Bonds And Chains

The supreme bond comes with agony to defeat.

Contemplation over what happens after you're laid in the casket.

In an underworld prison, no time to be particular. 

I'm the number one hellrazer. 

Swinging my fists to keep my life from sinking. 

Like a king dethroned, I'm just trying to reclaim my moment under the stars. 

The bonds I forged along the way will tell you they always got my back. 

Even if I fall I don't run out of breath, I take a moment then I attack. 

Even in separation I always come back. 

C.R.E.A.M. Is forever so I stay ready to bring the hood back. 

For a moment, there was nothing.

No sound. No breath. No thought.

Just a suffocating darkness — thick and absolute — pressing against their skin like wet obsidian. It coiled into their lungs and gnawed at their ribs. There was no sense of motion, only the unbearable certainty that they had ceased to exist.

Then the voices came.

Not whispered, not shouted — accused.

Specters began to bloom from the dark, not as forms but as memories with teeth.

Cenotlatlacatl saw them first — the long-forgotten dead, the ones he thought the silence had swallowed.

Victims. Witnesses. The broken.

"You will never reach her."

"You were born to bury, not to save."

"You defiled the water. She will never call you son."

He clenched his jaw, but it trembled.

The air was gone.

Across from him, Kamelotl squirmed as if drowning. The roots in his chest writhed in panic. His gills fluttered, desperate for breath. But what came instead was a chorus of thunder-laced laughter.

The Emissaries of Tlaloc.

Rainless clouds in the shape of bones. Blue fire dripping from empty sockets.

"Born of failure."

"Son of defilement."

"Even your joy was a mistake."

They were alone.

Alone with the weight of every sin they'd ever worn.

Voices crept in. Not words — accusations.

Whispers spoken in the tone of memory.

Dead ones. Lost ones. The ones who didn't forgive him.

Then—

A drop.

Not sound, but sensation.

Cool. Still. Real.

From the center of his chest, just beneath the broken crescent of his collarbone, a single thread of mist began to escape.

Not smoke. Not breath. Something older.

Moonlight, thinned into water.

It curled from the scar like a whisper from below the earth, like something Xarátenga had left behind just in case he survived this long.

The mist moved slow — spiraling outward, then downward — toward the base of the bloom across his chest.

The Ayōxōchitl.

The roots that branched from it twitched as if waking from a dream. Then, gently, they drank.

They drank the mist like memory drinks silence.

And something shifted.

A pulse. A chill. A clearing.

Like cold water poured through a fevered skull, his mind returned — not whole, not calm — but real. Present.

He opened his eyes.

And saw Kamelotl.

Thrashing. Panicking. Drowning in a fear far deeper than his own.

His gills fluttered uselessly. His tail coiled like it wanted to vanish. The Emissaries of Tlaloc circled him with storm-laughter.

The hallucinations felt tangible to him. Overwhelming, all of his senses. 

Without thinking, Cenotlatlacatl reached out.

The mist followed him — dancing from his fingers like a thread of prayer.

He placed his hands on Kamelotl's shoulders, and the roots beneath his palms lit up — responding to the mist like soil to rain.

The Ayōxōchitl on Kamelotl's chest pulsed once — then again.

"Look at me," he whispered, voice cracking like dry bark.

"Breathe."

Kamelotl blinked rapidly, still shaking.

So he tightened his grip. Not harsh. Just firm. Present.

"Come back."

Their breaths didn't match — until they did.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

The mist coiled around them both, now — a soft loop, like a shawl of moon-chill. The arc seemed to hold its breath.

Their flowers glowed.

Orange. White. Red. Turquoise. 

Roots meeting mist. Memory meeting breath.

And for the first time since they fell into this journey,

they saw each other without the weight of hate.

They sat there, in silence.

It wasn't awkward — not anymore.

It was a silence that felt earned,

like breath after drowning,

like ash settling after the fire.

Neither of them looked away.

Not quite trust…

But not hostility either.

Something had changed.

A crack in the armor.

A gentleness that neither of them knew how to name.

Like the weight of their shared blood had started to matter more than the wounds that came with it.

They still weren't sure about each other.

But for a moment, they didn't need to be.

The arc around them drifted quietly through the void,

and the cempoalxōchitl light cast soft shadows across their faces —

two reflections in flame and bloom.

Still, there was tension.

A thread pulled taut beneath the surface.

Like a storm building on the horizon —

not seen, but felt.

Kamelotl glanced at him.

"You think we're close?"

Cenotlatlacatl didn't answer right away.

He looked down at his hands,

still faintly glowing from the sigil's light.

"No," he said.

"But I think we're further along than we've ever been."

Kamelotl stared at the glowing bloom on Cenotlatlacatl's chest.

It shimmered like a wound that refused to close — but somehow made the dark feel less cruel.

His voice broke the silence, low and tired:

"What do you think is the right way to live?

Will there be a place to rest after we die,

or will Mictlan be something we endure again one day?

When this is all over…"

He didn't ask it like he expected an answer.

He asked it like a child asks the ocean if it's ever been held.

Cenotlatlacatl didn't look up right away.

His eyes lingered on the mist still curling around his arms, slowly fading.

The silence returned — but not empty.

It felt like it was waiting.

He finally spoke:

"I don't know what's right.

I used to think survival was enough.

Then I thought revenge would make it easier.

Now… I think maybe the right way to live is to remember.

Even the things we wish we could forget."

He looked at Kamelotl then, straight on.

No mask. No myth. Just a man who had lost too much to lie.

"As for rest…

Maybe we don't get peace. Maybe we become it.

One day. For someone else.

Maybe Mictlan isn't a punishment — maybe it's the walk we take

so others don't have to."

Kamelotl let out a bitter laugh, more sigh than sound.

"Matron Xarátenga's offer is looking very tempting, don't you think?"

He ran a hand along the edge of his obsidian leg, watching it catch the faint light from Cenotlatlacatl's sigils.

"I don't regret the decision we made.

I just hope… when everything's done, and it's time to rest…

we can run through her flower field.

Maybe in our forms. Maybe as butterflies or something."

A small smirk tugged at the edge of his mouth, but it didn't hold.

"As long as we get to enjoy some peace in her realm.

Do you think she'll remember us?"

"Think she'll let us stay…

until we're ready to be reincarnated?"

Cenotlatlacatl looked at him for a long moment, then turned his gaze upward — though there was no sky above, only the soft nothingness of the arc's cradle.

"She remembers everything.

Every name. Every mistake. Every moment we thought no one saw."

He paused.

His voice softened.

"I think that's what her flowers are made of."

Kamelotl chuckled dryly.

"You think she'll plant us?"

Cenotlatlacatl shrugged, a rare curve to his lips.

"Only if we make good compost."

They both laughed, just a little.

And for a fleeting moment, it felt like enough.

Far beyond the arc's path, past the edge of the breathless void,

a still lake slept beneath the stars.

Moonlight poured across its surface,

unbroken, sacred —

a silver mirror cradled in the womb of silence.

And in its reflection, she stood.

Cloaked in light, crowned in night.

Matron Xarátenga.

She watched the ripples in her lake —

each one a dream, each one a soul.

And as their laughter echoed faintly across the folds of time,

she smiled.

"Children of obsidian…

One day you may spread your obsidian wings over my flowers.

But sadly, your journey is not yet complete…

Still —

you may make this your home,

when the pain you will live through

has finished carving itself into your bones.

As long as it takes, my children."

She whispered the vow not for them,

but for the only one who could hear.

From beneath the trees where no light reached,

Ñuhu Ña'an Savi stepped forth —

Matron of the Rain Shadows.

"And when they are ready to return…

they will be reborn in my caverns.

Not as warriors. Not as echoes.

But as children again —

into a more simple, peaceful way of life."

Their words vanished into the stillness.

But somewhere, deep inside a drifting arc of root and breath,

two souls breathed in unison.

Not knowing they had just been promised peace.