For the final five infected, Mort carried Todloc on his back.

  The priest had grown too weak to walk, his body little more than fragile weight draped over Mort’s shoulders. More than once, Mort had nearly tried to intervene—to force divinity into him despite the warning—but Xochiquetzal’s words remained sharp in his memory.

  Two concepts would tear him apart.

  And unlike Itzcamazotz, Mort chose to believe his goddess did not guide him toward harm.

  So he endured.

  He set Todloc down only when they reached each hut. The priest could barely lift a finger by the end, yet he stubbornly forced himself awake long enough to point the way with trembling hands.

  Mort found himself respecting the man.

  Not for power.

  Not for faith.

  But for sheer, grinding perseverance.

  The last parasite proved the easiest of the night. It tore free with barely a struggle, smaller than the rest. Weaker.

  Younger.

  Mort had noticed the pattern hours ago—the infected had steadily declined in age. The final victim was only a few years younger than he was.

  He did not dwell on it.

  He refused to.

  Patterns led to implications, and implications led to fear.

  Still… it had all felt too smooth.

  Itzcamazotz was not a god who relinquished control easily. If the corruption had truly been severed so simply, Mort would never have needed to flee in the first place. He had helped destroy one of the bat god’s greater anchors.

  Gods did not forgive that.

  Dawn began to spill across the village.

  Golden light crept over the ground, pushing away the long night’s chill and uncertainty. Mort lowered Todloc gently beside him and sank to the earth.

  He wanted to curl up there.

  Sleep.

  Run.

  Running again felt logical. He had helped. He had cleansed. Perhaps that was enough. He had washed away some of his guilt.

  Before the thought could root, warmth bloomed from his gem.

  Xochiquetzal emerged in a mist of soft pink light, shaping herself from his own divinity into a faint feminine silhouette. She wrapped translucent arms around his shoulders from behind, her presence cool and steady against his overheated skin.

  Her touch soothed the frayed edges of his nerves. Where stress had coiled tight, her divinity unraveled it gently. She murmured soft, teasing reassurances into his thoughts, each word dissolving a layer of tension he had not realized he still carried.

  Mort’s sweat-slicked skin gradually returned to its natural pale-pink hue. The harsh green veins that had bulged under strain receded. The heat faded from his blood.

  Only exhaustion remained.

  His eyes were sunken. His shoulders slumped. He allowed himself to sag fully onto the earth, staring at the sky as it shifted from violet to gold.

  After everything—

  He felt… capable.

  The challenge that had loomed like a mountain now lay behind him.

  He turned toward Todloc, intending to share some small remark of triumph, even if the man could no longer hear it.

  But the priest had not gone still.

  He was glowing.

  Motes of divinity—those Mort had shed throughout the night like drifting embers—hovered in the air. One by one, they drifted toward Todloc’s frail body and sank into him.

  Mort froze.

  The light intensified.

  What had seemed like dawn’s reflection became something deeper. Brighter.

  Then—

  Flame.

  A brilliant red fire erupted around Todloc, rising high into the morning sky like a beacon. It did not consume the huts. It did not scorch the ground. It burned clean and contained, a sacred pyre that swallowed the dying priest whole.

  Mort lurched forward. “Todloc—!”

  Fear seized him.

  But Xochiquetzal’s presence sharpened.

  Do not interfere.

  Her voice changed—layered, resonant. Double and triple tones overlapped as she began to chant in a language Mort could not fully comprehend. The words spiraled through the air like living threads, weaving themselves into the fire.

  Though he could not grasp their full meaning, impressions leaked into his mind.

  Rebirth.

  Cleansing.

  Reclamation.

  Brilliant pictograms flared into existence around Mort—blessed glyphs shaped from refined divinity. They drifted like luminous petals toward the crimson pyre and embedded themselves into Todloc’s form within.

  No screams emerged.

  The red flame did not char flesh. It coursed through blood, searing away impurity with surgical precision. It devoured the hollowness left by shattered faith and replaced it with something new.

  Something chosen.

  Xochiquetzal’s melody rose higher, drawing upon every remnant of power still within Mort’s gem. He felt it emptying—felt the last of the night’s gathered divinity pour outward.

  Together, goddess and mortal shaped the ritual.

  Mort’s lesser divinity—the unique strain born of his love, suffering, and stubborn defiance—etched itself into Todloc’s Tonalli. A mark formed, glowing bright against the priest’s soul.

  A brand not of servitude—

  But of alignment.

  The flames compressed.

  Then, with a final pulse, Todloc drew them inward.

  The crimson fire folded into his chest. The glyphs settled into his skin. The blazing pillar vanished as though it had never been.

  Silence followed.

  Todloc stood where the pyre had burned.

  No longer skeletal.

  No longer fading.

  His posture straightened slowly as breath filled lungs that no longer wheezed. Beneath his robes, strength returned—not borrowed, not parasitic, but rekindled.

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  The branded mark over his Tonalli pulsed once before dimming to a steady glow.

  Mort stared, wide-eyed.

  Xochiquetzal’s silhouette flickered faintly behind him, her power nearly spent.

  A priest must serve something, she whispered softly. Now he serves with open eyes.

  Todloc opened his own.

  They were clear.

  And burning faintly red with the reflection of a new dawn.

  “Thank you.”

  Todloc dropped to his knees.

  Tears welled freely in his eyes, though his body no longer trembled with weakness. The sensations flooding him were impossible to name. His blood thrummed with warmth. His thoughts felt sharp, clean, ordered. Where despair had hollowed him out, something steady now burned.

  He looked at Mort as if seeing him for the first time.

  What the young man had done over the past day surpassed anything Todloc had witnessed—even from the god he had served his entire life. The toad had possessed the power to cleanse sickness with a thought. That much Todloc did not doubt.

  Yet it never had.

  Not with urgency. Not with compassion. Not for “insignificant” mortals.

  Worship had never guaranteed mercy. In fact, Todloc had seen the opposite—those most devout often suffered the hardest trials.

  “I will serve faithfully,” Todloc said, rising with solemn conviction.

  Mort waved weakly from where he still sat on the ground. “You don’t have to kneel,” he muttered. His voice was hoarse with exhaustion.

  To Todloc, that humility only solidified his resolve.

  It did not matter that Mort’s divinity was still small compared to the toad’s former might. Todloc could feel the difference. Mort’s power did not stagnate. It moved. It grew. It refined itself with each act.

  Even as a lesser divinity, Mort carried the promise of something far greater.

  Todloc intended to help build it.

  He turned as villagers began approaching in cautious clusters. A grin tugged at his lips as he caught his reflection faintly in a polished clay pot—his posture straight, his skin firmer, decades seemingly peeled away.

  He chuckled inwardly.

  His wife would certainly have much to say about this.

  Behind him, Mort remained seated, shoulders slumped, eyes half-lidded as he watched the sunrise. No one disturbed him. Whether from instinct or reverence, the villagers gave him space.

  Within Mort’s gem, Xochiquetzal observed quietly.

  The ritual had bound Todloc—but it had also bound her future.

  She had no intention of remaining in this parasitic half-state forever. Symbiotic though it was, it reminded her too much of the very corruption they had just excised.

  If she wished to manifest properly—if she wished to step beyond Mort’s internal world—she would need an anchor.

  A cuauhxicalli.

  A sacred vessel. A place where offerings and refined faith could gather without tearing Mort apart.

  Todloc, sensing her attention, began speaking to her silently even as he addressed the villagers aloud.

  His mind and mouth operated independently with startling clarity. Mort’s divinity flowed through his blood like a catalyst, sharpening his thoughts to uncanny precision. He explained the miracle to the people—carefully, gently—framing it not as betrayal, but revelation.

  At the same time, he relayed information to Xochiquetzal.

  The toad had been lazy in its divinity control. Crude. It relied on the overwhelming mass of its physical body to suppress minor divinities in the region. By sheer dominance, it had risen to hegemon status over a third of Lake Chapalac.

  Its history was painted along the lakeside city walls—blessed pictograms depicting triumphs, battles, divine favor. Children undertook pilgrimages to see them.

  Todloc huffed a quiet laugh at the memory of tantrums and blistered feet. A few villagers glanced at him oddly—his amusement ill-timed against the gravity of his words.

  He cleared his throat and continued.

  Not all would accept this change easily. The toad had protected them from certain dangers for generations. Sacrifices had been justified. Hardships rationalized.

  He knew that mindset intimately.

  It had been his own.

  But now he felt the difference inside his Tonalli. The brand Mort and Xochiquetzal had placed there did not command. It aligned. It did not suffocate doubt; it clarified it.

  When the explanations were finished—when questions had been asked and answered, when awe and fear had settled into cautious hope—the villagers dispersed slowly to greet the morning.

  Nearly an hour had passed.

  Todloc finally returned to where Mort still sat on the earth.

  The young god looked smaller now. The night’s fire had burned out, leaving only a weary man watching sunlight stretch across the village.

  Todloc lowered himself to sit beside him.

  For a time, neither spoke.

  Todloc reflected on the path that had led him here. On the choices he had made to appease a bloated god. On the offerings he had overseen. On the suffering he had rationalized as necessity.

  The weight of it pressed heavily on him.

  But unlike before, it did not hollow him.

  It anchored him.

  He glanced sideways at Mort.

  He saw it clearly now—the same wound lived in the younger man. Regret. Guilt. A quiet desperation to atone.

  Where others chosen by gods had been proud or domineering, Mort had been painfully sincere. Honest to a fault. Reckless in compassion.

  Todloc exhaled slowly.

  “We are alike,” he said at last.

  Mort blinked, glancing over.

  Todloc offered a small, knowing smile.

  “We both serve to make amends.”