The first thing I felt wasn't pain.
It was mud. Warm. Thick. Sticky.
It clung to my chest, seeped into my mouth. I choked. Spat. Gagged again. It smelled like blood, smoke, and something worse—like rot. My ears rang. My skin burned. I couldn't breathe.
Then the weight hit me—heavy, slumped across my back. A body. Warm but lifeless. Limbs tangled in mine. I panicked. I shoved hard, slipping on the wet earth beneath me. My hands were shaking, but I pushed until the corpse rolled away with a squelch and a sickening snap of something breaking.
I gasped. Coughing again. Mud and bile on my tongue.
When I finally opened my eyes, I froze.
Corpses.
Dozens. Maybe hundreds. Piled around me like a battlefield from a nightmare. All Mexica. Their armor torn, obsidian blades shattered, feathers soaked with blood. Limbs twisted the wrong way. Faces frozen in agony. One boy was still clutching his own intestines, like he could somehow shove them back in.
This was a war zone.
My heart began to race. My body felt wrong—too lean, too light. My fingers were rough, not soft like I remembered. My skin was darker. My arms stronger. My voice—when I whimpered—was higher. Younger.
No. No, no, no—
This wasn't me.
I stared at my hands. My legs. My chest.
This wasn't my body.
I sat up slowly, heart pounding, and looked around. The stonework. The temples. The causeway behind me, shattered. The lake around it, black with smoke. And there, far ahead in the haze, rising above the city like a broken god—
The Templo Mayor.
Cracked. Half-destroyed. Covered in ash and fire.I knew this place. I had studied it. Watched documentaries about it. Read books on it. Obsessed over it. But I'd never seen it like this.
Not alive.
Not burning.
Not real.
I heard screams in the distance.
Not like in movies—no, these were real. Ugly. Raw. The kind you only hear in videos you're not supposed to watch. Someone pleading for their life. Another praying in Nahuatl. Another just screaming until their voice gave out.
And under it all—boom.
A cannon.
I whipped my head toward the sound. Smoke rose from a nearby street. And with it, the glint of armor—steel. Marching. Spanish voices shouting orders. The clash of metal and the soft thud of arrows—or maybe bolts—hitting flesh.I backed away instinctively, crawling behind what looked like a broken altar. My hands sank into the mud again. My fingers brushed bone.
That's when the memories hit.
Not Ehecatl's.
Mine.
A flash of headlights. A podcast playing about Mesoamerican warfare. A delivery notification on my phone. Me zoning out while driving. Then—
White.
And now… this.
I died.
But I didn't move on. I woke up here.
In this body.
In this hell.
A voice screamed nearby. I flinched. It was a Mexica warrior—barely older than me—dragging himself across the ground, blood pouring from his mouth. He tried to yell something, but it came out in a gurgle. Then he stopped moving.
I couldn't breathe.
I curled behind the altar, body shaking, mind racing. This wasn't a dream. Not a hallucination. Not sleep paralysis. I could smell everything. Feel everything. And I couldn't wake up.
I dug my nails into my arm. It hurt. It was real.
Why was I here?
Why me?
I had always joked about stuff like this.
"If I got isekai'd to the Aztec Empire, I'd change everything."
"I'd stop the fall of Tenochtitlan."
"I'd teach them how to fight back."
"I'd be a god."
Gods. I was an idiot.
There was no glory here. No romance. No heroism.
Just death.
I felt like throwing up again, but there was nothing left in my stomach. My whole body was trembling. My thoughts were a storm—memories of my old life clashing with the carnage in front of me.
I remembered laughing with friends. My mom making tamales during the holidays. Late nights watching documentaries about Montezuma, Tlaloc, Huitzilopochtli. I remembered feeling pride. Curiosity. Longing.
But that version of me had never seen someone burn alive.
Had never smelled the inside of a torn stomach.
Had never been covered in another person's blood.
And now that version of me was dead.
Whatever I had been before… I wasn't anymore.
Footsteps approached. Heavy. Steady.
Spanish.
I clamped a hand over my mouth, pressing my body flat against the broken stone. My breath caught. I didn't move.
They passed just feet away. Their boots were soaked. Their armor scratched and dented. One of them laughed. Another jabbed at a corpse with the end of his sword, like he was testing if it was really dead.
I didn't understand all their words, but I caught enough:
"Paganos… perros… termina todo."
Finish them all.
They moved on. I stayed still. For minutes. Maybe longer. I didn't count.
Eventually, I moved. Slowly. Carefully. I crawled from behind the altar, trying not to look at the bodies again. Trying not to think. Just… move. Find somewhere. Anywhere.
I didn't have a plan. I didn't even know who I was anymore.
I only knew one thing—
I didn't want to die again.