I didn't sleep.
I couldn't.
When I closed my eyes, I heard the screams again.
When I opened them, I saw worse.
I hid beneath what remained of a collapsed home — nothing more than charred beams and half a wall. The stonework still smelled like burning pitch. The earth was wet and sour, thick with blood. Every breath I took was a quiet war against my stomach. I couldn't vomit anymore. Nothing was left in me.
I'd curled behind a broken wall with a jagged hole, barely enough space to breathe. My body hurt. I hadn't eaten in—what? A day? Two? It didn't matter.
I was still alive.
And for now, that was enough.
Then I heard them.
Footsteps. Laughter. Shouting — not Spanish, but Nahuatl. The words were familiar, but the accents were different.
"Bring out the women. The ones with fat hips."
"There's more in there. Drag them out."
"I said alive, not in pieces."
I peeked through the hole in the wall. Slowly. Carefully.
They weren't Caxtilteca. Not the ones in armor. These were native warriors — allies. Tlaxcalans, with their distinct hair-knots and painted faces. A few Huejotzinca, too, judging by their cloaks. One of them wore the jaguar pattern of a fallen Mexica captain, stripped from his corpse. They joked as they went door to door, pulling people from rubble, dragging women by their hair.
One woman fought back. She couldn't have been more than twenty. She screamed, bit, kicked. She was beautiful — feathers still tangled in her hair, like she'd once been someone respected.
They threw her down and took turns.
Another girl screamed for her mother.
A child was struck with the butt of a spear for crying too loudly.
An old woman was dragged out, kicked, and spat on — "Witch," one of them called her.
I saw one Otomi warrior spit in the face of an elderly Mexica man, then bash his teeth in with a rock. He said the old bastard had fought in the Flower Wars. Said he remembered his own grandfather being taken. Said now was justice.
There was no justice. Just cruelty, wearing revenge as a mask.
I didn't move. I didn't speak.
I just watched.
And in that moment, I hated myself more than anything else in the world.
The sun rose slower than I thought possible.
I stayed hidden all day. When the men moved on, I slipped out. My legs barely worked. My throat was dry enough to crack.
I found a clay bowl lying on its side. I licked the rim, desperate for even a drop of water. A corpse lay beside it — a boy, maybe ten years old. Face down. His back was covered in shallow cuts, like he'd been flayed just to bleed.
I don't know why, but I turned him over.
He looked like my cousin.
Same round cheeks. Same wide nose.
Same look of confusion frozen on his face, like he didn't understand what had happened.
Neither did I.
Later that night, I heard something else. Closer.
Two voices. Mexica. Arguing. One was younger — a teen like me. The other was older, maybe in his twenties. I stayed low, crawling toward a broken hallway where the voices echoed.
"Give it here, bastard!"
"I found it first!"
"I'll split your throat!"
They were fighting over a satchel of food. Maize, crushed beans, a gourd of what might've been water. I watched as the older one grabbed a jagged piece of obsidian and slashed the younger across the chest.
The teen fell. Twitched. Tried to crawl.
The older man didn't even blink. He took the food and left him to die.
This wasn't about Spaniards anymore.
This wasn't about gods or war or glory.
This was survival.
I spent that night in a broken shrine. The face of the god had been torn off the statue — the eyes cracked, the mouth smashed in. I curled beneath the altar, trembling.
I heard another girl scream not far away. Then nothing.
I covered my ears and squeezed my eyes shut.
And I asked myself:
Why did I ever wish for this?
Somewhere near dawn, I saw a group of women led by a Spanish soldier and Tlaxcalan guards. Among them was a girl my age, maybe younger. She didn't cry. She didn't speak. Her dress was torn. Her eyes looked like someone had ripped the soul out of her.
She turned her head and looked right at me.
I froze.
She saw me.
I know she did.
But she said nothing.
She turned back and kept walking.
When the sun rose, I had stopped trembling.
Not because I was brave.
Because I was empty.
I no longer flinched at the screams.
No longer gagged at the smell.
No longer felt like myself.
I was still Ehecatl. I knew that.
But something else had started to rot inside me.
I was becoming hollow.