“He came in blood. He did not cry.”

  The eclipse came without warning.

  At the edge of the jungle, in a village that did not appear on maps, the sun vanished mid-breath. The sky dimmed to ash, and birds dropped from the trees as if struck dead by the gods. Even the wind forgot how to move.

  Inside the hut, a woman screamed through her teeth, legs parted over blood-streaked cloth. Her fingers dug trenches into the packed dirt floor. The midwife chanted softly, not in Nahuatl, but in an older tongue—the one used only when death circled close.

  Outside, the warriors waited, backs straight, hands on their macuahuitl clubs. One of them stood apart. Yaotl, a Jaguar Knight, cloaked in spotted hide and silence, arms folded across his chest. His war sigil glowed faintly under the jaguar helm, the obsidian eyes catching firelight.

  Then it came. A wet gasp, a single breath—and silence. The baby did not cry.

  Inside the hut, the midwife looked down and whispered, “He does not belong to this world.”

  Yaotl entered without asking. He looked at the child, blood-slick and still. His eyes were wide open. Watching.

  The midwife handed the boy over without a word. Yaotl took him, held him up to the eclipse-darkened sky, and said:

  “Return him. Or mark him.”

  A jaguar screamed from deep in the jungle. Not a roar. A scream.

  Yaotl did not speak as he left the hut, child in arms. The others parted for him without a word. The eclipse still held the world in its mouth.

  He walked into the jungle, feet silent against leaf and soil, eyes locked on a path only he seemed to know. Vines curled like fingers from the trees, but none touched him. The baby remained quiet, eyes never closing.

  He reached a small clearing.

  There, at its center, a flat stone sat buried in moss and memory.

  Yaotl knelt. From a pouch at his waist, he drew a blade of obsidian, black as the night between stars. He placed the newborn on the stone. The infant didn’t shiver, didn’t cry. Only watched.

  Yaotl sliced the cord with one clean stroke.

  Blood touched the stone.

  He took the umbilical cord and the obsidian blade, bound them in a strip of woven bark, and dug a hole beside the stone with his hands. The earth accepted it.

  “This is your root,” Yaotl said. “Blade and blood. You belong to neither. You answer to both.”

  The wind stirred.

  The jaguar screamed again—closer this time.

  Yaotl looked at the boy. “The gods are watching. And if they are watching, they are waiting.”

  He dipped his finger into the blood still wet on the stone and drew a glyph on the child’s chest.

  This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

  A jaguar fang.

  The mark glowed, only for a moment, and faded.

  The jungle went still.

  He wrapped the baby in a red cloth and stood. “You are not born,” Yaotl said. “You are offered.”

  Years passed, but the mark never faded.

  Not when Izel scraped it against stone during drills. Not when the healers smeared it with ash and aloe. The jaguar fang burned beneath his skin, silent and waiting.

  He was five the first time the mirror spoke.

  It was a festival day. The villagers painted their faces, danced with drums, and prayed to Tonatiuh to keep the sun alive. Yaotl stood behind Izel as they approached the temple pool—a stone basin filled with obsidian-dark water, perfectly still.

  “Look,” Yaotl told him.

  Izel leaned forward.

  His reflection stared back—wide eyes, sharp cheekbones, dark hair falling across his brow.

  Then it moved.

  Only a blink.

  But his reflection blinked before he did.

  Izel jerked back. “It—did you see—”

  Yaotl didn’t answer. His hand rested heavy on the boy’s shoulder.

  “Some mirrors show what waits behind you. Others show what waits inside.”

  Izel’s chest was tight. His feet itched to run, but he didn’t.

  In the pool, the reflection was still. Normal again.

  But Izel could feel it watching. Waiting.

  That night, he woke from sleep to the sound of low growling beneath the floor.

  They named him Izel during the Rain Month.

  Not in the temple, not before the priests, but in the shadow of the same stone where Yaotl had buried his cord. The elder stood barefoot in mud, feathers soaked from a night storm, and held a smoking torch made of pine and pitch.

  “Izel,” the elder said. “The lone one. The thread between.”

  The villagers watched from behind trees. No one approached.

  The elder dipped his fingers in black soot and circled Izel’s eyes.

  “May you see what others fear. And may it not break you.”

  When the name was given, thunder cracked the sky.

  And that night, in the firelit hush of the hut, Yaotl spoke to him like a warrior speaks to another.

  “You were not born with a name,” he said. “You earned one by surviving their fear.”

  Izel didn't understand then.

  But he began to notice.

  How the women pulled their children close when he passed. How the dogs growled low when he came near. How elders made signs against evil—not when he misbehaved, but when he was silent.

  Once, he overheard two men talking near the maize fields:

  “He doesn’t dream like the others. He waits. Like something inside him is watching.”

  The other whispered, “Maybe he’s not dreaming. Maybe the god is.”

  They took him to the Telpochcalli the day after his twelfth rain.

  The House of Youth sat near the edge of the city—not built to shelter, but to scar. Walls of raw stone. No roof over the courtyard. No warmth but fire, and that was earned.

  The gate shut behind him with a sound like bone hitting bone.

  An older boy handed him a bundle of firewood. “Carry it.”

  “How far?” Izel asked.

  The boy pointed to the hills.

  Then smirked. “You ask questions like you’re still a child. Go.”

  Izel’s arms ached before the river. His feet bled before the first hill. When he returned, the bundle was lighter—some sticks lost, or broken.

  They beat him for that.

  That night, he slept beside a wall. No blanket. No roof. Just the open sky, stars like teeth.

  He dreamt of claws scratching obsidian. Of a jaguar pacing behind his eyelids.

  By the third week, Izel stopped bleeding. His skin was too raw for the blood to matter.

  That’s when Yaotl appeared, helmet in hand, watching from the shade.

  “I told them you’d survive this,” he said.

  Izel looked up, too tired to speak.

  Yaotl crouched beside him. “But survival’s not enough.”

  He placed something beside the boy: a jagged obsidian shard wrapped in cloth.

  “Blood is the first truth. Speak it.”

  Izel waited until the others slept.

  The shard felt heavier than it should—as if it remembered things.

  He unwrapped it, pressed the edge to his thigh, and dragged it across the skin.

  Not deep. Just enough.

  The blood came slow and bright.

  He let it drip onto the courtyard stones. Then pressed his fingers to the cut and touched them to his forehead, his chest, and the ground.

  “Take it,” he whispered to the night. “Take me.”

  A wind stirred. Low. Almost like breath.

  The next day, he was called to the temple court. A lecture, they said.

  Tlacaelel stood before them in red robes, sun behind him, eyes like dry coals. He didn’t speak at first. Just watched the boys squirm under the heat.

  Then:

  “To serve the gods is to die beautifully,” he said.

  His voice was calm. Controlled.

  “You will learn what it means to lose your name in the fire. And if you survive, the gods may give it back—**in pieces.”

  Izel met his gaze and felt nothing but the weight of being seen too clearly.

  Afterward, Yaotl found him alone.

  “You understand now?” he asked.

  Izel nodded.

  “Good. Then you are no longer a child.”

  He didn’t remember the pain. Only the warmth of the blood—and how the gods did not look away.

  flame.

  He is already more weapon than boy.

  Yaotl

  Thank you for reading Chapter 1: "Marked by Fire"!

  Chapter 2: "The House of Pain" drops TOMORROW at 9:00 AM CST. ??

  You don't want to miss it—training begins, blood is spilled, and Izel takes his first irreversible step toward the gods' hunger.