The Ajtz’ite

Ancient myths become reality. 

Strings on a web. 

If it has no pulse does it mean it's an undead?

The gods had to drown a whole race without morality. 

Not even a rain of fire could completely wipe them from existence. 

Truly, an evil weed never dies, carries on in pure persistence. 

When the sun brings hope for man. 

The shadows bring joy to the heartless. 

Ix Kame sees no value in trees without a soul. 

The only use they serve is to feed fires as coal. 

The Arc burns. Kamelotl stands. The sun listens.

The thunder had faded, but the heat remained.

Kamelotl's obsidian-clawed toes gripped the sacred arc. His roots trembled beneath him, coiling and uncoiling like nerves. Above, the heavens churned—red, gold, and violet threads bleeding through a sky that pulsed like a dying drum.

He could still feel Cenotlatlacatl's absence, like a tooth ripped out from his soul.

Behind him, the last flickers of butterflies scattered. In front of him, Huitzilopochtli stood—his body the shape of war made flesh, feathers burning with the memory of blood.

But it was the drums that unnerved him most. They had stopped.

Now, only his tail thumped.

Thump. Tap. Tap. Thump.

He reached with it. Not for rhythm… but for guidance. Like a blind child feeling his way through heatwaves and memory.

That's when the god finally spoke again.

"Take her then," said Huitzilopochtli, voice low, not angry, but… amused.

"Take whoever it is you're clawing your way across my arc for."

Kamelotl narrowed his eyes. "You're letting me?"

"I said you could take her." The god's smile cracked like obsidian in fire.

"But only if you can find her. And say her name."

A silence followed.

Not mocking.

Not cruel.

Just final.

Kamelotl's gills flared. The Ayōxōchitl still pulsed on his chest—faint, white, untouched. His roots curled around it like a trembling fist.

"And if I don't know it?" he asked, the words small, vulnerable, ash-coated.

Huitzilopochtli's feathers shifted like blades sheathing themselves.

"Then she stays buried in the light. Forgotten like so many before her."

"You mean Mictlan?"

"No." The god looked toward the sun's bleeding rim.

"I mean where the sun keeps its shadows."

Kamelotl's tail began again.

Thump-thump. Tap. Tap. Thump.

It echoed… deeper this time.

Something stirred. A name, hidden not in memory—but in love.

The rhythm quickens. The old world awakens.

Thump-thump. Tap. Tap. Thump.

The tail kept striking. A rhythm born of desperation—no longer searching, but summoning.

And the roots on his chest responded.

They swayed—not wildly, but deliberately, like dancers waking from sleep. The Ayōxōchitl sigil on his chest brightened slightly, not with flame, but with tension. The petals did not open. They quivered.

He closed his eyes.

He didn't think.

He trusted.

⸻

The rhythm in his tail told his body what the gods would not.

His legs carried him forward. His clawed feet pressed into the arc's radiant surface. His roots, now twitching like tendrils of sacred instinct, pulled him to the front edge.

And that's when he saw them.

🕊️ The Cihuapipiltin

Hovering like hummingbirds over the sunlit path—

Hair floating like seaweed in flame,

Eyes glowing with the moon's silence.

They were mothers of death, children of pain—women who had died in childbirth and become vengeful wind spirits. Their screams were songs. Their presence, an omen.

Each one stared at Kamelotl.

Each one looked like someone he had loved.

⸻

Behind him, Huitzilopochtli shifted.

"The wind grows bitter."

His voice was sharp now. Focused.

"A battle comes."

⸻

Kamelotl didn't respond.

His tail quickened.

Thump-thump. Tap. Thump. Tap. Thump-thump.

He could taste the moment now—

Like cedar sap and blood in his mouth.

Like wind holding its breath.

And that's when the wood began to crack.

🌲 The Ajtz'ité'ob' Appear

From the edge of the arc, something began to climb.

First: hands—too long, bark-wrapped, jointed with blackened knots.

Then: faces—masklike, carved, eyeless.

Then: bodies, stiff but fluid, like roots that had forgotten what it meant to walk.

Wooden sorcerers.

They didn't roar. They didn't speak.

They just climbed, one by one—some on all fours, some twitching their limbs like puppets made of memories.

And their tongues were made of fire, but they didn't burn.

⸻

Kamelotl stepped forward. His tail stopped. The rhythm had changed.

Now his heartbeat kept time.

"They smell like death without blood," he whispered.

"They aren't from here."

Behind him, Huitzilopochtli's eyes narrowed.

"No. They are from before."

"From when even gods made mistakes."

Laughter that drips like sap. The unholy tricksters arrive.

⸻

They kept climbing.

Dozens of them—Ajtz'ité'ob', carved from coralwood, ash-bark, and long-forgotten cruelty. Some wore masks of jaguar skulls twisted backward. Others had painted faces—charcoal, chalk, dried blood.

They moved like puppets in a broken dance.

And then they started to laugh.

Not loud. Not wild.

But snickering.

"Eheeheeheehee…"

It echoed across the arc like leaves brushing bone.

It twisted into the wind like secrets meant to stay buried.

It didn't come from their mouths—it came from their joints, their splinters, their eyes carved too deep.

⸻

One stepped forward. His fingers dripped glowing resin. His mouth hung open, unhinged.

"The mutt came looking for a name…"

"The name! The name! Oh, what a sweet little rhythm!"

"Will he find it before she forgets it herself?"

More laughter.

Eheeheeheehee…

⸻

One turned to the Cihuapipiltin and whistled through his fingers.

"Mothers of bones! Daughters of dirt! Tell the boy which one of you he's come to steal!"

They didn't answer.

But their hair blew against the wind, as if warning Kamelotl.

⸻

"They mock because they envy," said Huitzilopochtli now, his voice dropping into war-temple silence.

"They never learned worship. Only imitation. They see your heartbeat, and they want it."

⸻

Kamelotl growled. His chest lit up—the roots pulsing now, dancing to the rhythm of battle. His obsidian leg dug into the arc's surface like a blade.

"Then let them come."

He raised his arms.

And the roots burst forth.

⸻

The Arc trembled beneath the weight of breathless tension. The beat was no longer just Kamelotl's—it belonged to the gods, the ghosts, the roots, and the forgotten.

And then one of them stepped forward.

A tall Ajtz'ité. Crooked but composed.

Wrapped in scarves of bark, painted with blasphemous glyphs carved into his own limbs.

His eyes were hollow, but his grin was wide.

He bowed.

"We are the Ajtz'ité'ob'.

We were carved, but never born.

We speak, but no one listens.

We dance, but cast no shadow."

He raised his splintered arms high, and all the others went silent.

"We have been offered… a deal."

Kamelotl's roots curled beneath his feet.

The Ayōxōchitl on his chest pulsed once—slowly.

The Ajtz'ité leader's mouth widened into a jagged smile.

"Ix Kame whispered to our bark while we slept in exile."

"She said if we bring the mutt to her—alive—"

"—we may finally be granted souls."

Murmurs. Chitters. Resin dripped.

One Ajtz'ité broke into a twisted pirouette, another pretended to cradle a baby made of ash.

"But," the leader continued, stepping forward,

"We are few. Worn. Brittle.

We do not wish to fight."

"We wish to dance."

A pause. A gust of silence from beyond the arc.

"If you win, we will leave.

If we win…"

He reached out a barked hand, pointing at Kamelotl's chest.

"…you come with us."

Behind him, the others began to sway.

Their joints cracked like castanets. Their knees bent wrong but in rhythm.

The wind began to pulse in tempo.

"Our music is old. Our bodies are memory.

You are just a flicker, dog-child."

Behind him, the crowd of Ajtz'ité shifted.

They were not dancers.

They were instruments.

One twisted to the side—revealing a drum grown from his back, its skin stretched tight with sinew and bark.

Another cracked open her chest—a wooden flute embedded in her ribs, now blowing ghost-notes from lungs that had never lived.

Another clicked his finger-knuckles like castanets.

Another's jaw vibrated, playing low hums like a jaw harp carved from obsidian.

This was not applause.

It was a score.

The leader turned back to Kamelotl as if playing through a broken conch.

Time twists. Kamelotl's eyes narrow.

"Then let's dance," he whispers.

His tail begins to thump—slower this time. But louder.

Boom… Boom… Tap. Boom.