Marisol guided the little dolls deep into the forest, nearing the place where they had once fought Tomás. The memory still lingered—raw and unwelcome—stirring emotions she would rather leave buried. She pressed them down and instead focused on the currents around her.

  With Axochi’s guidance, she felt the world as it truly was.

  Faith flowed through everything—an endless ocean of shimmering strands weaving through trees, stone, wind, and flesh. Most of it was unrefined, tangled emotion: hope braided with fear, love muddied by jealousy, reverence stained with doubt. A living tapestry of belief.

  And within every current, like flecks of ink in water, were the black specks of corruption.

  They were not foreign. Not separate. They were part of the whole—another expression of life’s complexity. Something the three adolescents still feared to touch.

  Jimena had not been so fortunate.

  She had been forced to confront it directly, and neither Marisol nor Jaime knew how to help her. Their divine patrons nudged them along increasingly divergent paths, each revelation widening the space between them. Sometimes Marisol wondered if they were still walking the same road at all.

  Her thoughts drifted as she watched the tides of faith shimmer and fold into themselves. She could see the ripples her own presence created—distortions in the vast, glimmering sea. For a moment, she felt suspended between truths, aware of how small she was and how immense the world had become.

  Then a whisper brushed her ear.

  Chalchiuhtlicue drew her gently back.

  The ocean of faith faded, replaced by the humid breeze of Bahía Oscura. She had found nothing unusual in the forest. Still, her sanctuaries continued to merge in subtle ways, overlapping into a nascent paradise that seemed to expand with every passing day.

  Birds had already begun nesting within the flowering canopies. Small critters darted freely through the undergrowth. Some had wandered here from distant stretches of forest, drawn by something they could not name. Many now gathered near Bahía Oscura in quiet reverence.

  They worshipped her.

  Marisol did not notice the way a small rabbit froze mid-hop when it glimpsed her—its tiny body trembling, dark eyes shining with wet devotion.

  Nor did she notice a handful of clay dolls that had slipped away from her command, blending seamlessly among the wildlife. Their small core-hearts pulsed with anxious light as they watched the massive form of Bruno lumber back toward the village. Each of his steps sent subtle tremors through the earth.

  By the time Marisol returned, her grandmother stood waiting at the village’s edge. The old woman’s brow was furrowed with worry, her posture stiff despite her years.

  The blind elder’s smoky owl apparition had carried an unmistakable tension earlier that day. Though Chia had sent Jaime to calm immediate concerns, uncertainty lingered like smoke after a ritual fire. The old woman’s divinations had revealed something stirring in the dark.

  But peering deeper was dangerous.

  Too dangerous to attempt alone.

  Her apprentices were not yet ready for such rituals.

  Marisol approached, sliding down from Bruno’s broad back. The clay giant rumbled softly behind her.

  “You might be needed soon,” her grandmother said, patting her arms. “I sent Jaime ahead to speak with Chantico. It may be nothing serious.”

  Then, in a softer voice, she added, “Y prefiero que estés cerca por si acaso algo pasa.”

  Marisol smiled faintly. She offered her arm, and the old woman took it. Together, they walked into the village.

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  Life surged around them.

  Insects buzzed in golden arcs above fields of flowering plants. Rodents scurried through dense patches of greenery. Children ran in wild circles, their laughter bright and constant. Dogs barked joyfully as they gave chase. The more daring youngsters climbed trees after cats—and their clay dolls mimicked them perfectly, scrambling up bark and branches with uncanny enthusiasm.

  Large Bruno dolls patrolled the outskirts of the chaos. Their heavy strides caused faint tremors that sometimes cracked the rough clay houses lining the paths. Fortunately, they had more than enough clay to repair any damage.

  Marisol stifled a laugh as one of the massive dolls tried—and failed—to catch a particularly unruly group of boys.

  As they neared the village center, the sound of splashing water rose above the din. A cluster of adolescents leapt into one of the winding rivers she and Jaime had shaped together. The currents meandered through the village, feeding small pools where families gathered.

  The pools closest to the cuauhxicalli had taken on a sacred quality since their ascension. Yet no walls had been raised. No prohibitions declared.

  Everyone was still welcome.

  Chia and the three young gods had agreed: nothing would change between them and their people.

  There would be no separation between mortal and divine.

  Jimena had been especially adamant about that. Jaime and Marisol had felt the same.

  The village was their family.

  Their power did not elevate them above it—it anchored them more firmly within it.

  Divinity was not a throne.

  It was responsibility.

  -

  Jaime tore through the sky toward Chantico, driving himself as fast as his wings would carry him. Which, to his private delight, was far faster than he had expected. It was almost tragic that no one stood below to witness it.

  Since his ascension, he had never truly let loose.

  Until now.

  The power within him—once contained, restrained, tempered—finally surged without apology. The part of his soul that had always burned too brightly, that had always been told to quiet down, to be careful, to be patient—

  It roared free.

  Jaime laughed beneath the carved owl helmet as he smashed through layers of resisting air. The wind folded and broke around him, currents bending beneath his will. His golden eyes traced their invisible paths, reading the sky as though it were scripture.

  Like a bird, he was unbound.

  In Mictlan, he had felt an endless well of divinity, dark and fathomless. Now that same abundance pulsed from his cuauhxicalli—his people’s faith rising through him like a pillar of light. It lifted him higher, closer to the sun itself.

  For one reckless heartbeat, his brilliance dared to rival the golden sphere above.

  “Cimikora,” Jaime intoned.

  He opened the floodgates.

  Power surged into overdrive.

  Cimi answered.

  The clouds split before him as if cleaved by unseen blades. When he broke through their upper veil and beheld the vast, endless blue stretching in all directions, something inside him stilled.

  He loved this world.

  The silence at that height was sacred. The sky, impossibly wide and unmarred, made him feel as though he had just awakened from a long dream.

  Then he let himself fall.

  His body tilted forward, and gravity claimed him.

  Clouds swallowed his form as he plummeted toward Chantico. For a breathless instant, he felt weightless—unreal—like a storied hero casting himself from heaven.

  And then he accelerated.

  Like a diver spearing into dark waters, he angled downward, pushing faster, faster still. The air screamed around him. His heart ignited with exhilaration.

  Light flared across his form—not heat, but radiance. Cimi absorbed the thermal force of his descent, stripping flame of its light, devouring it before it could consume him.

  Adrenaline flooded his veins.

  His blood felt molten.

  Solid divinity crystallized around him, forming a luminous shell that cracked and reformed as he lanced through the troposphere. The drain was immense. He could feel the cost of such reckless expenditure—but he did not care.

  He did not want it to end.

  Beneath his helmet, the pictogram of death burned bright. It delighted in the razor’s edge between life and annihilation. Jaime and the sigil laughed together—wild, unrestrained.

  The earth rushed upward.

  Closer.

  Closer.

  “Enough!”

  Cimi’s voice cut through the mania like a blade.

  She seized him, forcibly bleeding momentum from his fall. Air buckled as his descent slowed from cataclysmic to merely devastating. She pressed her will against the ocean of faith surrounding them, steadying his senses while suppressing the distant influence of Mictlantecuhtli, whose hunger thrilled at the thought of ruin.

  For a fleeting moment, she tried to press her will upon Jaime as well.

  She failed.

  Even as a lesser divinity, Jaime’s soul burned too fiercely. No god. No spirit. No patron could command what was now wholly divine.

  Cimi recoiled, then shrieked—not in anger, but urgency.

  Focus.

  She forced his awareness outward.

  Something was wrong.

  Far beyond Chantico’s borders, the currents of faith churned violently. A violent collision of divinity and corruption tore at the spiritual fabric of the land.

  It was impossible to ignore.

  Jaime’s laughter died.

  His playful radiance dimmed, replaced by something colder. Sharper.

  Death coiled around him like a mantle.

  He stabilized midair, eyes narrowing toward the distant clash he had only now begun to perceive. His skin prickled. Every instinct screamed.

  Whatever was there—

  Whatever dared spread such corruption—

  Would not be allowed to endure.

  His soul, his spirit, and his patron demanded annihilation.

  And the festering stain in the distance could not hide from Jaime’s sunlit glare.