“Where do we begin?” Iktan’s voice, usually a careful murmur, held a new, resonant edge. Coyotl traced a finger over an old map of Atlan spread across his heavy obsidian table, marked with faded symbols of the Unfated. Xochil, her face alight with an almost fierce hope, leaned forward, ready to absorb every instruction. The air in Coyotl’s study smelled of coriander, dried peel, and sheepskin parchment. Then, the door exploded inward.
Splinters of carved cedar skittered across the flagstones. Ixchel filled the doorway, his ceremonial breastplate dented along the ribs, salt glaze drying along his temples. His gaze jumped from Coyotl to Xochil, bloodshot and erratic. The vibrant, confident flow of his ‘Fate: S-class Vanguard, Pillar of Atlan’ that Iktan had once observed over him was now a sickly, twitching current, barely holding its form. A faint, almost transparent ghosting of ‘Fate: Disgraced Usurper’ superimposed itself, wavering like heat haze.
“So, this is it,” Ixchel snarled, his voice hoarse, raw. “The traitor’s nest. Plotting your little revolution, Iktan? Thinking you’ve won?” He crossed the threshold, iron-shod boots grinding chips of timber into dust. Two conscripts hovered by the lintel, spear tips wavering as they watched Coyotl.
Coyotl moved with a speed that belied his bulk, stepping between Ixchel and the table. “Ixchel. This is not the time or place. Your conduct is… unbecoming.”
“Unbecoming?” Ixchel laughed, a jagged sound devoid of humor. “My conduct? I should have let you rot in the lowest levels, Iktan. After all the glory, after all the honor… for *him*?” He pointed a shaking finger at Iktan, his gaze burning with a venomous intensity. “You think you’re so clever, don’t you? The quiet genius, pulling strings from the shadows. You think I don’t know what you did? What you *always* did?”
Iktan remained motionless against the back shelving. He had plotted the swordsman's fall in recipes and calculated rations, expecting bluster. Instead, Ixchel's jaw shook beneath a patchy stubble, twitching between panic and fury.
“You always had such a knack, didn’t you?” Ixchel continued, ignoring Coyotl’s silent warning. He reached beneath his cuirass, yanking free a flat jade talisman strung on copper wire. It curdled with an oily green sheen. “A knack for seeing things others couldn’t. For *creating* things. You were supposed to be the ‘Culinary Saint,’ weren’t you? The one who could nourish souls, reshape destinies with a single meal.” His voice dripped with bitter mimicry.
Xochil pressed a fist against her throat. Coyotl leaned forward, his heavy brows lowering as he took in the carving.
“That was your true Fated Role, wasn’t it?” Ixchel’s grip tightened on the stone, blanching his knuckles. “The divinely ordained master of sustenance. But you know what? It didn’t suit my narrative. It didn’t fit with *my* destiny as the great S-class hero. So, I took it.”
He held up the jade pendant. “This, Iktan, is the Soul-Twister Charm. A forgotten relic of my ancestors, who understood that fate was not fixed, but merely… suggested. With this, I twisted your grand destiny. I took your ‘Culinary Saint’ and I ground it down, reshaped it into ‘Scullery Drudge.’ I took your genius, your inherent power, and I rerouted it, fed it into *my* fate. Every dish you made, every secret you wove into your food, it was all for *me*. It was *my* power, *my* glory.”
The admission hung between them. Xochil stared at Iktan, her mouth parting in dismay. Coyotl lowered one thick palm to the bone grip of his boning knife.
A slow fatigue settled behind Iktan's ribs. The theft was uglier than petty political sabotage. Above Ixchel’s brow, the script snapped and settled into harsh gold runes: ‘Fate: Architect of His Own Ruin.’ The stolen rank had simply crushed the thief beneath its weight.
“You think you can take my power now?” Ixchel spat, his eyes gleaming with a desperate madness. “You think you can be the hero? You think you can save this crumbling world with your pathetic little cooking tricks?” He raised the Soul-Twister Charm high. Its green glow pulsed, deepening into an ominous emerald hue.
“If I cannot be the hero,” Ixchel declared, his voice rising to a fever pitch, echoing unnaturally in the confined space, “then there will be no hero at all! If Atlan will not praise me, then Atlan will burn!”
With a guttural cry, he pressed the glowing charm against a small, ornate panel on his armor’s vambrace. A sudden, piercing hum filled the room, growing louder, vibrating through the floorboards. The jade amulet throbbed violently, and from the vambrace, a thin, shimmering thread of green light shot upwards, piercing the ceiling. It was a signal, a beacon, amplified a thousandfold, screaming out into the beyond.
“He’s triggering the spire beacon,” Coyotl growled. “An old emergency rite to call reinforcements from the upper tier. But with the Blight awake below... it will only summon the Weeper.”
The green needle of light bored through mortar and stone lath. Deep within the masonry, a damp, rhythmic wailing answered—the Weeper of Echoes turning its multi-jointed mass toward their floor. Ixchel stood panting, grinning through cracked lips as the beam strobed faster. A fracture opened in the empty air above the table, smelling of ozone and dead brine, and frost feathered across the inkpot.