I Was Reincarnated In The Viceroyalty Era With My Harem

chapter VIII: Games and Obsidian Shadows

The days following their first encounter were ones of quiet tension for Alejandro. The echo of "Itztli" resonated in his mind, a name that was a knife, a mirror, an oath. His adult mind strategized: he needed to deepen that contact. But how to justify to his parents insisting on approaching the marked family?

He decided the best cover was the simplest: the innocence of a child looking for a friend.

Now past two years old and with a carefully expanding vocabulary, he began to ask.

"Mom, play sun girl again?" he asked Citlali one day as she wove.

Citlali set down her needle. "Xóchitl, I told you... it's dangerous. Her family doesn't want visitors."

"But alone," insisted Alejandro, putting on a genuinely sad face. "Me alone. Her alone. We play here." He pointed to the inner courtyard, a relatively private space.

Citlali looked at him, searching his eyes for that flash of ancient wisdom that sometimes surfaced. "Why her, my flower? There are other children."

Alejandro couldn't say: Because she's the only one who understands the silent war we wage in our veins. Instead, he used a half-truth: "She shines pretty. Like... like moon on water."

The metaphor, too poetic for a two-year-old, made Citlali frown, but it also touched something in her. She, who also shone with a silent, hidden magic. Finally, she sighed. "I can't take you to look for her. But... if you see her at the market, and her mother allows it, you can greet her. Nothing more."

It was a minimal opening, but enough.

---

Alejandro didn't have to wait long. One rainy afternoon, with the market half-empty, he saw Itztli helping her mother gather their few goods (amulets, dried herbs, small pieces of polished obsidian) before the downpour intensified.

He slipped away from Citlali with an "I go help" and approached, tottering in the drizzle.

Itztli saw him coming. She stood still, a cloth bag in her hand, her silver hair plastered to her forehead by the dampness, making her look like an ancient silver statuette. She didn't smile. She didn't frown. She just observed.

Alejandro stopped before her. Itztli's mother watched them from under the awning, her arms crossed, a vigilant silhouette.

"Hello," said Alejandro in Spanish, then, remembering, added in the clumsy Nahuatl he was learning from Citlali: "Ximopanolti (let's play)."

Itztli blinked. Her expression was one of total bewilderment. It wasn't the reaction of a girl being invited to play by a boy. It was the cold assessment of a warrior facing an unexpected tactical proposal. Alejandro felt the weight of her gaze: she knew he wasn't normal. His insistence gave him away.

"Why?" asked Itztli in clear Spanish. "The others don't want to. They're afraid." Her tone was flat, as if stating a weather fact.

Alejandro, forcing childish clumsiness, shrugged. "Boring alone. You... draw eagles. I... can make..." He searched his limited vocabulary. "Towers." He was thinking of the block castles he built with his father.

Itztli studied him for what felt like an eternity. The rain fell between them, tracing a veil. Finally, she nodded once, a curt movement. "Not here."

She turned to her mother and said something in a rapid, guttural Nahuatl that Alejandro barely caught: "Mother, the Ollin-child wants to play. He doesn't smell like a lie. He smells... old."

The warrior woman looked at Alejandro. Her scrutiny was physical, almost painful. Then she nodded, a fractional gesture. "In the dry place. By the old wall. For a little while. When the rain stops."

It was a conditional permit, supervised and in a specific place: a semi-ruined corner of an old adobe wall, within sight of their stall but not exposed to the main market.

---

When the rain eased to a drip, Alejandro and Itztli sat on the damp earth under the shade of the old wall. There was an empty space between them. No toys.

"What do we play?" asked Itztli, her tone still wary, but with a glimmer of curiosity.

Alejandro, for the first time, didn't have an adult plan. The System was silent, just observing. It was just a boy facing a strange girl. "You choose."

Itztli looked at him, surprised. The other children (the few who ever approached) always wanted to impose their games. She looked at her hands, then at the space between them. She extended a finger and, with fierce concentration, drew in the air.

It wasn't a physical drawing. But Alejandro's Eyes of the Fifth Sun saw how a faint thread of golden and purple energy issued from her finger. The thread curved, forming a glyph in the air: CALLI (House). The glyph floated for an instant, glowing with phantom light, before fading.

"My grandmother," said Itztli, not looking at him, focused on her own finger. "Made glyphs that lasted. I only... draw smoke."

"I see," said Alejandro, without thinking.

Itztli stared at him. "You see the smoke?"

Alejandro realized his mistake, but it was too late. He nodded slowly. "I see a glow. Like your hair."

A long silence. Then, Itztli did something unexpected: she smiled. It wasn't a wide, carefree smile. It was a small adjustment of the lips, a crack in her armor of solemnity. But it completely transformed her face.

"Let's play... making houses," she said. "Houses no one else can see."

And so, for the next hour, they played the strangest and most wonderful game Alejandro had experienced in either of his two lives.

Itztli "drew" with her chaotic energy, sketching glyphs, tiny pyramids, suns with eagle features. Her creations were imperfect, tremulous, sometimes dissolving in a sputter of purple energy. But they were real magic, raw and uncontrolled.

Alejandro, for his part, used what he had. With his Eyes of the Fifth Sun, he could see the energy patterns and, with enormous effort, tried to stabilize them. He couldn't create his own magic yet, but he discovered that if he concentrated his will (the same one he used to speak) on Itztli's flickering glyphs, he could make them last a second longer, their forms become a bit clearer.

He built "towers" of intention, of pure will, to support her "castles" of chaotic energy.

It was a game without words, of intense gazes, of hands gesturing in the air, of sighs of effort. They didn't laugh. They were working, though under the cover of a child's game.

» EVENT REGISTERED: MAGICAL SYNERGY FOUND.

» INTERACTION: 'ANCESTRAL CHAOS' (ITZTLI) + 'WILL OF OLLIN' (BEARER).

» RESULT: TEMPORARY STABILIZATION OF CHAOTIC MAGICAL MANIFESTATIONS (30% EFFICACY).

» MUTUAL BENEFIT DETECTED: ITZTLI EXPERIENCES GREATER CONTROL (MINIMAL). BEARER EXPERIENCES GREATER UNDERSTANDING OF CHAOS STRUCTURE.

» TRUST LEVEL (ITZTLI): INCREASING.

---

When the sun began to filter through the clouds, Itztli's mother made a signal. It was time to go.

Itztli let her hand fall. The last glyph, an eagle with wings spread that they had managed to hold for almost five seconds, vanished. She looked at Alejandro, and this time her expression was open, though still grave.

"You... aren't afraid," she said.

"You either," replied Alejandro.

"I'm afraid of other things," she confessed, lowering her voice. "Of men with iron crosses. Of the night that comes asking for my grandmother."

Alejandro felt a chill. "Do they come?"

"Sometimes. My mother sees them pass. We hide." Itztli looked toward her mother. "Playing with you... is dangerous for you."

"I have a secret too," said Alejandro, pointing to his own eyes, which glowed faintly as he activated the Fifth Sun for an instant.

Itztli nodded, as if that explained everything. "Then... we are secrets together."

"Secret friends?" proposed Alejandro.

She considered the word "friends" as if it were a foreign concept. Then, she nodded. "Secrets. That's better."

Before she left, Alejandro remembered something. "My mom calls me Xóchitl. My dad calls me Miguel. You... call me Ollin?"

Itztli thought about it. "Ollin is your path. It's not a name for friends." She paused, and for the first time, she seemed like a real child. "Tepi."

Alejandro didn't know that word.

"It's small. Like you. But it's also... the beginning of something. The tip of the spear." She turned to leave. "Until next time, Tepi."

Alejandro watched her walk away, her silver hair now shining under the emerging sun.

» NEW DENOMINATION OBTAINED: 'TEPI' (FROM ITZTLI).

» MEANING: SMALL / BEGINNING / TIP OF SPEAR.

» IMPLICATION: RECOGNITION OF POTENTIAL AND STATUS AS CLOSE ALLY.

» RELATIONSHIP UPDATED: ITZTLI – BASIC TRUST ESTABLISHED. PRIMITIVE MAGICAL COMMUNICATION CHANNEL DISCOVERED.

---

Citlali found him sitting by the wall, staring into space with a pensive expression.

"Are you okay, Xóchitl? Did you play?"

"Yes," said Alejandro, smiling for the first time with a genuine, unfeigned happiness. "I played at making houses out of air. With Itztli."

Citlali sighed, but saw there were no traces of visible magic, no danger. Just a tired, content child. "Alright. But remember, it's our secret too. Don't tell your father about her... not yet."

Alejandro nodded. He understood. Álvaro would see only the danger, not the shared glow in the rainy air.

That night, as Don Álvaro told him a story about Santiago Matamoros, Alejandro thought of glyphs of fire and a girl who had given him a new name. He wasn't Alejandro. He wasn't Xóchitl. He wasn't Miguel. For the first time, the man reborn in this world wondered if it was time to leave his past life behind and recognize his new life for what it was: his real life. Tepi was a name born of a connection forged in magic and secrecy. A name that meant beginning.

He had achieved his goal. He had drawn closer. And he had found not just a source of chaotic magic, but someone as lost and as found as himself.

The game was over for today. But the match between Movement and Obsidian had only just begun.