Xochipilli's cadence blooms like cempoalxōchitl in the midst of the underworld:
Tetzāhuitl blooming forth in the rain.
Even that isn't enough to wash away what was once pain.
For blood spills to feed such a flower—
sacrifices to ask the gods for power.
Voices escaping from the buds—
cries of mercy sound like thunder to bugs.
A beautiful crimson.
The night sky like obsidian.
The pulque flows freely—so drink and be merry.
Be good in actions, and your souls shall the Xoloitzcuintli carry.
The tunnel ahead began to shift. The stone didn't move—but the path did. A passage unseen by mortal eyes opened slightly to his left. Only for a moment. He veered.
The ahuizotl followed, snarling and gnashing, but something pulled at it—like hooks in its flesh. The deeper they swam, the more it struggled.
Cenotlatlacatl felt it too. The weight of judgment.
This was not a tunnel.
This was a test.
He passed through the veil and emerged into a hidden chamber—round, hollow, still submerged. In the center floated a single obsidian shard, pulsing with the same green-black hue as the ash upon his brow. He didn't know why, but he knew it was meant for him.
The ahuizotl clawed its way in behind him, but its body convulsed. The ashlight poisoned it. It shrieked, shaking violently as if being peeled from the inside.
Cenotlatlacatl reached toward the shard—then paused.
Something whispered behind his ear, not in sound, but in sensation.
A memory?
A truth?
"Only those marked by Death's curiosity may wield her ember."
He gritted his teeth. Grabbed the shard.
The chamber pulsed.
And everything went dark.
The shard pulsed in his palm—cold, hungry, ancient.
It wasn't a blade in the traditional sense. It was jagged, imperfect, sharp in every direction. Not made for elegance. Made for endings.
And he knew—anything it touched would die. Even immortality could rot beneath its edge.
The ahuizotl writhed at the edge of the chamber, howling as the ashlight swirled around him. But it didn't flee. It refused to surrender.
Cenotlatlacatl bared his teeth. "So be it."
With new purpose and a weapon in hand, he turned and dove—back into the black. Back to the beast.
The water churned as they collided again, this time with more than fury. This time with intent. He slashed and sliced, not wildly, but with focus. The shard left trails of sickly light behind, each cut dragging black sludge from the ahuizotl's wounds. Not blood. Not ichor. But something older. Tainted.
The beast screamed. It thrashed harder, raking at Cenotlatlacatl's skin, ripping open new wounds that spilled red into the water. But even through the pain, Cenotlatlacatl smiled.
You feel it now, don't you? The edge of your fate.
The battle bled into chaos—biting, grappling, stabbing, choking. The water turned dark, a tempest of blood and rot, of curses colliding.
Finally, with a brutal kick to the creature's stomach, Cenotlatlacatl wrapped his arm around the ahuizotl's neck and began dragging him—slowly, painfully—into the hidden chamber. The beast resisted, but its movements faltered. Each wound festered. The rot had begun.
As they passed through the veil again, the creature screamed louder than before. The water here—it was different. Thicker. Hungrier. Even the wounds themselves seemed to decay, skin peeling and bloating at unnatural speed.
An altar had risen while they fought.
Obsidian and bone, slick and jagged, jutting out of the center of the chamber like a fang in a black maw.
It called to him. Or perhaps it called to his curse.
Cenotlatlacatl grinned as he pulled the ahuizotl onto the platform. The beast growled weakly, eyes filled with hatred and confusion. And fear.
"You took a leg of mine earlier," he muttered, licking blood from his lip. A twisted snicker followed.
"I guess it's my turn to take something from you."
He didn't strike clean.
He sawed.
Slowly.
Cruelly.
The obsidian shard dug through flesh and tendon with a sound like wet wood tearing. The ahuizotl howled in pain, limbs flailing, tail beating against the altar with hollow thuds. But Cenotlatlacatl didn't stop. He sawed until the leg came free in a spray of black and red. Then he tossed it onto the altar.
The bones rattled.
The air shifted.
Before he could reach for the second leg, the altar began to groan. Bone by bone, it collapsed in on itself. The obsidian cracked and split.
The severed leg atop the altar pulsed once—then burst open. Not with blood. With petals.
Sickly green marigolds bloomed violently from the flesh, their edges tinged with ash. The blossoms waved in the current like tongues of fire, dancing unnaturally, casting flickering light into the chamber.
From within them came flies—dozens, black-bodied with eyes like emberlight. They circled once above the altar, then descended in silence onto the waving petals.
And in those sickly green flames, he saw it.
A memory not his own. A truth buried in time.
He saw the moment the cenote was defiled—his own hands, red with stolen blood, clutching jade and obsidian as he fled from gods and guilt.
He saw the tears fall—Chalchiuhtlicue weeping from the river's mouth, Tlaloc thundering overhead, and the spirit of the cenote—her daughter—screaming in silence as she sank beneath her own waters.
In that place of desecration, the elements twisted.
Blood, obsidian, jade, and divine grief melded into flesh. A form took shape—a thing born not of womb, but of vengeance.
The ahuizotl opened its mouth in that memory, still wet with birth. And from its head, six feathered gill nubs curled—unfinished.
Familiar.
They matched his own.
Tlaloc proclaimed, his voice booming. "If you wish to serve me like the rest of the Ahuizotl do, then you must drag your curse brother down into the depths of mictlan. Offer him as sacrifice and you may enter Tlalocan."
The waters of the cenote spiraled— it was his sin. His twin. His consequence.
Blood from both of them swirled together, forming a spiral in the water—a whirlpool. The platform shook beneath them.
Then the altar cracked fully—and the current took them.
He tried to grab something—anything—but the pull was too strong. The obsidian shards spun around them like broken teeth. The leg spun in the center of the vortex, the marigolds still clinging to it even as petals were torn away.
He tried to scream, but the water swallowed it. A shard struck his temple.
His grip loosened. His breath escaped.
His body fell limp.
And on the still water above, only bubbles rose—silver, soft, silent.
From the bubbles, Tetzahuitl bloomed. Purifying the waters to pristine condition.
Silence, in the land where the Xoloitzcuinte sing.