Chapter Twenty-Seven. Yadriel
TWENTY-SEVEN
YADRIEL
The old church loomed like a carcass, its stone bones cracked and overgrown. Yadriel led the way this time, portaje in hand, heart hammering behind his ribs. Every step toward the crypt felt heavier than the last, like the ground itself was trying to push them back.
Behind him came the others—Enrique and Lita at his side, their expressions grim.
Maritza stalked just behind and Julian followed in silence.
Behind them, the rest of the brujx had arrived—elders with the most experience, portajes ready, rituals memorized.
Somewhere above, Mateo’s trucks idled at the gate—rebar and cement waiting on a single word: “collapse.”
This time, they were not walking into the dark alone.
They crossed the ruined nave and slipped into the side chamber. The hidden stairs yawned before them, narrow and steep, twisting down into the earth.
The deeper they went, the colder it became. Glyphs etched into the stone pulsed, casting dim halos of green and blue light. The walls sweated moisture. The air buzzed with a low, resonant hum that crawled up Yadriel’s spine.
The chamber at the base of the stairs opened like a wound in the earth, the cenote pulsing at its heart. Green and blue light oozed from the water’s surface, reflecting off the stone walls in sickly hues. Glyphs carved into the crypt walls pulsed in sync, alive with old, angry magic.
But it wasn’t just the cenote that radiated energy.
A ring of tethers had been laid out around it. Dozens of them were arranged in a wide ritual circle. Each one glowed faintly with spectral light—a tortoiseshell comb, a cracked phone, a child’s shoe, a string of rosary beads.
Yadriel’s stomach turned. The formation wasn’t just decorative. It was functional, deliberate. A conduit.
And at the center, standing just before the edge of the cenote—
Angel.
Bahlam stood in the center, wearing Angel’s body like a prize. Their arms were outstretched, head tipped back.
Angel’s head turned slowly, like it was detaching from her spine.
Bahlam moved inside her body like it was something borrowed, stiff and wrong.
Her face twisted into a grin that didn’t belong to her.
Her portaje was gone, her hands were empty, but she didn’t need a weapon.
The magic radiating off her body was enough to make the air vibrate.
The death god’s voice crawled from their throat like smoke.
“I have waited so long,” Bahlam rasped, low and hungry. “So long for this body, this altar. This world that forgot me.”
“Stay behind me,” Yadriel whispered to Julian, stepping forward, portaje raised.
His dad stepped forward without hesitation—not reckless, but deliberate—pulling Bahlam’s focus toward him and off the circle forming behind.
“And now that you’ve got it,” Enrique said defiantly, “All you’ve done is defile the dead and torture the living.”
Bahlam’s head lolled toward them, the grin splitting across Angel’s face too wide, too cruel. “Is that not what your kind has always done? Called on the divine, begged for power, and buried the consequences.”
Yadriel flinched. The air in the crypt thickened like clotting blood.
Bahlam’s eyes cut to the line of youths and elders and gleamed, pleased. “You bring your children to die for you?”
“No,” Lita said sharply, stepping into view before Enrique. “We bring them to fight with us.”
“You don’t belong here,” Enrique decreed. “Not anymore.”
The cenote surged in response. Threads of sickly light rose from the tethers, spiraling into the air like smoke. He heard gasps behind him as the brujx took it in—the sheer scale of the energy being pulled through.
Angel’s grin stretched, her spine popping as she straightened further. “You act surprised,” Bahlam said, voice deepening, doubling. “But it was your blood that called me here. The strength your ancestors begged for. I was invited.”
The cenote churned behind him, boiling with unnatural energy.
Yadriel reached for Maritza beside him, nodding once. “Start the circle.”
Maritza crouched with him near the crypt’s edge, her bag already open. Salt, candles, bundles of copal—she moved fast, unrolling the tools for the ritual. Lita knelt with reverent hands, whispering blessings into the circle’s border.
Runners peeled off to the walls, ready to carry wards to the outer ring. Healers took posts by the stairs, hands already slicked with alcohol and prayer.
Rio dropped into position at the south. Enrique took the west, eyes never leaving Bahlam. Maritza set the last candle and slid to the north, hand on Julian’s shoulder for one breath before she anchored in.
Julian was pale, but steady. He met Yadriel’s eyes and gave a small nod. He moved into the center of the forming circle, his jaw set tight.
Yadriel felt the glyphs hum beneath his boots as he took the eastern point. “Don’t look up,” he told Julian quietly. “Focus on what you came here to do.”
Around them, the brujx were taking position. The older men fanned out, eyes scanning the ring of tethers. The women moved behind them, hands raised, ready to shield. But none of them made the first move. Not yet.
Bahlam hadn’t noticed them—not all of them.
Good.
Yadriel began to chant quietly, hands pressed to the stone. A soft golden light bloomed at his fingertips. One by one, the candles lit. The circle took hold—a steady pull tying Yadriel to Julian and the other anchors. If he broke, Julian’s lifeline frayed with him.
Bahlam turned.
He cocked his head, watching them move. “You think you can stop me with prayers and tricks?”
Yadriel stepped forward again, planting himself between Bahlam and the ritual circle. “No,” he said. “We’re going to stop you with everything we’ve got.”
“Foolish boy,” Bahlam hissed. He tilted Angel’s head with an eerie, weightless grace. “I have worn a hundred names across a hundred lifetimes,” he said, voice thick with centuries. “And I will wear a thousand more before this world is dust.”
From the center of the cenote, a ripple passed through the waters.
Then the tendrils came.
Thick, serpentine limbs of shadow burst upward, writhing toward the nearest brujos. Screams echoed through the crypt.
Yadriel slashed his portaje through the first one, light erupting from the blade. The tendril shrieked and evaporated, but three more whipped toward the circle.
Yadriel didn’t think. He lunged, sliding between Julian and the shadows. His portaje carved a line of gold across the air, burning two. The third rebounded off Lita’s ward with a screech and skittered back like a scorched eel.
Julian knelt behind him, already inside the circle. Lita pressed a shaking hand to his shoulder, grounding him. Maritza slammed the last candle into place.
“Anchors set!” she called. “Hold steady!”
Bahlam raised his arms, and the cenote responded—the spiral of tethers glowing with a pulsing, sickly light. The water bubbled like it was boiling from the inside out, the colors deepening to something darker, more violent.
“You can’t stop what’s already begun,” Bahlam said, his voice low and thick with promise. “The veil will rupture. The forgotten dead will flood this world. And I will feed until your sky bleeds.”
“Not while we’re standing here,” Enrique said, stepping forward with his portaje drawn.
From the stairwell, the second wave of brujx poured down, splitting.
The release team to the tethers, shield team to the water’s lip.
Behind them, brujas lifted their hands in unison.
A dome of soft light rose, thin at first, then bright as breath filled it.
Dona Clara’s voice cut through—crisp commands sending runners to each quarter.
“Eyes on me, cabrón,” Enrique growled, raising his portaje again.
Bahlam bared their teeth. “With pleasure.”
The crypt detonated into motion. A barrage of barbed tendrils shot from the water—dozens—fanning like whiskers.
And then the water itself rose, shadow-coalescing into a jaguar’s skull and shoulders over Angel’s body, a half-formed beast rearing from the cenote.
Its maw yawned wide, obsidian fangs dripping green fire, and it lunged straight for the eastern quarter.
Yadriel reacted on instinct, slashing his portaje again and again, gold cutting through black. Each strike burned, but the beast didn’t slow. The air pressure crushed his lungs and his arm went numb at the elbow. The jaguar’s head crashed down, close enough for heat to lick his face.
Yadriel planted his boots, every muscle locked. If he slipped, the circle slipped with him.
Bahlam’s gaze locked onto Yadriel now, realization dawning.
“You,” he hissed. “The Lady’s heir.”
Yadriel raised his portaje. “You’re not getting past me,” he said, voice shaking but firm.
The shadow-jaguar struck—not a feeler now, but a killing blow.
Yadriel braced.
Then—
A blinding flash—not of blue or green, but gold, pure and furious—split the crypt like a lightning strike.
The impact hit the lunging head midair with the force of a divine storm. It shrieked, splintering apart as if it had slammed into the sun itself.
And standing in its wake, haloed in golden light, was a man Yadriel had expected to never see again.
Catriz.
His ghost shimmered with impossible intensity—brighter than any spirit Yadriel had ever summoned, brighter even than Lady Death’s altar flame. His golden gaze was fixed not on Yadriel, but on the god who’d just struck at his nephew.
“Not today,” Catriz said.
His voice was quiet, but it carried—cutting through the chaos, through the roars of Bahlam, through the pounding in Yadriel’s chest.
The shattered tendrils collapsed in on themselves, seared by Catriz’s presence.
Yadriel could only stare, breath caught somewhere between fear and awe.
“Tío…?” he whispered.
Catriz finally looked at him. The hard edge in his face eased, just for a second.
“You were always the one who knew what was right,” he said quietly. “It’s my turn to do right.”
He turned back to Bahlam. The golden light around him flared like the sun.