The obsidian butterflies never run away.
Silence never lasts, it's gone as soon as you drift away.
We're at war within ourselves, the darkness creepin.
When you look up the light is always seeping in.
Enjoy your blessings and the rhythm with dance.
Next thing you know you might turn around and time has caught up, that was your last chance.
The silence in the chamber fractured not with thunder—but with her voice.
Mictecacihuatl, still as ever, yet alive in the hollows between moments, raised her hand and let it linger in the air like the final beat of a heart that knows it must stop.
"Your trial is simple to speak, impossible to complete," she said, and every word weighed heavier than bone.
Cenotlatlacatl and Kamelotl stood side by side. The latter mimicked the former's posture with childish pride, unaware of the tension thickening around them like blood in water.
"You will walk the path of Mictlan," she continued. "But you will not stop there. Your steps must carry you into the realm where roots do not grow, where pain is worshipped and names are devoured. You must reach Xibalba."
Kamelotl's gills twitched. Cenotlatlacatl narrowed his eyes.
"There, in a cage of laughter and knives, a tlacuache waits—" Mictecacihuatl's mouth barely moved, but the name echoed like a child's cry. "He carries a fading ember. You must keep him alive. You must restore what has dimmed."
A dry, derisive laugh broke the still air.
Ix Kame stepped forward from her silk-bound perch, her voice sharp and low: "They'll never make it past the Tz'ikin Mirror Gates," she hissed. "But I will enjoy watching them try."
Cenotlatlacatl turned to her, jaw clenched, but said nothing.
Instead, he turned to Xarátenga, moonlit and gentle. His voice cracked, the plea buried in it: "Please… I only ask one thing. A clue. A direction. Where is she?"
Mictecacihuatl answered before Xarátenga could speak.
"Do not beg, child of wounds. The trials will show you what you must carry, and who placed it there."
But Xarátenga—still, luminous, woven in mist and memory—smiled with eyes deeper than the lake.
She stepped forward and knelt, plucking two cempoalxōchitl from the bed of marigolds at her feet. One orange as sunlit memory. One green as the sickly fire of ashlight.
She held the green first. Ix Kame scoffed again but extended one long, cracked nail and tapped it. The flower shuddered.
From its stem, roots burst, writhing, knotted, as if they longed to climb into something, to feed on memory.
"You may not want it," Xarátenga said, voice barely above silence, "but it wants you."
Then she touched the orange blossom with her own hand. It wept immediately. Dew formed at its center, luminous and clear—the purest Cenotlatlacatl had ever seen.
He stepped forward before thinking, as did Kamelotl. The two stumbled into a bow.
"You kneel to no one," Xarátenga said, smiling with sadness. "But for this, you must lower your heads."
She placed the ashlight cempoalxōchitl on Kamelotl first. The roots latched into his gills instantly—he yelped, but did not pull away. They coiled like snakes, then vanished beneath his skin.
Then she turned to Cenotlatlacatl.
The moment the orange bloom touched him, he felt it: Heat and cold. Love and shame. Her scent. The memory of her voice.
The roots slipped beneath his flesh, and into the feathery gills at his neck. They dug deep—but not to harm. To bind.
He did not wince.
He only whispered: "Thank you."
The roots had claimed them.
But it was not possession—it was direction. For the first time since death and rebirth, since curse and silence, both wept.
The tears came softly at first, pooling along Kamelotl's wide cheeks and dripping from his jaw. Cenotlatlacatl's eyes shimmered but did not close. They wept not from grief—but from the strange sweetness of finally being led.
"I feel it," Kamelotl whispered, his voice uncertain as wind across stone. "It hurts, but… I feel like I finally know which way is forward."
He looked sideways to his brother—not of blood, but of curse. Of path. Of root.
What choice will I make now? What is this freedom I've been granted? I thought I was only meant to be the corrector of sin… What if instead—
He didn't finish.
The ashlight roots spread, slipping like vines through the cracks in his obsidian skin. His gills thickened, not like flesh but like bark, ancient and damp. Fossilized in moments, they stiffened and pulsed, then curled slightly like the leaves of a young tree. The roots descended along his spine, snaking in steady rhythm.
Even his tail-hand, once so monstrous in function, now bore veins of wood and ash. Not fully transformed, but entwined—symbiotic. Like roots refusing to let go of the dying stump they loved.
And Cenotlatlacatl—though his body did not warp, his soul did.
He felt it the moment the orange bloom's dew melted into the markings on his face. Another ring of marigolds spread—not visibly at first, but in sensation. He felt petals unfurl beneath the skin, layer by layer. They spread into the sickly green ashlight markings Mictecacihuatl had left—but now there was order. Now, they bloomed in a circle. A full cempoalxōchitl.
He clenched his jaw when it began to burn. It wasn't pain—it was searing clarity, like fire cutting through fog. A memory of fire, perhaps. Not enough to hurt—but enough to remind him how it felt to burn.
Then the ashlight roots cooled the bloom, quelling the fire like wind silencing a campfire. It didn't vanish—it simply no longer reached him. The warmth remained, distant and unreachable.
Mictecacihuatl stepped.
As soon as her foot touched the ground. The dance of the souls began. A smell like salt and pulque hit the air. The drums reverberated through the ground like the dead souls trying to force themselves through. Ajpakal Kame and Cenotlatlacatl began to dance along with the marigolds and obsidian butterflies. Owls and snakes danced together. Slithering in the ground, and the others silently taking flight. Swerving through the air like petals in the wind. In the middle of their swaying he looked at the goddess's that remained before him
He touched his cheek gently, and without lowering his eyes, spoke to Xarátenga:
"Thank you, Lady Xarátenga, for your blessing. Out of curiosity… what exactly do they do, these marks?"
She looked at him for a long while.
The lake of her eyes rippled. Her voice, as soft as moonlight on obsidian, finally replied:
"They remind the underworlds who you are. They warn the ones who will try to break you. And if you lose your way… they bloom again when you are ready."
She stepped back, and the marigold in her hand faded—its petals drifting up instead of down, floating like dying stars.
"You are not yet what you will become," she said. "But you are now walking toward it."
He turned to Xarátenga first.
A glance of quiet appreciation, like the final glow of a candle before it gives itself to night. She stood still, her long form shimmering in a halo of swaying cempoalxōchitl, their heads bowing not to her—but with her.
Then to Ix Kame, the one born of roots and bones. He did not hate her. He did not trust her. But he respected her.
You carry your duty like obsidian, he thought. Sharp. Faithful. Cold.
And yet—when his eyes narrowed with the defiance of one who had suffered and still stood—he made it clear:
You do not get to shape my trial. You may rule one realm—but not my soul.
With a turn along the beat.
Something shifted.
Cenotlatlacatl blinked, only once.
And when his eyes opened again—
The rhythm was gone.
No more music. No more dancing dead. No more gods swaying in divine theatrics.
Just silence.
He looked down.
They were already on the river.
The vessel they stood upon had no oars, no visible structure. Just petals, bone, and shadows held together by direction. Kamelotl stood beside him, wide-eyed and unsure if he had fallen asleep or awakened for the first time.
The water of Mayu shimmered like obsidian cracked by starlight. They floated through memory.
And in that hush, as the cempoalxōchitl drifted beside them in slow orbit, Cenotlatlacatl remembered.
"Everything has spirit," the old priest had once said. "Even silence. Especially silence. The trees are our grandfathers. The stones are our mothers. The wind is your brother. The flowers—your sisters. And when you are forgotten, they are the ones who will still remember your name."
He watched the petals bend toward him as if in greeting.
And for a moment—only a moment—he bowed his head in return.
But he said nothing.
He let the silence speak.