As Elena lay resting, she dreamed.
And as she dreamed… she saw him.
The strange man from the river.
At first he stood in the wavering glow of candlelight, shadows dancing along stone walls. His dark olive skin carried a flush of adrenaline, his long braids tied back neatly, though a few strands fell loose over his brow. His hands were quick, deft, as they caught a messenger hawk that had slipped through an open arrow slit.
The hawk struggled briefly, but he calmed it with a soft murmur. Dark brown eyes, bright, quick, and alive with mischief, glinted as he plucked a sealed parchment from the bird's leg.
The wax bore the crest of the Inquisition.
He scanned the contents quickly, his jaw tightening, and without hesitation he fed the letter to the nearest candle. The flame consumed it in seconds.
He scribbled something short on a scrap of paper, eyes darting to the door as if listening for footsteps. A smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth before he tied the new note to the hawk's leg and released it back into the night.
The bird's wings beat once, twice, then vanished into the darkness.
He leaned back in his chair and exhaled. For a heartbeat, he looked satisfied.
Then came the sound.
Boots in the corridor. The sharp turn of a key.
The candlelight trembled.
The world went black.
When sight returned, it was not in the dim safety of the room, but beneath a pitiless sky.
Jaime was chained and gagged, wrists bound tight before him. He sat suspended in midair, the rope creaking above him where it held the swing-like plank beneath his knees.
Below him yawned a vast ravine, water churning far below like the gullet of some great beast.
A line of armored men stood at the edge. One stepped forward, reading from a scroll, his voice like iron.
"Jaime Coana, you have been sentenced to holy swimming. May Saintess Yidali have mercy on your soul."
Elena gasped- she knew this ritual.
She had been forced to witness one as a girl, when she first tried to escape her mother's church. Lee Rosaria had made her watch from the execution scaffold itself, whispering the false mercy of it into her ear.
Sink, and the Saintess has spared you- innocent, beloved of the heavens.
Float, and you are a heretic whose body shall burn.
A test that saved no one.
The gag prevented reply. The smirk was gone now. Jaime's dark eyes met theirs once, without fear, only something grim and resolute, before the man's blade sliced through the rope that suspended Jaime.
And he fell.
Elena fell with him.
Air rushed past her ears in a hollow roar before the water swallowed them both whole.
The cold was a living thing, seizing bone and lung alike. Chains dragged him downward, twisting him as the blackness closed in. She saw his braids unravel in the current, each strand curling like drifting ink.
The light above was fading fast. His thrashing slowed, his chest heaving against the gag as the last bubbles fled his lips.
And then-
It spoke.
A voice like pressure against the skull, ancient and patient, curling around the syllables of his name:
Do you wish to live, Jaime Coana?
His head jerked faintly in a nod. Vision blurred.
The darkness shifted, folding back to reveal a radiance deep beneath the current-
A gleam of bright, living blue.
It came closer, vast and coiled, eyes glowing like twin moons through the silt. The scales shimmered as it moved, light sliding across them like liquid.
A serpent.
A god thought lost for a thousand years.
Coatriskie.
The hiss was both sound and thought, wrapping around them in the freezing water:
Help me find my beloved. My Nanichi. Something terrible comes. Help me, and I shall spare your life.
He hesitated for only a heartbeat before nodding again.
The serpent's coils shimmered forward, brushing against the rusted manacles. The chains fell away as though they had been made of mist.
For an instant they simply stared at one another, god and man, the weight of the pact unspoken but understood.
Then Coatriskie struck.
The great body folded and pressed into him, entering his chest in a rush of impossible cold. Jaime's back arched, limbs flaring in the current as blue light bloomed beneath his ribs. His heart jolted into a punishing rhythm, pounding as if it might burst from the cage of his body.
Elena felt it, too, a violent echo in her own chest.
Her scream tore her from the depths-
She lurched upright in bed, coughing violently as glowing blue water spilled from her mouth.
"Calmete, mija," Señora Behike's voice came quick and firm as she pressed Elena back into the pillows. Her wound tore anew under the sudden strain, but even as the pain burned hot, the black curse began to retreat, the tendrils fading from her veins.
La Señora's sharp eyes narrowed with interest, catching every shift in Elena's skin.
"So. Coatriskie lives." Her voice held a reverence almost buried beneath the gravel of age. The corners of her mouth lifted faintly. "Truly lives."
In the healer's hut, Jaime Coana's eyes snapped open.
His skin was slick with water, his curls hanging heavy against his neck. But it was his gaze that startled the healer leaning over him, the warm brown of his irises now lit from within, glowing blue like deep-sea fire.
A hiss escaped his lips, low and satisfied.
Well done, my vessel. You both live.
He shuddered, the blanket settling over his shoulders as if the cold still clung to his bones.
Outside the cottage, Niegal's axe split wood cleanly, over and over, each swing harder than the last.
El León Negro stirred in his chest, voice curling like smoke in his mind:
The bastard still lives.
Niegal didn't know what it meant, only that he now shared the same sour heat in his blood. His jaw locked as he raised the axe again, the woodpile growing in uneven stacks at his feet.