Chapter One
The jungle had been trying to eat the temple for a thousand years and had mostly succeeded. Rena Castillo stood at the edge of the clearing where the canopy thinned just enough to let the light through, and stared at what the satellite imagery had only hinted at: a structure of dark stone rising from the undergrowth like a fist punching through green fabric. Vines had colonized the eastern face entirely, and the staircase that once climbed the northern side had been reduced to a suggestion, but the proportions were unmistakable. This was not natural. This was built.
Her guide, a quiet man named Esteban who had spent thirty years leading researchers into places they should not go, stood beside her with his machete resting on his shoulder and said nothing for a long time. Then he said, "This is not Maya." It was not a question. Rena had studied Maya architecture for fifteen years, and the proportions were wrong — the angles too steep, the stone too dark, the carvings on the lintel above the entrance unlike anything in the archaeological record. She photographed the lintel with hands that were not entirely steady and zoomed in on her camera screen. The symbols carved into the stone were precise, deliberate, and entirely unknown to her.
They made camp at the base of the western wall, where the ground was dry and the canopy provided shelter from the afternoon rain that arrived