"Every curse got a chorus, every ghost got a beat…"
Tahtah
Before he was shadow, before the mist claimed his name,
He was just another boy in chains,
No tribe, no fam, no birthright claim—
Only scars like maps and eyes full of flame.
They called him nothing.
But the gods? They watched.
And when he reached for jade, they reached for justice,
With thunder in their hands and grief in their mouths.
Now he walks where the rain don't dry,
Where the cenotes sigh,
Where the water spirits cry…
And the streets still whisper why?
Cenotlatlacatl—
It all begins on a clear night in the cold desert, born on nearly a new moon, darkness all around. Tranquility is a mere transition between the rhythm on a drum, restless and always a fleeting breath, just like the whims of the gods. The perfect night for Tezcatlipoca to roam the lands. With no other gods taking interest in the mortal realm, he roamed the night to his heart's content, freedom! Something even the gods crave above all else. On his night's path, a flicker—like light on obsidian—quickly swallowed by darkness. He soared through the mortal sky, savoring a rare silence—no rage in his chest, no chase on his heels. Only freedom. A very rare night, peace was the only thing on his mind, he knew it would not last long. Peace was rare in a life as long as his. A cry was heard, just barely, as if the sheer dark sky wanted to muffle the sound. "If I ignore it, my peace will last for another mortal lifetime… hopefully" he thought as he headed towards the infant's cries.
He approached to find a village ravaged by war. The souls already heading to Mictlan to begin their long journey. The Xoloitzcuintli could be seen guiding the souls deemed worthy by them. Carried within their fur or lingering upon their breath as a form of transportation. In other places they bit the souls who mistreated animals or other humans through cruel acts. Their howls, songs for the moon, pleading to open a path to Mictlan. What caught his eye above all else was a single hummingbird hovering over a tent.
"Strange, no one should be left to mourn the dead, and it's too soon for the warriors to be reincarnated. That only leaves one reason for a hummingbird to be lingering here." He approached to peep inside the tent, just to find the body of a mother, with babe still inside, the cry coming from his soul rather than the baby's lips. "The unfulfilled love of a new mother, such a travesty" looking at the soul inside waiting to follow alongside its mother.
Tezcatlipoca had a whim, will he regret this moment. Most absolutely, this smelled like trouble, the opposite of peace really. Profoundly long sigh, Was he breathing life into the child… or regretting it the moment it left his lungs. No one knew, maybe not even Tezcatlipoca himself. In the same way he came in, he disappeared into the night. This time with the hummingbird by his side. With the rhythm of a drum, dim at first and then grows strong, the solitary cry in the night brings a smile to the face of the god with a whim.
Years later in a forest. A slave is washing his face in a lake. The cold water shocking him awake.
He caught his reflection in the still water—gaunt, feral, unrecognizable. Would anyone remember this face, if it vanished tonight?
He had no name.
Not one he could remember. If he ever had a mother, her voice had been drowned out by the howls of men and the crack of stone whips. He was a child with no past and no language of his own, passed between warriors like a tool—sharpened, silenced, spent.
They kept no names for slaves. Only bruises. Only tasks. Food, just enough to keep them alive.
By the time he was tall enough to carry a blade, his fingers had already forgotten how to tremble. His earliest memory: being handed over like property, traded to the tribe without name or reason. He was forced to learn to bead and sew clothes for the children of the tribe. By the age of eight he had devoured meat for the first time, his first violent act of thievery from a slave his own age. They couldn't both die, so he took with no remorse. When he was thirteen, he had led three men to die, using the familiar terrain of the jungle to his advantage. Taking their rations and even an obsidian blade he found intriguing. When he was fifteen, he had slit the throat of a jaguar and worn its teeth around his neck. Hoping to finally be recognized as useful to be a warrior of the tribe.
But he was never one of them. Truly a solitary life, with no one to care if he truly lived or just faded away into death. A hope lingered in his heart—that one day, his name might bring a smile at the mere mention of it.
They spoke in half-drunken Nahuatl, laughter thick with smoke and blood. Stories of raids on the southern peoples—the Mayans, with their sunstone priests and jade-rich temples. There was to be a strike soon. One last time before the rains made travel impossible.
He was to carry the spoils. And bleed first if there was danger.
But he had other plans.
The raid was chaos, fire licking the thatched temples, screams buried beneath drums. The priests fought back with obsidian blades, but they fell just the same. The smoke was so thick, he could feel it coating his lungs. After years of surviving being his only priority, the skills he learned were applied for a hopeful haul from the temples.
He did not fight. He crept.
In the chieftain's hall—painted in sky blue and flecked with golden dust—he found it. Wrapped in jaguar pelt, resting beneath a woven banner of Chaac, the rain god of the southern lands: a bundle of jade amulets, heavy with divine charge.
He did not hesitate. He took it and ran.
He didn't look back—not when a horn cried out, not when one of the elders shouted, "Tlācacatl!"—"Man-thief!" Soon a gurgle was the last sound heard from the priest, choking on his own blood from the obsidian blade silencing him forever.
He was already in the trees, the bundle bound tight beneath his arm, his feet finding roots like memory.
By dusk, he was alone in the jungle.
By midnight, he was praying.
His lips were cracked. His breath came in gasps. The jade whispered to him in pulses of heat.
He fell to his knees beside a cenote, its edge glowing faintly in the starlight. Mist rolled out like breath from the underworld.
He raised his arms and whispered, voice trembling for the first time in years:
"Quetzalcóatl... I implore you...
If you still walk with the broken, hide me.
If you speak for those with no names, speak for me now." He carried only a yearning for freedom and a life worth living—the faintest twinkle of hope shimmering in his dark pupils.
The water stirred.
From it, she rose.
Not a woman. Not fully. Not entirely spirit, either. She was the guardian of the cenote—one of Tlaloc's favored. One of Chalchiuhtlicue's daughters, innocent in the purest way. Skin pale as moonlight, hair floating like threads in a dream, eyes far too ancient for such a youthful face. A lullaby escaped her lips.
"Xiqui yehua in Xóchitl
Xiqui yehua ipan noyólotl
Pampa ni mita tlazotla
Pampa ni mita tlazotla
Ica nuchi noyólotl"
A hauntingly beautiful lullaby he had heard the mothers of the tribe sing to their children. He would listen while staving off the cold of the night, alone, tears falling from yearning for something he could never have.
She turned to look him in the eyes, mournful eyes full of self pity. She felt the soul within him—marked by Tezcatlipoca himself. The weight of his life and his transgressions heavy on his shoulders. Flashbacks of stealing scraps and the beatings he had taken in order to learn how to get away without being caught. In the midst of turmoil within his mind, the spirit had taken an interest in him. She only reached for him. A mistake brought around by curiosity.
She reached for him—gentle, curious. But something primal surged in him. He saw a hand, not kindness. A threat. And he struck. He lashed out with the obsidian blade. Causing the ichor to drop along with her hand into the Sacred Cenote.
As the waters became murky, he started to feel a voice in his head. Like thunder proclaiming his sins.
"Nameless worm."
"Slave."
"Thief."
"Cenote defiler".
"Murderer."
In the murky waters the reflection of a god he had seen many times before. A god worshipped to bide the rains from claiming the lives of the tribesmen and dragging them down to Mictlan. His visage terrifyingly clear, seared into his very soul. Tlaloc had brought his judgment down upon him. Tlaloc is not simply the god of rain—he is the god of the storm, the drowned, the cornfields, and the weeping child. His whole life had been the calm before this storm.
The water surged around him, not drowning him, but reshaping him. His breath fled. Gills burst from behind his eyes, curling like crimson feathers. Three pairs, each flaring like the fronds of a serpent. Where ears once caught the wind, now these tendrils pulsed with unnatural breath. Pain laced every breath as if his body rejected the curse while it molded him into something new. His eyes widened, his skin thickened.
A pale beam of moonlight broke through the cenote's canopy, striking the water with unnatural precision. A tear in the world. A witness. Perhaps a gate to somewhere deeper.
When he awoke on the shore, he was something else.
Not a boy. Not a man.
Not a god.
But a guardian of a path he once defiled.
A shadow on the water.
A curse given legs.
The jade was gone.
But from the trees and the wind, his new title followed him like thunder:
Cenotlatlacatl.