Page 159 of The Lost Guardian

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When Santiago came back to himself, it was like he’d never left. Perhaps he hadn’t. The golden tomb shook with an ancestral vigor, splitting the walls and ceiling, toppling intricate sculptures and piles of treasure.

Santiago watched in fascinated horror as each golden tile began snapping in on itself, folding like the world’s most impossible piece of origami. The click, click, clack of the motion bounced around the room.

Mario, who had been trying to stand, got his foot caught inside a piece of the collapsing floor, as if in a mousetrap. Santi watched in disbelief as the ridge that trapped him folded in again and again, swallowing the young mercenary inch by inch.

Santiago tried to block out Mario’s screams. He couldn’t. When a piece of tile snapped over Mario’s elbow—bending the whole arm in the wrong direction—Santiago would have vomited if there were anything in his stomach. Instead, he dry heaved as the temple continued folding in around them.

Like my chakana, Santiago thought, remembering how it had expanded to reveal the initial riddle before contracting once more. We’ll be crushed.

A large golden column split from the wall, toppling over like a freshly cut tree. It slammed into Leo, who shot his gun wildly into the air several times, while disappearing under its bulk. The heavy coffin in the center of the room split and folded, toppling Torres. He tried to run, but vines burst from between the pleated cracks of stone, lashing him in place.

“No!” the man cried out, attempting to scramble out of the swiftly folding slabs. “Help me!” he demanded.

No one did.

Santiago half ran, half crawled to Ali, attempting to keep his balance among the shaking wreckage. Her eyes were closed, and her body was covered in more of the strange vines, pinning her to the tomb’s floor. He pressed his fingertips to the side of her neck, holding his breath. He felt nothing, only cold and clammy skin.

“No,” he whispered, shifting his position.

There! He felt it, her pulse, light as a butterfly wing but still beating. He pulled at the vines, ripping them off her, only for new ones to coil around her flesh.

Torres screamed.

A sickening crunch echoed through the chamber.

Santiago didn’t look.

The room continued overlapping. Perhaps the whole temple would fold in on itself, leaving nothing but another chakana behind. The curse was taking Atahualpa’s enemies as promised, and it was intent on claiming Ali as well.

“The Huáscaros will fall,” Santiago remembered his abuelo had said. Everybody with Huáscar’s symbol. With his tattoo.

How could I miss that?

A particularly violent tremor rained debris onto them, and Santiago flung his body over Ali’s to shield her from falling projectiles. When he looked up again, a chunk of the tomb’s right corner wall had retracted, sunlight pouring in from outside.

“An exit!” he exclaimed, pulling on Ali. “Come on, that’s our way out!”

Ali didn’t reply, and more vines enveloped her, stretching over her face and mouth now. Santiago watched in horror as they constricted, like an anaconda eating a mountain cat.

The tiles were clicking together faster now, like a ravenous rain stick, eating more of the walls and floor.

“No!” he cried, searching around for a knife. When he found none, he closed his fingers around one of the thin golden leaves, using its edge to hack at the vines. The ropelike foliage was too thick, and Santiago ended up cutting his fingers and hand more than the creeping plants. He flung it—and a spattering of blood—to the side.

Santiago knelt, grabbing the chakana between his slick fingers.

“I claim her!” he shouted into the retracting temple. “You said that I could have anything from this tomb! That I could take one thing of value with me! She is worth more to me than all the treasure of the world combined. And I am not leaving without her!”

The room shuddered, once again throwing Santiago off-balance. He watched in dismay as the center of the room snapped together, swallowing half of the golden garden with it. The earth tilted, and Santiago saw the column pinning Leo snap, sucking the man’s remains into the strange, overlapping destruction. It was getting closer now. They were running out of time.

“You promised me one thing of value!” he screamed. “I value her life above all else. Give it back to me!”

For an infinite moment, it seemed that Santiago’s pleas remained unheard.

Then the vines shifted from beneath him, and he rushed to pull them the rest of the way off Ali’s body. They receded, allowing him to drag her free.

Santiago lifted Ali’s limp form into his arms, staggering toward the bright patch of sunlight. Debris careened through the air, a hail of golden bullets, as the whole temple began shrinking in on itself.