The air in Guadalajara was heavy that summer — thick with the scent of ripe mangoes, diesel smoke, and something else… something damp and ancient, as though the city itself had just crawled out of a river. Detective Ana Ramírez had been looking forward to the trip with her eight-year-old son, Mateo — their first real vacation since her husband’s passing.

They had planned for markets and music, for street food eaten on warm steps while the day dimmed into amber twilight. Mateo had been especially excited about the Plaza de los Mariachis — he’d been practicing saying gracias with just the right flourish, eager to impress the musicians.

But on the second day, Mateo vanished.

It happened quickly, cruelly, in that way disappearances always do. One moment, he was sitting on the low fountain wall, licking a lime paleta, grinning at a street performer who balanced a spinning guitar on his chin. The next, he was gone. His paleta stick lay on the cobblestones, already gathering dust.

Ana’s police instincts roared to life before the grief could. She searched every corner of the square, her voice sharp and commanding, interrogating vendors, sweeping through the crowd like a storm. She barked orders in rapid-fire Spanish at stunned tourists, scanned every alley. But no one had seen where Mateo went.

Only one old woman, bent over with age and wrapped in a black rebozo, muttered something under her breath as Ana passed her:

"Los ojos del sacerdote han vuelto."
The priest’s eyes have returned.

The police in Guadalajara were polite but sluggish. They assured her they would “look into it.” Kidnappings were not unusual, they told her gently, often for ransom. But no one called. No note came. And no ransom demand was made.

By the third day, Ana was hunting alone. She moved through the old quarter, where the streets narrowed into jagged veins, the walls painted in flaking shades of ochre and blood-red. Laundry swayed above her head like pale flags, shadows knotting between the buildings.

She began noticing strange things: a sudden chill in the heat, the faint brush of feathers against her skin when no one was near, and eyes—glinting, cold—that seemed to watch from the darkened rooftops. Talons scraped faintly against clay tiles at dusk. And once, a soft hiss, like scales sliding over stone, echoed just beyond her hearing.

She found herself drawn to a small shop lined with cracked books and relics, the air thick with dust and the bitter scent of herbs. The owner, a man with clouded eyes, seemed to be expecting her.

“You are the mother,” he said softly, “of the boy who looks like him.”

Ana frowned. “Like who?”

The man disappeared into the back and returned with a flat stone tablet, etched with worn but still-visible carvings. A figure stood in the center — a young man, draped in ceremonial robes, his hands raised in supplication to something above him. His eyes, despite being no more than carved lines and pits, seemed to follow her. The likeness was uncanny. It was Mateo’s face.

“This is Tecuani Itztli,” the man explained, his voice low and reverent. “The last high priest to serve Quetzalcoatl before the Spanish came. Every fifty years, he is reborn… and every fifty years, he must be given back to the god, to keep him asleep. Without him… the god wakes.”

Ana felt her pulse spike. “That’s a story,” she said sharply. “A superstition.”

The man’s pale eyes fixed on her. “The cycle is older than your city. It has been kept. Always. You cannot stop it.”

The nights grew colder. Sleep became a stranger. Ana’s dreams churned with vision: Mateo in white robes, standing on a stone altar slick with dark, glistening stains. The smell of copper filled her nostrils. The sky above him was a void, yet the air shimmered with heat.

A week later, Ana followed a tip from a barefoot street boy who claimed he saw Mateo near the old Templo de la Serpiente. The temple ruins lay half-swallowed by jungle just outside the city, fenced off with rusted wire and forgotten by all but insects and shadows.

She pushed through overgrown paths until the heat seemed to drain away entirely, replaced by a damp chill that settled in her bones.

Inside the temple, the first thing to hit her was the scent—copper and rot, ancient and unforgiving. The walls bore carvings of coiling feathered serpents, their eyes glinting faintly as if alive in the flicker of candles burning in niches along the stone. But the flames did not dance or flicker, held unnervingly still as if time itself held its breath.

At the far end, beneath a vaulted ceiling mottled with age, stood her son—or something wearing his face. His small body was wrapped in white ceremonial cloth, the fabric stained faintly at the edges. Gold bands circled his wrists and ankles like shackles. His eyes were his, yet ancient, knowing, and filled with a calm no child should carry.

“They will feed him soon,” a voice hissed from the shadows. The old woman in the black rebozo stepped forward, her face painted with streaks of red and black, eyes hollow and wild. “The god hungers.”

Ana lunged forward, but the ground beneath her rippled, like the skin of some great living creature.

From the darkness above, a vast shape descended — a scaled body the color of storm clouds, feathers shimmering with impossible iridescence, eyes molten gold and burning with terrible hunger. The air was filled with a low, resonant hiss that rattled her chest and chilled her marrow.

Quetzalcoatl had woken.

Mateo turned toward the god and smiled — not the smile of her son, but the serene expression of the ancient priest depicted on the tablet, ready to serve his fate.

Ana screamed his name, but her voice was swallowed by the rushing wind and the rasp of scales. The last thing she saw before the darkness took her was her son stepping willingly toward the serpent’s yawning jaws.

Ana woke in a hospital room bathed in pale fluorescent light, the sterile smell sharp in her nostrils. Her throat was raw, her limbs heavy, her heart weighed down by emptiness deeper than any wound.

Outside, the city murmured. Not just with voices, but with whispers—dozens of voices that wove through the air like a secret chorus.

She caught fragments:

"La tormenta… no era normal…"
"El dios… otra vez…"
"La mujer en la piedra…"

A nurse leaned in, voice lowered. “People say a storm came out of nowhere last night. The streets flooded in minutes. Lightning struck the cathedral. But…” She paused, eyes flicking toward the window. “The rain only fell over Guadalajara. Like the sky knew exactly where to aim.”

Ana’s pulse quickened, grief folding into grim resolve. The storm was no accident. It was a message.

When the nurse left, Ana’s gaze drifted to the corner of the room. There, resting on a chair as though awaiting her return, was a carved stone tablet. Its surface was worn by centuries, edges chipped, but the center was sharp and clear: a face. Her son’s face, peaceful, eyes closed, lips curved in that serene expression.

Her hand trembled as she traced the carvings beneath it—symbols she now understood. They spoke of the next coming, the boy reborn, and the terrible cycle turning once more.

And beside those glyphs was a map—unfamiliar, distant—a place marked with a single deliberate chisel stroke, decades into the future.

Fifty years from that night.

Ana leaned back against her pillows, the hospital monitor’s steady beeping a cruel echo in the silence. She should feel despair. She should scream.

But instead, a new fire kindled deep within her.

She would wait. She would prepare.

And when Quetzalcoatl returned, raging for his meal, she would be there—ready to deny him once and for all.

Outside, the wind whispered, scales brushing softly against the hospital window.

The storm was not over. It was only sleeping.

And somewhere, carved faintly in the shadowed edges of the tablet, another face watched.

Ana’s.

The cycle had not ended.