The air was different here.
Wet.
Heavy.
Alive.
It clung to skin not like heat—but like belonging. Like something that had been waiting to be touched again.
Xiuhcoatl stepped onto the southern path, and the jungle rose around him like a breath held for years.
The canopy arched above, vast and green and gold, sunlight fractured through hanging vines, falling in ribbons across the moss-choked trail.
The air tasted of copper and loam. The soil, dark and rich beneath his boots, gave slightly with every step—not soft, but knowing. The kind of ground that remembered every name ever buried beneath it.
Behind him, the warriors were silent. No drums. No chants.
Not because it wasn’t deserved—but because some things were too sacred for sound.
The jungle smelled of rain that hadn’t fallen ye
