Puma Punku was not a building. It was a scream frozen in andesite. Enki stood amidst the shattered megaliths, each one cut with a precision that defied the bronze tools of the age. H-shaped blocks with perfect right angles, surfaces smooth as glass, interlocking channels cut with laser-like accuracy. It was a sanctuary of silent, impossible geometry, a place that asked "how?" and offered no answer.
And in the center of the ruin, amidst the scattered evidence of his own genius, sat Marcus. The Builder. He was not building. He was simply staring at a perfectly cut stone in his hands, his face a mask of hollowed-out horror.
"I finally see the board," Marcus whispered, his voice raspy from disuse. He didn't look up as Enki approached. "All these millennia, Kaelen. I thought I was building refuges. Sanctuaries. But I was just building their cages. Every perfect line I've ever drawn is a bar. Every arch is a support for a prison I didn't know I was constructing."
He looked up, and his eyes held a terrifying, painful clarity. "The Ikannuna didn't just give us Crowns. They gave us a purpose that serves their end. My Sloth... my aversion to the fight... it made me the perfect tool. I would build for anyone, for any purpose, so long as I didn't have to lead or choose a side. And they used that."
"Marcus..." Enki began, but the Builder stood up, a new, frantic energy in his movements.
"I won't be their tool anymore. I will not let this be another cage."
With a sudden, shocking burst of strength, Marcus began to push at a massive, multi-ton block. He wasn't just trying to move it; he was targeting a key stone in the complex's layout. He knew its structure, its points of failure, with an intimacy only its creator could possess.
"Marcus, stop!"
"It's my last testimony!" Marcus roared, his voice echoing across the high plain. He shoved again, and with a groan of protesting stone, the block shifted. Then, like a house of cards, a cascade of collapse began. The sound was a mountain dying.
When the dust settled, the beautiful, precise sanctuary was a chaotic jumble of rubble. Marcus stood panting in the center, his clothes white with dust, but his face was serene.
"My final design," he said, his voice calm now. "My own ruin. Tell them, Kaelen. Tell the court the Builder's last act was to un-build. Tell them I broke the tool." He looked at the shattered stones, a sad smile on his lips. "A question asked in granite, and answered with a hammer."
Then, he turned and walked away, disappearing into the vastness of the Andes, leaving Enki alone with the shattered evidence of a soul's rebellion.