The world blinked, and when their feet touched solid ground again, they stood atop a mountain.
At first glance, everything seemed calm. Endless ridges stretched into the horizon, jagged teeth softened by haze. The sky was impossibly wide, clouds drifting so close that if Marisol reached out, she swore she could brush her fingertips along their bellies. The air smelled thin, sharp with stone and resin from the sparse trees clinging to the peak.
For a heartbeat, she thought this place might be merciful.
Then the rustling came.
Leaves whispered against each other, a small sound at first, like a sigh. But it grew, until entire branches rattled, trunks shuddering in their roots. The ground beneath them trembled, tilting, rumbling. Jaime spread his stance wide, his jaw clenched.
The mountain itself was moving.
Beneath their feet, the peak groaned like some ancient beast stirring from slumber. It shifted forward, sliding across unseen plains, drawn toward another mountain drifting nearer through the cloud-sea. And that mountain, too, bore trees that shook like banners in a storm.
Jimena cried out, clutching Xolo against her chest. The dog whined but did not struggle, his tongue darting out to lick her cheek, as though trying to soothe away the fear. His dark eyes gleamed with uncanny intelligence, watching the colliding path ahead.
Marisol steadied her breath. She felt it—the certainty that this was no accident. From the moment the bell had tolled, they had known their blood would be tested. Each trial was carved into their marrow, passed down from ancestors long forgotten, now waking within them like embers flaring to flame.
"¿Listos?" she asked, her voice firm, though her hands trembled at her sides.
Jaime only grunted, sharp and low, but in the set of his mouth, in the fire in his gaze, another presence glared out. His boy's body bore it awkwardly, but his spirit moved with the weight of centuries.
Marisol swallowed hard, fixing her eyes on the approaching peak.
She didn't know how she would cross the gulf between mountains. The space yawned wide, mist churning below, and the trees that marked the far summit looked impossibly far away. But her heart pounded with a rhythm that wasn't hers alone.
A deeper beat, steady as drums in the earth, thrummed within her. Something old, something powerful, whispering of strength she had not yet learned to wield.
"Then we move," she said, though her words were half to herself, half to the gods.
The mountains drew closer. The trial had begun.
The mountains groaned louder as they drifted closer together. The first gap yawned open, a chasm of mist and nothingness, bottomless as the night sea.
Marisol braced her feet on the trembling stone, heart hammering. She bent her knees, let her breath fall into rhythm with that other pulse deep inside her chest—and leapt.
For an instant she soared. Her body felt weightless, carried by something more than muscle, more than bone. She landed hard, knees buckling, but she was across.
Xolo did not hesitate. The dog bounded after her, legs folding and stretching with effortless grace, as though this was the world he had always belonged to. He cleared the gulf easily, paws barely whispering against the stone.
"Come on!" Marisol shouted, her voice whipped away by the wind.
Jimena's breath came quick, her hands slick with sweat as she edged toward the cliff. She pushed off, shrieking midair, and somehow her feet caught the lip of the neighboring peak. She teetered backward, arms flailing—
Xolo lunged, sharp teeth catching the hem of her huipil. The fabric pulled taut, and Jimena dropped forward with a gasp, collapsing on the rock.
Marisol grabbed her, pulling her up with a rough laugh of relief. "You did it. You're here."
Jimena pressed her forehead against Xolo's. The dog wagged its thin tail and gave a sharp bark, as though to say it had always known she would.
Behind them, Jaime's eyes burned dark, his jaw set. His body tensed like a bowstring. When he leapt, his arc was nearly flawless—powerful, clean. But as his feet hit the stone, a strange disjointedness rippled through him. His limbs seemed to lag behind his will for a heartbeat, like a puppet tugged by unseen strings.
Marisol frowned but said nothing.
The three pressed on, leap by leap. With each mountain crossed, the rhythm grew. Land, crouch, breathe, leap again. Jimena stayed at the front, her small frame trembling, but they made sure she was never left behind. Marisol and Jaime flanked her like shadows, every fiber of their blood urging them forward.
For a time, it was almost easy.
Until the peaks began to change.
The next mountains that loomed over them were vast, monstrous things, their crowns vanishing into clouds. Compared to them, the children's path of smaller peaks felt like stepping-stones in a river that had suddenly turned into an ocean.
Jimena stopped at the edge. Her lips trembled. The vast gulf stretched wider than any leap she had made yet, and her spirit faltered.
"I… I can't." Her voice broke.
Xolo barked and bounded in circles around her, then suddenly froze, ears flat, before doing something unexpected. He bared his teeth in what might have been meant as a grin, tongue lolling out the side of his mouth. He hopped on his hind legs, tail twitching, eyes wide in a parody of play.
Jimena blinked, startled. A choked laugh escaped her throat. "You're ridiculous…"
But Marisol only shuddered. There was something eerie about the expression on the hairless dog, something uncanny in the way he mimicked joy.
Jaime snorted, though his lips twitched like he was holding back a smile. For a moment—just a moment—the ancient weight inside him flickered, and the boy surfaced. Fear gleamed in his eyes.
The god coiled in his chest stirred. The girl is weak. The line is fragile.
Mictlantecuhtli's essence pressed deeper into Jaime's mind, sharp as obsidian shards. He had not chosen this vessel; the boy was forced upon him. But necessity bound them. And if the priesthood was to survive, if this trial was to be completed, then the god of the dead would not wait on human frailty.
Jaime stiffened, his breath coming in ragged bursts. His shoulders squared, movements no longer his alone. When he spoke, his voice was layered—half boy, half something much older.
"Enough trembling," he said. "The path does not forgive hesitation."
Jimena swallowed, looking between her brother and Marisol, then at the yawning void.
The trial demanded she jump.