The Wellspring settled, but it did not calm. Ripples of violet and gold pulsed across the surface, like a heartbeat too large for the cavern to contain. Jaime coughed, water dripping from his hair and eyes, but the eyes themselves… they were not entirely his. Coatriskie lingered there, coiled in every nerve, every muscle, whispering, waiting.
Elena floated beside him, still trembling from the exertion, her chest rising and falling with a rhythm borrowed from the storm. Her wounds, once raw and ragged, shimmered pearlescent under the Wellspring's light, the bite on her shoulder, the claw marks, the ribs- all melded into a tapestry of healed skin streaked with spiraling lightning scars. And yet, she felt the weight of Guabancex pressing against her heart, a fragile pulse she had to guard with every breath.
Jaime reached for her again, but this time, the touch was different. Where his fingers brushed her arm, a current ran between them. Alive, sentient, a spark of Coatriskie's own essence weaving through her lightning scars. She gasped, more at the awareness of power than the physical contact, and he saw it reflected in her violet-flecked eyes.
The cave hummed. Every ripple, every drop, answered to the bond they had forged, a dangerous, intoxicating tether between vessel and god, mortal and divine. Alejandro took a cautious step closer, hand still on the hilt of his sword, but Señora Behike's gaze stopped him.
"Not yet," she whispered, voice sharp but low. "They are… not fully themselves. One wrong move, and the Wellspring will consume everything in this cave."
Jaime's lips trembled, and for a heartbeat, he was simply Jaime again: a man terrified of what he had become, terrified of what he might do if Coatriskie's influence overwhelmed him. He pressed his forehead against Elena's, their breaths mingling, both tasting salt and ozone, both tasting the edge of the impossible.
Elena's hand moved up to his cheek. The sensation was electric, not just from her own power but from the surge of the god within him. "It's… too much," she whispered, voice breaking. "I feel everything- you, the god, the storm, the Wellspring itself. I… I don't know if I can hold it."
"You can," Jaime murmured, Coatriskie's voice curling beneath his own, smooth, coaxing, a predator wrapped in velvet. "You must. Because the alternative…" He did not finish the sentence, but the Wellspring seemed to echo it anyway, thrumming with threat.
Alejandro swallowed hard, every instinct screaming at him to intervene, to pull them apart, to flee. But Señora Behike's hand rested lightly on his shoulder. "Watch, mijo. Learn. Pray you never have to fight what they have just become."
Outside, the jungle waited, silent for the first time in months. Even the Serpiente cult held its breath, unaware that the Wellspring had claimed more than just a mortal bargain. It had forged a weapon, a bond of storm and wrath, of love and terror.
Elena let out a shuddering breath, gripping Jaime tighter, feeling the surge of power settle into a rhythm within them. It was horrifying, overwhelming, but it was also impossibly theirs.
"And now?" she whispered, her lips barely brushing his ear.
"Now," Jaime said, voice low, "we survive. Together."
But the Wellspring hummed under their feet, as if testing, as if tasting the promise of destruction and love intertwined. Somewhere below, in the shadows too deep to see, something smiled. Patient, waiting, and infinitely hungry.
Then the Wellspring heaved.
Water licked up Elena's throat like a hand testing the pulse of its prize.
She could feel the serpent god pressing behind her eyes now, curling around her thoughts, whispering that this was not union- it was claiming.
"Don't fight it," Jaime's voice came, but it was layered, his own tone riding beneath something deeper, more ancient. "If you fight, it will choose for you."
The current surged. The Behike's chant faltered. Stone dust rained from the cavern roof as Alejandro drew his blade again, his gaze flicking between them, searching for the moment to intervene.
It never came.
A column of water rose between Elena and Jaime, smooth as glass until it shattered into a hundred ribbons, each one lashing their arms, binding wrist to wrist, pulse to pulse. The bindings tightened, burrowing under skin until they glowed with a sickly blue light.
Elena gasped, her breath stolen not by the water but by the sensation, as if her veins had been hollowed out and filled with the Wellspring itself. Jaime's head jerked back, his pupils splitting like a serpent's, and the air in the cavern turned wet and cold.
The Behike screamed a single word in the old tongue. The bindings flared, sealing themselves with a hiss.
For a heartbeat, nothing moved.
Then the Wellspring answered.
From its depths, something vast shifted , the smile from before breaking wide and a shockwave tore through the water, throwing Alejandro to his knees.
Elena's vision blurred, but before she fell, she saw it:
A second shadow rising behind Jaime, wearing his face but with eyes too bright, too patient.
And it was looking at her.
The Wellspring calmed suddenly, like a predator easing its jaws shut around prey it no longer needed to chase.
Elena floated, gasping, her wrists still burning where the bindings had stitched themselves under her skin. When she blinked, the world looked different — colors sharper, crueler. She caught her reflection in the surface of the water: her garnet eyes were gone.
Now they were violet, luminous in their depth, a storm bottled into two small windows. When her magic stirred, the glow flickered indigo, not like flame but like lightning pressed behind glass.
"Elena…" Alejandro's voice trembled. He lowered his sword, his face stricken. "Your eyes-"
A strangled cry turned her head. Jaime clawed his way upright, water sliding down his shoulders. His irises, once earthy brown, had become a deep ocean blue, fathomless and cold. When he raised his hand, a flicker of indigo light crackled along his fingertips. The twin to hers.
The Behike's chanting died into silence. Even she seemed unwilling to speak.
Then the voices came.
Not from the cavern, not from the Wellspring, but from inside their skulls.
Guabancex: Storm-child, you are no longer yours alone.
Coatriskie: And neither is he. One vessel, two bodies. One wound, two sufferings.
The water stirred again, rippling in time with their words.
Before Elena could answer, her head snapped back as invisible hands clamped around her throat. Water surged into her mouth, choking her. She thrashed, eyes wide in panic-
And across from her, Jaime screamed. Not in outrage, but in suffocation. His body convulsed, mouth flooding as if he too were being drowned.
Alejandro leapt forward, but the Behike threw out an arm, her face grave.
"Don't," she hissed. "It is their trial."
The voices deepened, overlapping like thunder on the sea.
Guabancex: If she dies-
Coatriskie: He dies as well.
Elena's chest burned. Jaime's face purpled, his hands clawing at nothing. Their bodies twisted in mirrored desperation until, at last, the Wellspring relented. The grip released, and both of them collapsed, gasping the same stolen breath.
The cavern shook with the gods' laughter.
Guabancex: Now you understand.
Coatriskie: One blood. One fate. One binding.
Alejandro stood frozen, his knuckles white on his sword. Señora Behike only closed her eyes, whispering prayers no louder than a breath.
Elena's gaze flicked to Jaime. His lips were blue, his chest rising in shallow heaves dbut his eyes, ocean-deep and strange, locked with hers.
Neither could look away.
Neither could forget the catch.