It was an entire day before Marisol felt strong enough to rise from her hammock.
Her body still felt heavy, as if her bones had been soaked in seawater and left to dry. Most of the chores had fallen to her grandmother, and though both of them knew she deserved the rest, it prickled Marisol to watch the old woman shuffle around the shack on tired legs, tending to chickens, sweeping the sand that always found its way indoors, grinding maize with hands that shook more than they used to.
Marisol sighed and forced herself to untangle from the hammock. The window beside her framed the curve of the beach, its black sand glittering under the morning light. For a moment, as she leaned against the wooden frame, the world seemed to tilt sideways. The horizon rippled, bending like a reflection disturbed by unseen hands.
She blinked hard, shook her head, and straightened her spine.
She would not let whatever she had seen—whatever she had become part of—twist her world into something unrecognizable.
Outside, the air smelled of salt and wet wood. The tide had finally begun to move again, but wrong—always too slow, too shallow, as though the ocean were reluctant to breathe. The fishermen on the far side of the bay stood idle, nets hanging loose at their sides, casting wary glances toward the water.
Marisol's grandmother was at the coop, scattering corn for the hens. She wore her shawl even in the climbing heat, her back bent but her movements brisk, purposeful. When she noticed Marisol stepping barefoot onto the packed sand, she paused, her face softening for only a heartbeat before she turned away.
"Go back and rest," the old woman said, her voice flat, almost stern.
"I've rested enough." Marisol bent to lift the water bucket, though her arms trembled more than she wanted them to. The weight pressed her down as if the sea itself clung to the handle.
Her grandmother clicked her tongue and made a small sign across her chest—not the cross, but something older, her fingers tracing a quick circle before she returned to, scattering feed.
Marisol stilled. That gesture—she'd seen it once before, long ago, on the night they had fled to this lonely shack after the accident. But every time she had asked about it, her grandmother had looked away, lips pressed into silence.
The girl's throat tightened with unspoken questions. She wanted to demand answers—to ask about the bell, about the creature, about the way her chest still beat to a rhythm not quite her own. But she knew her grandmother, knew that the old woman's silence was a wall she would not climb unless forced.
Still, the wall was cracking.
Marisol could feel it.
From the edge of the mangroves came a sudden noise—frogs again, their chant pulsing steady, low, like the heartbeat she now carried inside her. The hens froze, feathers ruffling, and one by one they turned their heads sharply toward Marisol, black eyes glinting.
Her grandmother crossed herself—this time with the Church's sign.
"Inside, child," she murmured, not looking at her. "Now."
Marisol's skin prickled. She obeyed, but not before glancing once more at the sea.
The tide was still ebbing.
And something vast was moving beneath it.
Inside the shack, the air was cool and dim. The palm roof creaked with the breeze, and from the rafters dangled bundles of herbs Marisol couldn't name. She sat at the table, watching the shadows shift across the walls as her grandmother moved about in silence. Every scrape of pottery, every shuffle of bare feet, sounded too loud.
Marisol pressed a hand against her chest. Her heartbeat was steady now, but not hers. The rhythm was too deliberate, too heavy, like a drum calling from far away.
"Abuela," she said softly.
Her grandmother didn't answer. She pulled a clay jar from a shelf and sprinkled a bitter-smelling powder into a cup of water. The scent was sharp, mineral, almost metallic.
"You know what I saw."
The old woman's hand trembled, just slightly, before she set the cup down in front of Marisol. "Drink."
Marisol stared at it. "You won't even look at me."
Her grandmother's lips thinned. "You think I do not know what it means when the campana de los ahogados rings? You think I wanted this?" Finally, her gaze met Marisol's—dark, weary, threaded with something between anger and grief. "I prayed it would never pass to you."
Marisol's stomach turned cold. "Pass to me? What do you mean?"
The old woman looked away, her shoulders bowing as if under a sudden weight. "Drink," she repeated. "It will help you sleep."
But Marisol did not drink. She pushed the cup aside, her eyes burning with frustration. "Why won't you tell me? You'd rather leave me blind than admit the truth?"
The silence that followed was sharp as glass.
Before either could break it, the shack's door rattled. Someone was outside.
Her grandmother stiffened, then moved quickly, pulling her shawl tighter. "Stay here." She slipped outside, shutting the door with more force than usual.
Through the cracks in the wall, Marisol could see a shadow—broad, hunched, leaning on a stick. It was old Don Esteban, the fisherman who had once lived beside them before whispers and stares drove the family to the edge of the village. His voice was low, urgent, but Marisol caught enough to hear her own name.
Her grandmother hissed something back. A warning. A denial.
Then came the words that froze Marisol in place:
"She bears the mark. Just like her mother."
Marisol's breath caught. She pressed her ear to the wall, but the voices had already dropped, too soft to follow. A moment later, footsteps shuffled away and the door creaked open again.
Her grandmother entered, face pale beneath her shawl. "Don't listen," she muttered, as if Marisol had not already heard. "The old man's tongue is rotten with rumors."
But the lie hung in the air between them, heavy as smoke.
Marisol swallowed hard. "My mother," she whispered. "What does he mean?"
The old woman closed her eyes. For a long moment, she looked as if she might finally speak—might finally split open the silence that had bound their family since the night of exile.
But instead she only shook her head. "Not tonight. Not yet."
Marisol clenched her fists, but the argument died on her lips. Outside, the frogs had begun again, their chant rising and falling like waves. She could almost hear words hidden in their croaks, syllables just beyond the reach of understanding.
And then—faint, far out over the water—the bell tolled once more.
This time, it was not only inside her.
The whole village heard it.
Dogs barked. Chickens scattered. Somewhere, a baby wailed. And above it all, the tide groaned, pulling back farther than it should, as though the sea were making space for something vast to rise.
Marisol's grandmother crossed herself, both the circle of the old ways and the lines of the new, her lips moving in a prayer that mixed two faiths.
Marisol's skin prickled. She knew, in her bones, that the village was listening to the same call she could not escape.
And she knew, with a certainty that left her trembling, that the sea would not rest until it was answered.
Marisol could feel her heart begin to drum in sync with the tide, the croaks, and the low, hollow tolling. Each beat reverberated through her chest until she swore her bones would rattle apart. And then, as if her spirit had crossed some hidden threshold, the terror bled away—replaced by a strange, dizzy euphoria.
Memories surged. Not her own. Older, buried deep in her blood. Flashes of white water tumbling down stone steps, of women crowned in jade, of prayers spoken in a language that tasted like obsidian and rain. Something ancient and holy bloomed inside her, unfolding like a flower, and from its petals came a name carried on the wind—
Chalchiuhtlicue.
The syllables were soft, but they struck her like a command. The name urged her forward, toward the beach.
Her grandmother's hand, snatched for her arm, but Marisol was already moving. The force inside her was the same one that had dragged her under the bell's rhythm days before—irresistible, tidal, not hers.
"Marisol!" Her grandmother's cry chased her down the dirt path, thin and sharp with fear.
The village was, awake now. Faces appeared in doorways, pale and panicked in the torchlight. Women clutched their children. Men muttered prayers. The bell's echo still hummed in the air, and each toll seemed to rattle loose another layer of dread.
Marisol's bare feet slapped the packed earth as she dashed past the thatched roofs. The villagers' eyes followed her, wide and shining. For the first time, she realized their fear wasn't just of the sea. It was of her.
She slowed only when the sand shifted beneath her toes and the open breath of the bay spread before her. The tide had drawn back farther than she had ever seen, exposing black sand glistening like oil. A smell of brine and something metallic—like blood—hung in the air.
And there, at the edge of the surf, were Jaime and Jimena.
The twins were a year younger than her, the children of the butcher who still muttered when her grandmother passed by. Jaime's laughter cut through the night like a knife, bright and careless, as if the tolling bell were nothing but a prank played for his amusement. He pointed at the exposed sea floor, jabbing his sister's shoulder.
Jimena was pale, her braid half-unraveled, her breath ragged from running. She kept glancing between the waves and Marisol, her lips trembling as though she wanted to say something but couldn't.
Marisol stumbled to a halt a few paces from them, her chest still thrumming with the rhythm of frogs, tide, and bells. She felt tethered to the beach, as if the sand itself had reached up to hold her here.
The twins' faces blurred for a moment in her sight—no longer just children she'd grown up beside, but reflections, echoes, carrying lines she half-recognized from the visions spilling through her veins. Faces she had seen kneeling at jade-lined canals, faces chanting under rain-heavy skies, faces washed away by waves centuries ago.
Her mouth opened, and words that weren't her own rose up, heavy with salt and history.
"Mictecacihuatl and Mictlantecuhtli, let us open the trial."
The voice that was issued from Marisol's lips was not hers. It was deeper, resonant, thrumming with authority that shook the air. Even as her chest rose and fell, her eyes glowed with a light that belonged to no child of Bahia Oscura.
"Fine," came the reply—dry, weighty, as if ground from stone. It did not come from the sky, nor the sea, but from Jaime himself. His small frame stiffened, and his expression hollowed into something ancient. His arms rose, trembling but commanded, toward the receded sea. A chant slithered around him, a chorus with no mouths to sing it, each word sinking into the black sand like hooks.
"Mictecacihuatl," Marisol intoned, her own voice now layered—hers and another's, braided like tide and undertow. She turned toward Jimena, who stood wide-eyed, trembling, but powerless to resist. Slowly, her hands lifted skyward, fingers crooked in shapes too old to name. The goddess's presence filled her like a flood.
The voiceless chant swelled around the three of them, circling like carrion birds. It did not come from their throats but from the air itself—the frogs, the waves, even the groaning of the mangroves all twisted into harmony.
Then the earth moved.
A deep rumble coursed through the bay, so low it rattled ribs. Villagers screamed, stumbling from their huts, clutching one another as the ground shivered.
The black sands cracked. Thin fissures spidered outward before collapsing with a sharp crack, raining grains into the void. The trench yawned wider and wider, a mouth opening to the abyss beneath the sea. Its breath reeked of brine, iron, and something older than rot.
Marisol felt her arms stretch higher, though her muscles screamed. Her heart beat not with her own rhythm but with the cadence of the chant. She understood, without doubt, what was happening.
The trial had begun.
The children—three, chosen, nurtured— ripened into vessels. Bodies hollowed and filled with voices too vast to name.
The villagers fell to their knees, not in prayer but in terror. Some wept. Others called on saints who would not answer. A few turned their eyes away, unable to watch what they had whispered about for generations, what they had feared would come true.
From the abyssal trench, a wind rose, icy and damp. And in that wind, names whispered in dozens of tongues—names the villagers' blood remembered even if their minds had forgotten.
The gods had come for their faith, and their faith had ripened into children.
And Bahia Oscura was about to learn what rebirth truly cost.