THE UNBROKEN

La Señora Behike burst through the tent's flaps, skirts flying like stormclouds behind her. Her eyes darted through the room, searching, fearful, until they landed on the impossible.

Elena was upright.

Breathing. Awake. Alive.

Niegal lay curled with his head in her lap, arms tight around her waist, as if she were a dream that might vanish if he blinked. His face was worn and pale, but there was color to it now, life where there had been none. He was silent, letting her speak, but the tension in his body told the truth. He was holding on to her like a lifeline.

Elena's hand smoothed gently through his hair, now a quarter inch grown in from the brutal shave. Her glowing eyes softened as she whispered to him, recounting what she had seen. Her voice wavered when she described the serpent, the endless sea, the bargain.

Her scars, those jagged constellations of stormlight, burned pearl-white again.

The serpent on her bicep pulsed once, acknowledging the presence of La Señora Behike as if to say: I see you, shaman. I am known.

The older woman exhaled. Her knees gave out as she dropped beside them, a trembling hand pressed to her own heart. For a long time, she said nothing, Just looked at Elena like she wasn't quite sure she was real.

Niegal turned his head, still too weak to lift it, and met her gaze with tear-rimmed eyes. Elena offered a sheepish smile, her cheeks flushing with color for the first time in days.

And then… she shuddered.

Deep within her belly, she felt something coil. Not painful. But powerful. Awake.

Behike noticed the change instantly.

"Tell me everything," she asked gently. "What did you do to return to the land of the living?"

Elena hesitated, then nodded. She began to speak, voice soft but steady, explaining how she floated in a sea beyond life and death, how a divine serpent rose from the abyss, how she offered everything. Her soul, her body, her will, to return.

She told of the heatless lava. The gaze that judged her. The coiling tail that dragged her up. And the moment the serpent shrank… and entered her.

When she finished, La Señora Behike said nothing.

Not for a long time.

Her face was unreadable. Her eyes flicked to Elena's tattoo again, then to the glowing scars, and finally to the place where Niegal's hand rested over Elena's thigh.

When she finally spoke, it was not with awe, but fear.

"…Elena," she said quietly. "Do you understand what you've done?"

Elena's lips parted. Then closed. She looked down at Niegal, who offered her a nod of encouragement, one hand squeezing hers.

"I told the serpent I would give anything to return to my family," she said at last. Her voice sharpened with conviction. "So I did."

La Señora Behike slowly sat down, legs folded beneath her. She looked shaken- truly shaken, not just by the tale, but by the presence of something older than time now radiating from Elena's body.

"Elena…" she whispered, almost reverently. "You didn't just commune with a spirit… you swallowed a god."

The air stilled.

Elena blinked, her expression neutral. Niegal's breathing slowed. Behike's voice dropped lower.

"Not just any god. Not a known saint or elemental. Not one the Church names or fears."

Her eyes met Elena's, full of wonder and dread.

"You've taken in the earliest known face of Guabancex. Before the names, before the myths. What you met was Koa Guariña. Devourer of Winds. Mother of all natural calamities, not just the storm. The Untamed Surge."

She pointed to the serpent tattoo, which now flickered with every beat of Elena's heart.

"That… is no symbol. It is a sigil carved by the will of a goddess. She did not mark you as her chosen. She became one with you."

Elena felt the coil again, this time flickering up her spine.

A hiss, low and barely audible, rose from her throat. Not her voice. Not her own.

"I said I'd give anything," Elena replied evenly. "And she accepted. I chose her. She chose me."

La Señora Behike nodded, rising to her feet like one standing before a storm.

"You now carry power that predates memory. It may protect you. Or destroy you. We do not know. We have no records of what such a bond means. You are the first."

She looked at Niegal, but couldn't quite meet his eyes.

Niegal remained silent, face still pressed to Elena's lap, drinking in her warmth like water after a drought.

Behike turned to go, murmuring blessings under her breath. But her hands shook as she parted the tent flaps.

Elena and Niegal were alone again.

They said nothing for a moment, the silence hanging between them like a fragile veil.

Finally, Niegal shifted, groaning as he sat up with effort, his bandaged hand never letting go of hers.

"My love…" he rasped, voice like gravel. "Promise me one thing?"

Elena cupped his cheek. "Anything. You know that."

His silver eyes, bloodshot, rimmed with grief, locked on hers.

"Don't sacrifice yourself again. Not for me. Not even for Esperanza." His voice cracked. "You matter just as much as we do. I can't lose you. I won't survive it."

Elena's eyes shimmered. "Mi León…"

He silenced her with a soft kiss, trembling but full of love.

"I know why you did it. I know you," he murmured. "But please. No more. Promise me."

She nodded, forehead resting against his. "I swear it. No more martyrdom. Not for you. Not for her. I'll live. I'll fight. I'll stay."

He smiled- a real smile, the first in so long it felt foreign on his face.

"That's all I need."

They stayed like that for a long while, kissing softly, whispering nothings into each other's skin.

Holding on.

As if the world might end if they didn't.

As if they were the world for each other.

And far away, where the horizon cracked with lightning, something ancient stirred in response… pleased.