The rain fell like whispers on the leaves, each drop a secret passed between the trees. Deep in the emerald heart of the Amazon, time did not exist—only instinct, pulse, and breath.
“Don’t move,” the man whispered, his hand trembling just inches from the jaguar’s snout. “Don’t you dare move.”
The jaguar didn’t flinch. It stared at him with golden eyes, so still, so silent, it might’ve been carved from the jungle itself.
Koa crouched in the undergrowth, bare chest streaked with mud and vine rope coiled around his arms like serpents. He was no stranger to the wild, no tourist lost in the brush. He was Kinari, a Whisperer of Beasts, last of the Rain Walkers.
And the jaguar?
The jaguar was supposed to be dead.
“Yara told me you were gone,” he muttered. “Said the spirits took you back to the River Beyond.”
The cat blinked once. Its ears twitched, but it made no sound. Then it rose—muscles sliding like silk beneath its spotted coat—and turned its back on him.
It wanted him to follow.
“Shit,” Koa muttered under his breath. “Not this again.”
The jungle darkened, the canopy swallowing what little light trickled through. Koa rose, war paint flaking from his cheek, and followed the beast. Somewhere in the distance, thunder cracked like a warning.
He wasn’t supposed to be here.
Not after the incident in Kumana. Not after what happened to his brother.
But two nights ago, Yara came to him in a dream, whispering words she never should’ve known.
“The jaguar still walks. And he’s not alone.”
He woke up with claw marks on his door and a scent in the air he hadn’t smelled in ten years—bloodroot and storm leaves.
Now, here he was, following a ghost-cat through a stretch of jungle that hadn’t seen human footprints in over a century.
The jaguar stopped at a fallen tree, pawing at the moss. Koa stepped closer and saw it—etched into the wood, a mark.
A handprint. Human. Fresh.
And underneath, smeared in what looked like sap or blood: “El Toro vive.”
“The Bull lives?” he whispered, mouth dry. “But that’s not possible. I buried him myself.”
Suddenly, the jaguar growled—a low, guttural sound—and leapt forward.
Then came the voice. Not the cat’s. Human.
“You shouldn’t be here, Rain Walker.”
Koa spun around, drawing his obsidian dagger from the leather sheath at his side. A figure stepped from the shadows, dressed in fatigues, face painted in stripes like a hunter. But the man’s eyes were cold—too cold for the jungle.
Koa pointed the blade. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m the one who’s going to bring the storm,” the man replied, smirking. “And you just walked into the eye.”
Behind him, the forest shifted. Another figure emerged. Then another. All of them armed. Silent.
Koa backed toward the jaguar, whose ears flattened in warning. The rain fell harder now, drumming a war song on the leaves.
“You can’t be working with him,” Koa said. “He’s dead.”
The stranger smiled wider. “Dead men leave long shadows, Kinari. And the Bull—he never really died. He evolved.”
Koa didn’t blink. “Where is he?”
The man’s eyes twinkled with madness. “Closer than you think.”
The jaguar snarled.
Then the forest erupted.
Gunfire. Screams. The jaguar pounced.
Koa ran.
Through vines and roots and ghosts of memory, he ran. Not away from danger. But toward the only thing worse—
The truth.
The jungle wasn’t green anymore. It was black, twisted in shadows, pulsing like something alive. Koa stumbled through the underbrush, lungs aching, the jaguar at his side panting in rhythm. The gunfire had stopped. That silence? It was worse.
A different kind of predator was hunting now.
“You smell that?” Koa muttered, crouching low beneath a rotting ceiba tree.
The jaguar didn’t answer, but its whiskers twitched. The stench was unmistakable—smoke, blood, and the past.
Koa tore away a curtain of vines and saw it: what remained of the old Kumana village.
The place he swore he’d never return to.
The huts were skeletal. Bamboo frames splintered and sagging. Ash blanketed everything like death’s dandruff. Trees had been felled in clean, circular cuts—military-grade work.
But the bones… the bones were still there.
Some piled in heaps, others sitting upright, like their owners had just... stopped moving.
Koa crept forward, eyes scanning. Then he heard the voice again—low, female, familiar.
“You broke your word, Kinari.”
He froze. That voice—it scratched at something buried.
“Yara?”
She stepped from the ruins, barefoot, hair wet from the rain. She looked older than she should. Or maybe just tired of existing between the worlds.
“I buried you,” he whispered. “I watched the earth take you.”
She tilted her head. “Are you so sure it was me?”
The jaguar snarled, but Koa held it back.
“Where’s the Bull?” he demanded.
Yara’s eyes went cold. “He’s building a temple. Out of skin and secrets.”
Koa’s gut tightened.
“You brought the outsiders here,” she continued, circling him like a priestess stalking prey. “You opened the jungle. Now the jungle will open you.”
“I didn’t bring anyone.”
“You didn’t stop them either.”
Suddenly, a child’s voice cut through the rain. “Mamá?”
Koa turned.
A little girl stood where no one should have survived. Half-starved. Eyes wide. No shoes.
Yara’s face paled. “She’s not supposed to be here.”
The girl ran to Koa, clutched his leg. “They’re coming,” she whispered.
“Who?”
“The men in white. With needles and fire.”
Koa lifted her into his arms. She was light. Too light.
Behind them, the forest sighed—not the wind, not the rain. Something breathing.
Then he saw the symbol again. Burned into the bark of a tree, deeper this time. A bull’s skull, flanked by two knives.
“They’re marking territory,” Koa said.
“No,” Yara replied. “They’re sending warnings.”
“Why?”
“To stop you from reaching the temple.”
Koa looked her dead in the eye. “Then that’s exactly where I’m going.”
Midnight.
They made camp in the husk of a hut. The little girl curled beside the jaguar, already asleep. Koa sat watch, blade across his lap.
Yara didn’t sleep. She just stared into the dark, eyes hollow.
“You still dream of the Red Room?” she asked suddenly.
Koa flinched.
The Red Room was supposed to be a story—something whispered around fires to scare young hunters.
But Koa had been there. Once. And something had watched him from inside the walls.
“I don’t dream,” he muttered.
Yara leaned closer. “Then you’re already halfway dead.”
Suddenly, the ground trembled.
Not an earthquake.
Drums.
Far away, but getting louder.
“They found us,” Yara said.
“No,” Koa replied. “They’re calling us.”
He stood. The rain had stopped. But something else had started. A low hum. Like insects buzzing through stone.
The jaguar rose too, ears alert.
“They’re waking it up,” Yara said.
“What?”
She pointed toward the dark horizon. “The thing buried beneath Kumana. The thing the Bull serves.”
The drums didn’t beat like music.
They beat like warnings.
Koa moved through the jungle with the girl on his back, her arms wrapped tight around his neck. Yara walked ahead, barefoot over the roots like she belonged to the land—maybe she did now. The jaguar flanked them silently, its yellow eyes flicking side to side.
And behind them, something was following.
Something wrong.
“I don’t remember this path,” Koa said, sweeping a branch aside. “It’s not on the old maps.”
“That’s because it wasn’t meant to be found by eyes,” Yara replied. “Only by blood.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
She turned her head just slightly. “It means the path opens only to those marked by death.”
Koa swallowed hard. “Great.”
The girl on his back whispered in his ear. “I know what’s coming.”
“What’s that, little one?”
She leaned in close. “The room. With no walls.”
By midday, the sky had turned an unnatural gray. Mist clung to the treetops like spider silk. The temperature dropped—impossible in the Amazon.
They reached a cliff face covered in vines. Yara pushed aside a section, revealing an opening no wider than a coffin.
“Welcome to the Red Room,” she said.
Koa stepped closer, unsure if the chill crawling up his spine was fear or memory.
“I thought the Red Room was... underground.”
“It is,” Yara said. “This is only the mouth. The rest is beneath your sins.”
The tunnel wound downward for hours. The light from above disappeared completely. Koa lit a torch from a waterproof pouch he carried. The walls weren’t stone—they were smooth. Too smooth.
Metal?
No. Something older.
Organic.
The girl wouldn’t go any farther. “He’s in there,” she whispered.
“Who?”
But she didn’t answer. Just turned and ran back toward the surface.
Koa moved forward anyway.
“You still haven’t asked the real question,” Yara said behind him.
“Which is?”
“Why you?”
They emerged into a cavern that pulsed red with light that had no source. It was enormous—bigger than any cathedral, the ceiling lost in blackness. In the center stood a structure that defied explanation. It looked like a house, but not built. Grown.
Its walls breathed.
The floor was covered in bones—animal, human, maybe worse.
“I came here once,” Koa said quietly. “With my brother.”
“And you left him behind.”
Koa turned to her, eyes narrowed. “You said he died in the flood.”
“I said you buried him.”
He froze. The walls trembled.
Then came the voice.
“You always were the weak one, Koa.”
Koa dropped the torch.
From the breathing structure, a figure emerged.
It was his brother.
But not.
Mako’s body was wrapped in ceremonial tattoos that pulsed with crimson light. His eyes were gone—replaced by glowing orbs. His voice echoed like it came from inside the earth.
“You left me to drown. But the Bull found me.”
Koa’s mouth went dry. “You were dead.”
“I was. But the Red Room doesn’t believe in endings. Only changes.”
Mako raised a hand. The floor shifted. A dozen shambling figures crawled from beneath the bones—half-human, half-something else. Their eyes glowed. Their mouths hissed.
“You opened the door,” Mako said. “Now we’re going to walk through it.”
Koa drew his obsidian dagger.
“Then you’ll have to go through me.”
The battle was chaotic.
Koa moved like a ghost, blade slashing through flesh that didn’t bleed. The jaguar tore through limbs and faces with primal fury. Yara whispered spells—old words—true words—that made the air shiver.
Mako didn’t move. He watched from the temple of flesh, his arms folded.
“You fight your own blood,” he said, voice thunderous. “For what?”
Koa plunged his blade through a creature’s chest. “Because you’re not my brother anymore.”
“You don’t understand what the Bull offers,” Mako said, stepping down the bone steps.
“Oh, I understand perfectly,” Koa replied, eyes blazing. “Power in exchange for your soul.”
“Who needs a soul,” Mako said, “when you can be a god?”
Suddenly, the room shifted. The walls cracked open, revealing a mirror underneath.
No, not a mirror. A memory.
It showed Koa as a child. Watching his mother die. Then running. The,n leaving Mako behind.
He fell to his knees.
“You still carry the guilt,” Mako said. “That’s why the Room chose you. You’re the key.”
Koa turned, blood on his lips. “Then I’ll break the goddamn lock.”
He raised his dagger and stabbed it into the floor.
The Red Room screamed.
Light exploded in every direction. The walls convulsed. The mirror shattered. Creatures melted into bone and ash. Mako clutched his head, screaming, as the symbols on his skin began to burn.
“I gave you a chance!” he roared.
Koa walked toward him. “You gave me nightmares.”
Yara grabbed his shoulder. “It’s collapsing. We need to move.”
But Koa stood firm. “Not until I end this.”
He raised the dagger again—then stopped.
The girl was standing behind Mako. But her eyes glowed now, too.
She smiled.
And said in two voices:
“The Bull is not one. The Bull is many.”
The walls of the Red Room groaned like an ancient beast, buckling under the weight of something waking beneath. Light crackled. The floor bled.
And in the center of it all, the girl—no longer just a girl—grinned with the teeth of something older than man.
“The Bull is not one,” she said again, her voice a harmony of the innocent and the damned. “The Bull is many. And they are hungry.”
Koa staggered back. “What are you?”
“I’m the first,” she answered. “The first face he wore. The first skin.”
Behind her, Mako had dropped to his knees, coughing black ichor, the glowing marks on his body flickering like dying stars. “She’s lying,” he gasped. “I’m the chosen one. I was promised—”
“No,” the girl said gently, walking toward him, barefoot across the bone-dusted floor. “You were just a door. And now... It’s open.”
The Red Room collapsed.
But it didn’t fall down—it turned inside out.
Walls folded like paper. The floor spiraled into darkness. The air filled with whispers in languages that hadn’t been spoken since before rivers flowed. The breathing house disintegrated into spores that clung to Koa’s skin like memory.
He ran.
Yara beside him, face lit by glowing glyphs she hadn’t painted. The jaguar snarled behind them, refusing to retreat.
Mako’s scream followed them up the passageway, ripped from his lungs as something pulled him backward. Not killed. Not devoured.
Worn.
Outside, the jungle was gone.
Or changed.
Trees moved where none had been. The sun was a red smear in a violet sky. Birds didn’t sing—only the low, vibrating hum of something beneath.
Yara collapsed to her knees. “We’re not in our world anymore.”
Koa looked around. “What do you mean?”
“This is the Bull’s jungle now. This is what happens when the skins wake up.”
He turned to the girl, who wasn’t a girl anymore.
She looked older. Not in age. In weight.
As if time had bled into her bones and brought all its ghosts.
“You said I was the key,” Koa said. “So tell me. What am I supposed to open?”
She tilted her head. “The Temple. The real one. The one that was never built with hands.”
“You’re speaking in riddles.”
“No. You just haven’t accepted the truth.”
She pointed toward the horizon.
Through the twisted canopy, something massive rose, towering over the jungle, pulsing with the rhythm of breath.
A temple, yes.
But not made of stone.
Of skin.
Skulls lined its steps. Faces stitched into its walls. And above it, something circled the sky. Not a bird. Not a plane.
A shape without definition. Changing constantly. Wearing every face Koa had ever seen.
“The Bull has always been there,” Yara whispered. “Sleeping beneath the stories. Wearing myths like masks.”
“And now?” Koa asked.
The girl smiled. “Now he’s ready for his next skin.”
Suddenly, the jaguar growled.
Something was moving through the trees. Not footsteps.
Drums.
Again.
But this time, they came from all directions.
From the sky. From underground. From inside their own bones.
Yara stood, wiping blood from her ear. “They’re summoning the Twelve.”
“What twelve?”
“The other skins,” she whispered. “The ones who wore him before. The ones who were broken... and didn’t die.”
Koa gripped his dagger.
“We fight,” he said.
Yara stared at him. “Fight what? You can’t stab a god.”
“Then I’ll make him bleed like a man.”
They moved toward the temple.
Every step forward felt like walking into a fever dream. Trees blinked. Roots whispered. Time bent sideways. Koa saw visions in the leaves—his mother, crying; Mako laughing; himself drowning in a sea of faces not his own.
At the temple’s base stood a figure cloaked in crimson. Masked. Silent.
He raised a hand.
And behind him, twelve figures emerged—bodies stitched, eyes sealed shut, hands bound in silver thread. But they moved as one.
“Guardians of the Skin Temple,” Yara whispered.
“They don’t look friendly,” Koa said.
“They aren’t.”
The final battle didn’t explode into chaos.
It unraveled like a dream—slow, disorienting, symbolic.
Each guardian mirrored a piece of Koa’s past. A failure. A regret. A version of himself.
He had to face them—not with strength, but truth.
One called out in his father’s voice.
Another wept with Mako’s.
Each time he cut them down, the skin peeled back, not revealing flesh, but mirrors.
Until he stood before the final door of the temple. Not carved. Not built.
Just there.
Waiting.
The girl stepped forward.
“You don’t have to go in.”
Koa didn’t hesitate. “Yes, I do.”
“Why?”
He touched the dagger to his chest.
“Because if I don’t... the Bull wears me next.”
He stepped through the door.
And vanished.
Epilogue:
The jungle regrew. Slowly.
But the sky never turned quite blue again.
Yara wandered the canopy alone, whispering to spirits who no longer answered. The jaguar watched the stars. Waiting.
And deep beneath the roots of the temple—far beneath the dirt and bone and blood—
The Bull waited too.
Wearing a new skin.
Watching a new world.
Smiling with Koa’s face.
THE END
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