The peace that followed Alejandro's crying was fragile, woven with evasive glances and silences that lasted too long. Don Álvaro spent hours checking the door locks, as if he could contain with wood and iron what his son had unleashed upon the world. Citlali, in contrast, moved with silent determination. She had seen it in her son: the spark couldn't just be seen; it could burn. And fire, without a channel, consumes its bearer first.
A week after the incident, while my father was out trying to sell some fabrics, Mom knelt before the cradle where I played with a gourd rattle. For some reason, even as an adult in a baby's body, I felt intrigued by how this object worked as I shook it. Incredible how you work... did they use a gourd, dry it out, and then fill it with seeds? I wondered in my thoughts as I kept shaking it.
"Xóchitl," whispered Mom, using the forbidden name in broad daylight. "Your blood is awake, and the world hears it. We cannot let it cry out alone."
Her hands, calloused and soft at once, cupped my little face. They're warm, no matter how much time passes I never see fear in her eyes. I only see a deep, ancestral resolution, I thought to myself as I laughed to show her I was happy.
"There is a ritual. From my grandmother, and from her grandmother. For when a child of the earth shows the gift before the first solar cycle. The Tonaltzin. To know the name the sun wrote on your heart, and to anchor your spirit so it doesn't get lost in the winds of change."
That night, when Dad returned, exhausted and empty-handed, Mom didn't ask for permission. She announced it. I had never seen so much determination in her eyes.
"We must perform the Tonaltzin. At the next new moon."
Álvaro opened his mouth to protest, but his wife's gaze stopped him. It wasn't a plea. It was a fact.
"It's dangerous," he managed to say, his voice hoarse.
"More dangerous is to leave him like this, like a lit torch in a dry field," she replied. "The ritual will give him roots. Without roots, any storm will tear him out. And the storm… is coming. I can feel it."
Álvaro looked at his son, who watched them with a seriousness unbefitting a baby. He saw in his eyes that latent golden flash, that promise of cataclysm or glory. His shoulders slumped in accepted defeat.
"Where?"
---
It wasn't a fertile chinampa or a majestic ruin. Mom guided us, carrying me wrapped in a dark shawl, to a forgotten place on the marshy outskirts of Tlatelolco: a bend in the river where an ancient ahuehuete had been felled. The stump, gigantic and black, still sprouted sickly shoots. The air smelled of stagnant water, mud, and something more: of wound.
"A guardian died here," Mom explained in a low voice as she placed simple offerings: withered marigold flowers, black corn kernels, a small obsidian knife. "A water spirit that refused to flee when the ships arrived. They killed it not with swords, but with salt and with the cold magic that came from the words of their god." She whispered this last part while looking at Dad, and I felt a bit bad for him as I watched him lower his gaze guiltily. "Its pain remained."
Still in Dad's arms, I activated the Eyes of the Fifth Sun.
The place was a magical cancer. From the stump emanated veins of purple and black energy, twisting like dying snakes. It was the Magic of Chaos in its purest form: ecological pain, betrayal of the land, impotent fury. The water in the bend glowed with a sickly green hue. The System resonated in my mind:
» LOCATION IDENTIFIED: 'Wound of the Earth – River of Lament'!
» CONCENTRATION OF 'CHAOS MAGIC' (Subclass: Territorial Pain): HIGH.
» WARNING: RESIDENT ENERGY IS HOSTILE AND CORROSIVE.
» SECONDARY OBJECTIVE DETECTED: 'HEAL/INTERACT WITH THE WOUND'. ACCEPT? (REWARD: ???, RISK: HIGH).
Hostile? Corrosive? I don't like this, I said to myself as I trembled in Dad's arms, and he seemed to feel it since he held me tighter and with more warmth; I could see he felt the same way.
Mom began the ritual. She lit copal, whose tendrils of smoke struggled to rise in the heavy air. She sang in an archaic Nahuatl, words that were more feeling than meaning. I felt the Earth Magic in my mother, weak but pure, trying to build a bridge to the place.
Then, she asked Dad to place me on a white blanket spread before the stump.
The instant my small, bare feet touched the damp earth, everything changed.
---
Alejandro's Eyes of the Fifth Sun exploded into vision. It wasn't a flash; it was a flood.
He stopped seeing the physical world. He saw timelines. Threads of golden light (earth), white (order), and purple (chaos) intertwined and broke in an infinite tapestry above his head. At the center, a black sun with a jade heart spun. It was his soul, the point where all the lines converged… or tore apart.
A burning glyph formed in the air before him, composed of dots and bars: 7-MOVEMENT (Chicome-Ollin).
» CALENDAR NAME CONFIRMED: 7-OLLIN.
» MEANING: DESTINY OF VIOLENT CHANGE, RENEWAL THROUGH CHAOS, HE WHO WALKS AMID EARTHQUAKES.
» CLAN ABILITY UNLOCKED: 'FEET THAT FEEL THE EARTH'S WOUND' (Level 1).
'Feet that Feel the Earth's Wound'? 'He Who Walks Amid Earthquakes'... what does it mean, that I can create...? I thought to myself. But before I could process it, the river's wound reacted.
The green water churned. From the black stump emerged a form made of weeping shadow and rotten roots: an ahuizote of lament, a minor water spirit perverted by pain into a chaotic entity. It had no defined shape; it was a whirl of ghostly faces of dead fish, drowned whispers in Nahuatl, and the penetrating cold of death by forgetting.
SCREEEEEEEE!
A piercing shriek tore through the silence, not in the ears, but in the soul.
The entity lunged, not towards Citlali or Álvaro, but directly at Alejandro. Why me? I don't even know you, I screamed inside while only frightened baby babbles came out. But the creature was heading for the glow of his new name and the vital energy of his ritual.
"NO!" Citlali screamed, throwing her body and the copal smoke between them. The entity struck her a glancing blow. Citlali fell to her knees with a gasp of pain, as if all the cold in the world had seeped into her bones.
Álvaro, blind to the entity but seeing his wife fall and the water twisting unnaturally, acted on instinct. He grabbed the small obsidian knife from the offering, a ritual weapon, not for battle.
"Get away from my family!" he roared, brandishing it blindly at the cold air.
It was useless. The ahuizote laughed, a sound of bubbles bursting in mud, and focused on Alejandro. It surrounded him. Alejandro felt a icy void, an infinite thirst that wanted to suck his warmth, his magic, his future.
Panic flooded him. Not the fear of dying, but that his parents would die for him. He wanted to fight, but how? He had no words, no strength.
Then, the System spoke, but not with text. With an instinct.
His new ability, 'Feet that Feel the Earth's Wound', activated on its own. Through the soles of his feet, he felt the agonizing heartbeat of the murdered guardian spirit. He felt its rage, its sadness, its confusion. And he felt something else: a thread of connection between that pain and his own, the pain of being a stranger, of being trapped, of endangering those he loved.
This feeling... this is what it meant, to feel the earth's pain, the spirits' pain. It's not acting out of malice, it's just suffering. Alejandro didn't try to reject the cold. He accepted it.
He let the river's pain, the purple chaos, flow into him. Not to feed it, but to acknowledge it. With all the strength of his adult mind and his child's heart, he projected a single, simple, raw feeling: "I'm sorry."
It wasn't earth magic, nor order magic. It was magic of pure empathy, a human bridge thrown over the abyss of suffering they shared. He could understand it because he too knew what it was like to feel forgotten on his deathbed.
The ahuizote stopped. The whirl of ghostly faces calmed for an instant. Alejandro's eyes, shining with the brilliance of 7-Ollin, found the core of shadow.
And in that moment of connection, the System did its thing.
» SYNERGY DETECTED: HUMAN EMPATHY + NAME 7-OLLIN + CHAOTIC ENERGY.
» PROCESSING… UNIQUE ABILITY CREATED!
» 'TEARS THAT BIND' (Embryonic Degree): Ability to channel a fraction of environmental chaotic pain through oneself, purging it temporarily in the form of physical tears. COST: EXTREME EMOTIONAL AND PHYSICAL EXHAUSTION.
Alejandro didn't think. He cried.
But they weren't tears of water. They were tears of a pearly grey color, which hissed softly as they fell on the earth before the stump. I guess in a way, I'm like you, Alejandro responded inwardly as his small baby body showed a smile with a tear falling from his eye. I hope you can also find peace and find wherever you go and be happy. Where they fell, the purple veins of chaotic energy dissipated, like smoke swept by the wind, leaving a patch of dead but peaceful earth.
The ahuizote let out one last moan, this time not of fury, but of relief. The form dissolved, not in an explosion, but in a sigh, returning to the water, which lost its sickly green glow for a moment.
Alejandro fell backwards, completely drained, white as wax. The grey tears stained his cheeks.
---
Dad scooped me up just in time. Mom, trembling but alive, crawled toward us.
"What… what happened?" asked Dad, terrified, wiping the strange tears from my face.
"He… gave them peace," Mom gasped, looking at the now-calm water in astonishment. "He took their pain and… carried it away."
The ritual was broken, but complete. Now I had another name on the list, a complicated one if you ask me, I'm going to struggle to remember so many names, though 7-Ollin doesn't sound so bad. And I had a new wound in my soul, the scar of having harbored for an instant the pain of a dying river.
On the way home, in a silence laden with terror and reverence, Mom spoke.
"We cannot stay."
Dad, who would normally have argued, nodded. He had seen the water move on its own. He had seen the color leave his son's face. He had seen tears that were not of this world.
"The ritual… left a mark. Those who sense these things… will come to investigate," she continued. "The good and the bad."
The next day, while I still lay feverish, a victim of the System's "extreme exhaustion," Father went to church for "Miguel's" official baptism. Fray Bernardo officiated, but his blue eyes scrutinized Dad with a new intensity.
"Your son has a… restless aura, Don Álvaro," he commented at the end, without smiling—I definitely don't like this guy for some reason. "Grace is at work in him, but he must be watched. The enemy lurks in damp places and ancient memories."
It was a veiled warning. Dad knew they had no time.