The Telling of Cualli, Who Wept for Gods Not His Own

A fictional character Telling. Meet Cualli.

Listen, child of the Lodge. Let me speak in the old way—with fire and blood in my words. You wish to know why I am here? Why the Broken Circle cast me out like a rotten fruit from its sacred boughs? Sit close. The tale is sharp, and it cuts deeper than obsidian.

I. The Sin of Softness

"You wept," they said to me in the Chamber of Severance. The high priests stood masked in jade and onyx, their voices humming with power. "For what? For whom?"

I laughed then—bitter as pulque left too long in the sun. "For them," I said. "For the gods we broke."

A gasp slithered through the circle. Even now, I remember how their chains—those beautiful, terrible things that bound reality itself—shivered at my blasphemy.

"Sympathy for divine flesh?" hissed Xolotl-ith, his mask cracking at the edges with disgust. "You were to unmake them, not mourn them!"

But how could I not weep? When we shattered Tlaloc's storm-heart and scattered his rains across dead lands? When we peeled back Quetzalcoatl's feathers one by one until only a screaming skeleton remained? They were glorious once. And we unmade them like butchers hacking meat.

So they took my chains from me. Stripped my rank of Nigin down to nothing but skin and shame. Cast me into the world beyond our sanctum with these words ringing behind me:
"Go then, tender-hearted fool. Love your dying gods alone."

II. The Embrace of Dark Masons

I wandered like a ghost through Tenochtitlan's ruins (oh yes—our work had reached even there). The conquistadors thought their guns and crosses felled the city, but no... it was us who snipped its threads from fate's loom long before Cortés ever waded ashore...

Then she found me—Malintzin-of-the-Lodge (though she laughs when I call her that). Her fingers traced my face where tears had carved grooves into my cheeks over years of exile:
"Ah... you are one who loves too much for your own good."
Her smile was a curved knife; beautiful enough to bleed for willingly...
"Good thing we build instead of break here."

And so I learned new arts among these architects of shadow! Where Broken Circle sunders bonds between heaven-earth-man-god alike… Dark Masons weave fresh ones from absence itself! Every brick laid hums beneath my palms like a lover's heartbeat restored after drowning...

But do not mistake this place as gentle redemption either—we raise spires atop graves here just as readily as temples upon living soil...

III. Revelation Written In Mortar & Memory

One night beneath black stars (the kind only we can see), Malintzin pressed her lips against mine while whispering something terrible-sweet into my mouth:
"Tell me true now ex-priest… do you still miss your old chains?"

Did I? Even after everything?

Yes.

No.

Both answers live inside me tangled tighter than sacred cords around sacrificial wrists...

Because here is what exile teaches better than any ritual ever did: To love something does not mean sparing it pain. Not if creation demands destruction first...

The Broken Circle feared compassion would make us weak… but they forgot that even gods must sometimes be mourned so new ones may rise from their ashes properly loved into being again...

Now watch closely little mason — see how tenderly I lay each stone despite knowing full well some future hand might yet dash them all apart again someday?

That isn't weakness.

That's divinity reborn through longing given form at last...

(Now pass me that trowel will you?)

Visual

Wiry androgynous figure with warm brown skin scored by tear-track grooves on both cheeks, dark liquid eyes, wearing feather-braided iron chains as jewelry over Aztec-patterned wrap garments, obsidian blade at the hip, restless tender hands.

Faction: The Broken Circle · View the Gallery