Since his banishment, Niegal had made the jungle his crucible.
Each wound he healed on himself helped clear the rot pestering from within, quiet penance for failures the gods would never forgive. The green shadows became his refuge, the screams of dying cultists his hymn. He skirted the Sanctuary's edge like a phantom, cutting down the Serpiente's faithful with precise, unrelenting strikes.
It was not duty that drove him. It was atonement.
Every body left cooling in the vines was one less pressing against the Sanctuary's fragile borders. The least he could give only thing left he could give.
Yet the cult never thinned. For every zealot he felled, another took their place.
Where were they coming from? Who was feeding this endless tide?
He carved the question into the back of his mind, knowing he might never have the answer.
One sweltering night, he saw movement through the ferns- Juan, alone, waist-deep in slaughter. The earth itself bucked beneath his enemies, roots and vines lashing out like living whips. Gueyaba's blessing clung to him like armor.
Niegal slipped into the fray without a word, blade flashing, splitting neck from spine. They moved in brutal rhythm, until Juan turned, growling gold eyes lit with raw disdain sharp enough to cut. No thanks. No recognition. Just the silent accusation that Niegal was the last person who should be here.
Rather than explain himself, Niegal vanished into the green.
Days later, the jungle shuddered.
It began as a low quake under his feet, then rose into a roar of thunder that rattled his bones. Magic rolled through the soil in waves, an ancient pulse he had felt only once before.
He followed it, past strangler figs and bone-white ruins, until the ground fell away before him and the glowing mouth of the Wellspring yawned wide. The air here was heavy with divinity, thick enough to drown in.
In the pool's luminous waters, Jaime clung to Elena's limp form, barely keeping her above the surface. Her skin was pallid, lips blue-tinged, and her breaths came shallow. Guabancex had burned her hollow, left her weaker than the day she nearly died in his arms. Her wounds, dear gods, the ones inflicted during his corrupted possession, were raw and bleeding under the bandages.
Jaime's eyes found him with the heat of a drawn blade, mistrust and rage in equal measure.
Niegal stepped into the shallows without speaking, hands outstretched.
Jaime hesitated. Just a heartbeat too long.
Then, with a sharp exhale, he let go.
Niegal's arms closed around her. She felt weightless, too light, like holding the husk of someone once alive. The moment she left Jaime's grasp, the younger man sagged, strength giving way all at once. His body folded into the water, unconscious before he could hit the stone lip.
Niegal gathered them both. Drew on the Wellspring's magic and the last dregs of his own. His hands glowed faintly as he knit torn muscle, cooled fever, eased pain. Not a prayer, he no longer believed prayers were heard, but a bargain, silent and raw, with gods who may never answer.
Hours passed.
He stayed at the water's edge, watching their faces in the glow.
They stirred in fevered dreams, calling for each other… never for him. The truth landed with its own kind of blade.
He did not resent it.
They belonged to each other in a way that shut him out entirely. He was a shadow here. Always would be.
The sound reached him first- footsteps echoing through stone. Voices threading closer.
Niegal rose, slipping into the cave's darker veins.
Alejandro arrived first, Señora Behike close behind. Alejandro's gaze sharpened the moment it landed on Elena and Jaime, his expression hardening like stone. The Behike knelt without hesitation, hands already working over the wounded.
Niegal stayed in the shadows.
Watched long enough to see them safe.
Then he turned, vanishing back into the jungle, leaving them in the arms of those who could still hold them in ways he no longer could.