds over itself, one moment gentle, the next flint-sharp, as though her voice has been multiplied, like shouting across the valleys and having the mountains speak back to you. “Hmm… Not what I would’ve expected at this point in your journey.”

The words sink into you, anchoring you like stones in water. You want to move, to speak, but all you can do is watch her eyes—those dark, endless eyes like lakes under a new moon.

Her hand rises, hovering just above the spiral that pulses at your feet. For a fleeting moment, the ground steadies beneath her. Light curls around her fingers like fireflies, then fluttering about her palm and wrist.

“Why do you run?” she asks. But you’re not running, though you very much want to. You want to leave this strange place behind, return to the waking world. Because, surely, this must be a dream. Some kind of bizarre realm where those who sleep travel to as their body rests peacefully. It is then that you notice the overwhelming sensation of cold, like the winters you grew up with back home.

Home. Where is your home? Why does the concept of home feel foreign and familiar, all at once?

Where are you right now?

The woman looks at the glowing embers now swirling about her arms with nonchalance. “Some run because they fear the fire. Others run to it, because they fear what will happen if they don’t.”

The pulse grows louder now, rattling through your chest, matching the rhythm of your own heart. Thump. Thump. Thump.

“Is there a difference?” you manage to croak. This voice still doesn’t feel like yours. Who is speaking? Is it you? It continues anyway, “Running to something… running away. No matter what, it’s still running.”

Her lips curve into something that might have been a smile, if not for cold indifference in her demeanor. “Perhaps,” she says softly. “But one choice protects. The other merely preserves.”

She kneels at the spiral again, grazing her fingers at its surface. The symbol spreads, its lines and coils expanding across the void.

“We broke ourselves to protect this world,” she continues. “Not because we wished to preserve ourselves. We broke to preserve you. All of you.”

Images flash in your mind. Figures you can’t name, faces half-formed. A warrior holds a shattered spear. A woman with golden hands reaches out to hold back a storm. A child with eyes like embers, crouched in a field of ash.

“Why?” you ask. Your voice cracks like a whip, words piercing the silence like lightning striking the plains. “You sound as though you regret your choice. So why do it at all? Why would anyone make that choice? Why destroy yourself?”

“Because someone always must.”

The cracks widen again, spilling dark into what little light remains in this place.

“When the gods call,” she says, “some answer because they love this world. And some answer because they’re afraid of what will happen if they don’t.”

Now, she looks at you, judging you. “Which are you?”

“I don’t know,” you choke, and the admission tastes like blood. “I don’t know.”

Her face flashes with disappointment. Or pity. Or, perhaps, something far worse.

“You will.”

The ground beneath you vibrates harder now, each tremor crawling up your legs, into your ribs. The man, who this entire time has remained silent and unmoving, stays beside her. He doesn’t look at you, can’t bring himself to look into your eyes.

“Father?” you whisper, though you don’t know why you use the word.

Though his mouth is closed, the man seems to speak, his voice resonating in your head, as soft as wind through reeds. “Protect the balance. Don’t let him unravel what was woven.”

The woman stands taller now, her tattoos seeming to glow like veins of dark light. “We are only as whole as the wounds we hide.”

The hum becomes deafening. The man’s image—your father’s image—crumbles into dust, scattering like ash in the wind. The woman’s silhouette lingers only a moment longer. Her green band shimmers one last time before she, too, begins to dissolve.

“All is not yet lost,” she murmurs, before her form evaporates into smoke. “But you must act before it’s too late.”

And then—

You are standing in the middle of a battlefield.

The air reeks of ash and burning flesh. Fires bloom across the landscape, staining the sky black. Bodies are strewn like fallen leaves in autumn. Faces are obscured, lifeless hands somehow still gripping weapons.

It’s every war you’ve seen. Every battle fought in Pachil, past and present, merged into one.

A tremor draws your gaze upward.

There, towering over the chaos, stands a figure. His form is monstrous and immense, wreathed in fire and shadow. Gold rays emit from the silhouette’s body, darting out at all angles like beams from the sun. You can’t see his face—the white hot glow emanating from behind the person is too blinding—but you know him.

Xiatli.

He calmly raises an arm, and the ground quakes. The battlefield convulses. The figures on it collapse one by one. They’re the blinking images of the Eleven, strewn about the land. Their contorted and gnarled forms shiver where they lay, before they vanish entirely, snuffed out like water dousing a campfire.

“No,” you whisper in a dry rasp.

You’re kneeling before the spiral.

It pulses, getting brighter, and brighter. The coils of the markings shift and twist, floating about like fish in a pond. It’s the only thing that feels real, something you can touch. You grab the symbol, noting how warm it is in your palms. You’ve seen this before. You don’t remember when or where, but it lives in you, is a part of you.

The hum grows louder, vibrating up through your knees, into your bones. It’s the beat of your own heart now, pounding against your chest in frantic time.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Then, you see the reflection—your reflection—staring back at you from the beyond. Except it’s not you. Not quite. The eyes are wrong, darker, deeper. Though your mouth doesn’t move, its lips twist into a faint, unkind smile.

You stumble back, but there’s nowhere to go. The ground behind you crumbles, slipping into nothing. The spiral of the symbol is all there is in the black, empty void, drawing you toward it like a current pulling a ship into its depths.

And then you hear her again.

“I told you not to follow.”

You spin toward the voice. Standing at the edge of the spiral, the young woman from before, the one who called you “brother”, watches you curiously. Her bare feet sink into the quavering stone. She looks almost real, almost whole, but her form continues to blink in and out of view. With her hand hovering just above its surface, she kneels beside the spiral.

“You don’t belong here,” she says softly. The sadness in her voice is discomforting, unsettling. “Not yet.”

Her hand lowers, and where her fingers touch the spiral, the stone cracks. Thin fissures spread outward, splitting the coils apart. You shout—Stop, please, stop!—but the words fall out of your mouth like stones.

The cracks spread faster now, veins of jagged black slicing through what little light remains. You feel it pulling at you again, the void stretching open beneath your feet. You try to stand, to fight against it. But you’re being yanked into the abyss as though it were quicksand, each step, each effort of resistance only sinking you further.

The woman looks up at you solemnly. “He’s coming,” she almost mumbles incoherently, sounding wounded, helpless.

“He’s always been coming. It was our fault.”

The spiral suddenly shatters completely. The hum becomes a roar, drowning out your thoughts, your gasping breath. You’re falling now, falling without end.

The void shrinks around you, tightening like a closing fist. The heartbeat thunders in your ears—but it’s not yours. It’s too loud. Too deep. No, this is something older, something that has stood the test of time, something that has been here for generations upon generations.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

You can’t move. You can’t scream. The pressure builds, and builds, crushing you from all sides. Any remaining breath flees your chest in a soundless gasp as the walls of the void close in, folding you into yourself. It doesn’t feel like death. It feels like erasure. Like being unmade, ground down to dust.

Through the violent roar, the woman’s peaceful, calm voice comes through:

“Not yet.”

Her form blurs, slips into shadow. You realize you’re no longer falling. You’re floating. Suspended. You can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t think. But you don’t need to. You’re too overcome with a sense of warmth, of calm. As if this abyss is nurturing you.

But then—

The heartbeat slows.

You look down and realize something is clutched in your palm. You don’t remember picking it up, but it’s there. It’s a small, carved stone, worn smooth and cool to the touch. The spiral, the symbol, is etched into its surface. The symbol that’s been following you all this time, that you swear is carved into your bones, is here, on this rock.

What is this?

You call out to the void. You think you’ve called out to the void. No answer comes. Only silence.

After several heartbeats, after several lifetimes—just faintly—you hear it.

A whisper.

It wisps through the dark. It brushes against your ear. At first, it’s too soft to understand. Something spoken by someone from somewhere far away. You strain to hear it, to understand what it said, but the sound slips through your fingers like sand.

You open your mouth to speak, to ask for the voice to repeat itself, to ask something, anything. But a force slams into you, dragging you backward. The light disappears, replaced by dark.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The heartbeat is slower now, fading into the distance. The stone with the spiral in your hand feels heavier, colder, like it’s sinking into your skin. Like it’s causing you to sink deeper into this darkness.

Before everything goes silent, the last thing you hear is the faintest hint of her voice. Two simple words that linger in your mind.

“Not yet.”