The rain did not stop. As if the sky was crying for what was about to happen.
Kael was alone, standing on the edge of an ancient temple devoured by time and weeds. At his feet, the city breathed like a sleeping beast, ignorant of the chaos brewing in its entrails. Behind him, the voices of the past continued to whisper, mingling with the memories that now burned like embers within him.
The echoes of his old life, of Kinich, were no longer mere hallucinations. They were part of him. A part that cried out to awaken.
He had seen his own death. He had felt the forbidden love that condemned him. He had recognized in himself something more than flesh and blood.
He was no longer a child. He was no longer just Kael.
-Is this what you want? -asked a voice behind him. It was the mysterious man who had trained him, the same one who had taught him to kill, to survive. Not to feel.
Kael did not turn around. His gaze was still fixed on the horizon, as if beyond that mist the image of Ixchel still rose, waiting for him among celestial ruins.
-I don't want it. I am.
The silence was absolute.
The man sighed, like someone who has lost something irretrievable.
-There's no turning back from here, Kael. If you cross that line... what little is left of your soul will be gone forever. You will become what you hate, what you were... what the gods fear.
Kael looked down at his hands, scarred, hardened, broken. They had held hunger, death, blood. And now... power.
-There is nothing left of me to lose," he replied. I have left the child behind. The only thing left... is what must be born.
Then, without further words, he walked to the altar of the temple.
There an ancient offering awaited him: a ritual dagger, forged of black stone and bone, wrapped in a faint golden light. It was the link between his past and his destiny. His reflection and his doom.
He knelt in front of it.
The clouds thundered.
The voice of the gods - fallen and risen - murmured his name.
And Kael, his gaze burning, cut his palm with the dagger. The blood fell on the altar and the world seemed to stop. The ground shook, the shadows shifted, and a dark light emerged from the depths of the temple. It enveloped him.
His humanity screamed. His soul wept. But he did not recoil.
For in that instant, Kael died.
And something else... he was reborn.
He was not human. He was not god.
He was the fury of a forgotten age.
The fire of a broken promise.
The beginning of a war that had no name yet.