Long before banners were raised and prayers learned to climb the sky, there was the Teyollohcuani.

From Nahuatl: The one who devours the heart.

It rose from shadow, and the darkness answered with a shriek. Cold breath cut through the trees, choking the wind until the forest forgot its own voice. Wings moved where wings should not be.

It drifts through crowds like a vampire through sleepers, unhurried and unchallenged, disguised among the living as an elderly neighbor or friend. 

It does not strike, not at first. It waits close by, where grief clings, guilt gnaws, and memories pull the chest outward. When the heart parts for a shadow, it takes.

When it chooses to be seen, it is a nightmare made flesh. Molten-red eyes burn. Beneath them, a hollow chest, opened not by wound but by hunger. Its beak splits wider than bone allows, ravenous for hearts steeped in fear and doubt. Where it passes, hope thins. Not slain, quietly extinguished.

Yet flesh alone does not satisfy it.

The Teyollohcuani devours the heart and the yollotl—the warmth that makes courage rise, the essence that lets grief heal instead of harden.

Under its blood-red gaze, life falters. Guilt presses down. Grief grows heavy. Memories, long buried, weigh upon the heart. Courage collapses before it can speak.

Prey feel the strange loosening in the chest, as if the heart were pulled toward the hollow that waits to judge it. The ache that follows is not pain, but memory—every failure recalled at once.

Not all who are fed upon die.

Some continue on.

They wake. They work. They answer when spoken to. They remember what love was called, but cannot feel its weight.

When its red light glows among the trees, no charm will save you. When wings stir in still air, do not speak. Do not look up. It is already tasting your fear.