The midday sun was more than just a light source; it was a blatant spoiler for hell.
The UV rays fell like a divine punishment, torturing the workers with zero mercy.
Sweat poured down foreheads, chests, and backs, pooling in regions no one would care to admit out loud. In that heat, "sweating through one's backside" ceased to be an exaggeration and became just another mundane detail of existence.
The sound was deafening: the rhythmic, incessant strike of stone hammers and basalt chisels against massive blocks of granite.
Ubirajara stood on the highest plateau of the region, where he could observe the people interacting and the surroundings in rich, panoramic detail.
He understood with absolute clarity that no society, no matter how prosperous, could sustain itself solely on the goodwill or charisma of a leader.
The initial enthusiasm brought by the bounty of rice and the security against the Aruaque raids would eventually dissipate.
For the village to survive, it needed institutions. He needed structures capable of organizing, containing, and directing human behavior in a predictable way.
Where there are no institutions, power is volatile; where they fail, raw violence reclaims its place.
Ubirajara viewed social control as a multi-layered tapestry. There was brute force, of course, but force was expensive and bred resentment.
The most effective institutions were those that operated in the invisible realm. Religion would mold consciences; the armed forces would guarantee the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence; and laws would discipline daily life.
Together, these gears would transform the will of a leader into a lasting order.
Of all these, religion worried him most. In the Tupi world, contact with the spiritual was fluid, individual, and fragmented across the visions of different shamans.
To Ubirajara, this was an administrative nightmare.
He knew the traps of history: empires that crumbled when priests became more powerful than emperors. He would not repeat the mistakes of Theodosius, nor the naivety of European kings who knelt before the Pope.
Religion would serve his state purposes, or it would be an obstacle to be removed.
He decided to act with the precision of a watchmaker. He wouldn't destroy ancestral beliefs, that would cause an uncontainable revolt. Instead, he would "reform" them. He began introducing small, almost imperceptible, yet consistent changes to the myths. The collective destiny of the nation began to take precedence over individual revelations.
Fixed temples would be built. A sacred order would be created, with well-defined roles, a clear hierarchy, and standardized rituals.
The spiritual would gain walls, a roof, and, above all, limits. No shaman would speak above the Great Leader.
No vision would carry more weight than a council decision. Faith would exist, but it would be framed within the boundaries of state bureaucracy.
He shifted his gaze from the quarry to the east and focused on the foundations rising near the village.
There, the Palace of Authority would stand. Unlike traditional malocas, which were organic, circular, and made of thatch and wood that required constant repair, the palace was built with resilient materials.
The granite bases, extracted with Herculean effort and transported via river, served as the foundation for adobe walls nearly a meter thick.
He could already visualize the hardwood columns, the ceramic tile roof his potteries were beginning to produce, and the internal gardens that would insulate the humid heat of the valley.
Ubirajara had also ordered the paving of a central avenue, a straight, wide thoroughfare connecting the palace to the village center, using packed gravel and laid stone slabs.
As the dust rose from the construction, Karai Arandu approached. The old shaman walked with a different posture now.
He carried a roll of mallow paper, its edges treated with resin to prevent fraying. Ubirajara noticed that Arandu rarely wore the urucum and jenipapo paints of old; the elder seemed to have "secularized." They entered a side room of the community center.
"The sacred text is nearly finished, Ubirajara," Arandu began, his voice hoarse but steady. "I have compiled the myths of the ancients, the songs of the stars, and the stories of Monan. But, as we discussed, I changed the arrangement of the words. Where once the spirits spoke to anyone walking alone in the forest, now they speak on special occasions and are interpreted by the wisdom of the Guide."
Ubirajara took the scroll and scanned the logograms. The writing system he had helped develop, based on concepts he remembered from Sumerian and Chinese scripts, had reached maturity.
With about a thousand fundamental characters, the Tupi script now possessed a stable structure.
It was the fundamental tool for his ambitions. Regardless of the dialect spoken, the symbol for "justice," "stock," or "law" would be the same for any tribe they absorbed.
"Religion is our foundation, Arandu," Ubirajara said, feeling the weight of the paper in his hands. "We need to officialize the Order, with rituals that everyone follows in the same way, from east to west."
Arandu let out a long sigh and sat on a polished rosewood bench. His eyes, once focused on the invisible, now seemed to analyze the geometry of the room. "It's curious, my friend... I feel increasingly distant from the voices I used to hear.
Arithmetic, logic... these things bring me a peace the spirits never gave me. I feel I am no longer suited for the role of shaman. I officially abdicate the role of spiritual guide."
Ubirajara smiled, feeling a pang of respect for the old man's honesty. Arandu was going through his own process of rationalist enlightenment. "I accept your resignation, friend. But you won't be idle. I need you to train the youths you recommended. They will be the new guardians of Tekoporaísmo."
"They must understand that faith must serve order, never the other way around. The spiritual will have structure. No shaman will speak above the Morubixaba; no vision will outweigh a decision of the State."
Arandu pointed out five names young men and women who showed almost ascetic discipline and total mastery of writing. Ubirajara officialized them as the first priests of Tekoporaísmo, a term derived from Teko Porã (the good living), but now redefined as a code of ethics, labor, and loyalty to the State.
That afternoon, under an orange sky, Ubirajara gathered the population in the central courtyard of Tekoá.
The silence that followed his arrival was absolute, a testament to the awe and respect he already commanded.
He climbed onto a platform and officially assumed the role of Great Karai.
"Listen to me, Tupi people!" his voice, trained to project authority, echoed through the palisades. "The tradition of our fathers told us to seek the 'Land Without Evil' by walking to the end of the world.
But I tell you: the ancestors were wrong! The Land Without Evil is not a place we must find. It is a place we must build! Paradise is not on the horizon; it is in the sweat of the workers, in the strength of our arms, and in respect for the law. The Land Without Evil is the destiny we create here, with our own hands!"
The crowd remained motionless. It was a violent paradigm shift. He was destroying the millennial spiritual nomadism of the Tupi and replacing it with the sanctity of labor and settlement.
Some faces showed confusion, others a renewed fervor.
But for the majority, Ubirajara was no longer just a man; he was the manifestation of the earth's own will, for better or for worse.
As night fell, Ubirajara headed to the workshop area near the river. His failure to obtain iron had become a nightmare.
He had tried various furnace designs, but the hematite ore from Mantiqueira only blackened or melted into useless slag.
Sitting before the fire, he closed his eyes and dived into memories of a past life: documentaries, chemistry books, fragments of knowledge.
It wasn't just about heat; it was about reducing chemistry. To turn stone into metal, he needed to remove the oxygen from the hematite.
He needed carbon monoxide in abundance and a temperature that challenged common ceramics.
He redesigned the furnace entirely, errecting a two-meter-high refractory ceramic tower. He installed powerful foot-operated bellows to inject air under pressure.
He used rigorously calculated layers of dense charcoal and hematite crushed into walnut-sized pieces.
The work was exaustive; he operated the bellows himself for hours, sweat carving grooves through the soot on his body.
After twelve hours of uninterrupted burning, he ordered the base of the furnace to be broken. Among the glowing embers, a spongy, red-hot mass emerged: the "bloom" of iron.
With a heavy stone hammer, he began to strike the glowing mass on a granite anvil. With every blow, impurities flew like sparks from stars.
And then, the sound changed. The dull thud against stone was replaced by a rhythmic, metallic, and crystalline "clang." It was the bell announcing that the Stone Age had ended that night.
The next day, he sought out the Morubixaba Guaraci. "Try to cut that dry pink peroba," Ubirajara said, handing him the cold axe.
Guaraci struck the trunk with all his might. The iron axe bit into the rock-hard wood as if it were soft clay, sinking several inches in a single blow. The leader stared at the intact blade, then at Ubirajara with respect bordering on dread.
"This... this is not made by the hands of men," Guaraci whispered. "It cut the peroba like paper."
"This is iron, Guaraci. It is the key to everything: for weapons that will not break and for plows that will tear the earth," Ubirajara replied, his voice tired but resolute.
Immediately, he organized the foundation of Hematite Village, the first subordinate settlement, creating the start of an urban network for the Tekoá nation.
Back in the maloca, the coexistence of Tainá, Anahi, and Iara was a turbulent river he could barely navigate. To his surprise, the open war he feared never happened. Tainá, with an emotional intelligence that far surpassed his own, had assumed the role of matriarch. She didn't compete; she led.
Under her supervision, Iara integrated into the village, while Anahi assisted Arandu with the new sacred logograms. It was an armed peace, but a functional one.
At the end of the day, Ubirajara sat beside Tainá in the shade of an imposing kapok tree. The sun was setting, tinging the sky with soft shades of violet and gold.
Without saying a word, Tainá took his rough hand and placed it on her abdomen.
Through the thin cotton, he felt warmth and then a brief, deliberate movement.
A kick.
For a moment, his thoughts lost their order. He had crossed a threshold from which there was no return.
He had arrived in this world as an outsider, armed with knowledge and cold calculations. Now he carried something that anchored him irreversibly to the community, a child.
He pulled Tainá closer, more by reflex than by embrace. The familiar scent of annatto and the sun-warmed skin anchored him. His mind, already active, silently recalculated.
In his mind, images of his past life surfaced: gray cubicles, empty spreadsheets, sterile ambitions that arose only to crumble under comparison.
The conclusion was inevitable.
Building a nation was dangerous. It was exhausting. But now he had a reason to do it: he wanted to leave a legacy for his descendants.