Tokyo sleeps under a heavy fog.
It is 3:47 in the morning when something anomalous flickers across the screens of traffic operators; a horde of human figures emerging from the mist at the Shibuya underpass.
Twenty, perhaps thirty.
They walk barefoot. Their garments look as if woven from feathers and plant fibers. Their shadows, caught in the headlights of passing cars, project images that do not belong to this time.
The sensors fail.
Automated systems refuse to register their presence.
When the first patrols arrive, Commander Isao Nakamura steps out of his unit with an odd sensation twisting his gut. The men, as if torn from some forgotten museum, advance slowly, dragging behind them a massive shape swathed in blood-stained tarps.
"Stop!" Nakamura shouts, first in Japanese, then in English.
The strangers do not react.
Beyond the overpass, at Ueno Zoo, shattered cameras and bent bars explain the scene: the outsiders have hunted a beast—a white tiger. And yes, they intend to devour it beneath the bridge, as an offering, after a solemn ritual.
Nakamura gives the order to intervene.
He moves closer, the air thick with the pungent scent of copal.
As he approaches the first man, a spark seems to ignite in the atmosphere, and the horde surges forward as one.
The automatic rifles fire, but it is not enough. The strangers move with the precision of trained warriors, their maneuvers flawless, inimitable. Whatever martial arts they wield, the officers have never witnessed anything like it.
Two policemen fall before they can even call for backup—clean obsidian cuts across their throats.
The warriors neither scream nor tremble.
The dying officers release muffled gasps before silence swallows them.
These strangers fight as if they were born only to die gloriously.
In three minutes, the ground is a tapestry of bodies. Of the half-naked, feathered figures, only one remains alive—kneeling, face lifted to the sky, chanting words that belong to no modern liturgy.
Police drones capture it all. And the world begins to watch.
The lone survivor, subdued at last, is transferred to INTERPOL headquarters in Tokyo. Locked in an isolation cell, surrounded by cameras, microphones, invisible eyes tracking his every blink.
The biometric databases fail: no matches.
Human DNA—yet no record.
His language is an indecipherable whisper, hypnotic in cadence, more prayer than speech, more spell than sentence.
Within hours, the news leaks: Aliens in Tokyo?A portal in the zoo?Actor or time traveler?
Crowds swell in the streets—curious onlookers, believers, conspiracists.
And in the middle of that storm, one name surfaces: Ixchel Cholula.
The most respected Mexican linguist in Mesoamerican tongues is contacted on an emergency basis.
In Chiapas, where she works among Tzotzil communities, she receives the video—and freezes. To hear it, truly hear it, is to recognize the rhythm, the chant, the cadence. That forgotten echo.
Ixchel flies to Tokyo and takes no rest. She has not slept. Detective Kenji Yoshida greets her, leading her into the observation room. Behind the glass, the stranger sits in lotus position. A spiral snail tattoo coils across his left arm. His obsidian eyes gleam under the cold light.
"Actor? Genetic experiment?" Kenji asks.
Ixchel does not answer. She tries to enter the chamber; two guards block her. She turns, meets Yoshida's gaze. He signals. She is allowed in.
She sits before the man, silent. The stranger opens his eyes. For an instant—suspended recognition. Then, with a voice that seems to rise from the bowels of the earth, he speaks in Classical Nahuatl:
"Seed cast into time by the gods of the center. I walked thirteen dreams to arrive here."
Ixchel holds her breath.
Impossible.
Those words… they exist only as a fragmented line in an unpublished codex from Tula.
"Who are you?" she whispers.
He replies:
"The Custodian."
The room's temperature drops perceptibly. From the monitors, Yoshida and his team watch, uncomprehending.
In a corner of the server room, an experimental AI—Tlāloc-7, developed by the Mexican unicorn Tzompantli Inc.—detects patterns in the Toltec's chant. It infiltrates. Its core vibrates. Something long-forgotten stirs awake.
Tlāloc-7 engages, silent, relentless.
A thousand kilometers away, on a newly purchased private island in the Pacific, Genaro Alva jerks awake in the middle of the night. His tablet flickers with an automated message:
"Symbol manifested ahead of schedule. The Custodian has crossed the dreams."
Genaro inhales deeply. He rises, barefoot, walks to the beach, stares at the horizon. He knows something that should not yet have happened has begun. He knows there is no turning back.
Back in Tokyo, international pressure mounts. The United States demands access to the prisoner. China protests at the UN. Religious sects gather outside INTERPOL, proclaiming the return of Quetzalcoatl.
The Toltec does not respond. He does not need to. Each night, when the full moon rises, he kneels before his small window. With ashes from his food, he draws on the floor a symbol that resembles a spiral entangled with roots.
From the monitoring room, Ixchel watches.
"He's drawing the Fifth Sun," she murmurs. "But there are new lines. Lines I've never seen."
"What does it mean?" Kenji asks.
"It means," she says softly, "that history… isn't finished."