Title: The Last Architect - By Mikel J. Chavez, 12.21.22

He called himself Arin in the earliest days, back when the sky was still thick with ash and the last of the great lizards thundered across the earth. He had no true name in any language spoken here, and no true form that stayed fixed for long. Arin was one of the Keplari, a curious and ancient species from a water-rich world orbiting the star you call Kepler-186. He came to earth alone on a research mission, expecting to observe briefly and leave. But the world caught him. Its chaos. Its beauty. Its endless potential.

For ages he wandered the continents, keeping himself hidden behind faces of his own making. Sometimes he was a hunter in a small tribe, sometimes a woman who gathered herbs near a river, sometimes a wandering stone-carver who whispered blueprints into the minds of people not yet ready to draw a straight line. He learned every rhythm, every weakness, every burst of brilliance the human mind could hold.

And every time humanity reached a plateau, he nudged them upward.

Arin’s method was simple. Once he mastered a new discipline, he distilled the essence of its understanding into a microscopic genetic marker, a strand of alien code. Then he released it into the world’s waters. The marker sought out the humans most capable of carrying that knowledge. It didn’t give them answers, but it opened doors in their minds. Agriculture. Medicine. Writing. Architecture. Electricity. Vaccines. Microchips. Every major leap forward began as a silent ripple from one wandering alien who walked among us.

He watched empires collapse and rise again. He walked battlefields and libraries. He stood on mountaintops pondering what the next age might look like. He loved this strange species more than he had ever intended.

But no amount of foresight prepared him for the day the mammoths returned.

It began as a curiosity. Researchers uncovered frozen tissue in a glacier and revived fragments of ancient DNA. Arin sensed something wrong before anyone else did, but for the first time in millions of years, he hesitated. He took the form of a scientist to investigate, but the virus came for him before he could isolate it. It was old. Primal. Perfectly adapted to organisms from the Keplar system. It leapt to him within hours.

His cells fought, reshaped, burned. His mind flickered. By the time he collapsed in the snow, he knew. He wasn’t going to heal.

And humanity would never know what they had lost.

The world moved on, unaware its invisible architect had died in a remote research station, body dissolving into harmless dust. At first nothing seemed different. Days passed. Then months. Then years. Progress slowed. Innovations stalled. Creativity dulled at the edges.

Humanity didn’t understand why the breakthroughs stopped. Why discoveries dried up. Why every field felt like trudging through mud. Without Arin’s markers seeding the next great insight, the species that had once leapt forward now stumbled.

Governments panicked. Industries collapsed. Blame spread like wildfire. Rivalries sharpened. Nations fractured. The world turned inward, petty and fearful. The great engines of progress rusted. Cities decayed. The global web of ideas shrank into tribal islands of suspicion and stagnation.

People whispered that the golden ages were over. That something sacred had been severed. No one knew the truth: that the mind guiding humanity for millions of years had vanished, leaving behind a species that never learned how to reach the stars on its own.

Somewhere, beneath a glacier that would one day melt, a few grains of alien dust slept quietly, unaware of the collapse above. And humanity alone for the first time in its history returned to what it had been before Arin ever set foot on the planet.

A brilliant, fragile species with infinite potential.

And no map to reach it.

ELF HELL - By Mikel J Chavez, 12.25.20

Sundown came early in the Arctic Circle, sliding over the snow like a warning. The workshop lanterns flickered. A hush settled over Santa’s Village, the kind that made even the wind hold its breath. Every one hundred years, the elves marked this night on secret calendars carved into ancient ice. They never spoke of it around children. They never spoke of it around humans at all.

The Night of Rebirth.

Normally, elves were cheerful, bright-eyed, and endlessly helpful. But deep in their lineage, older than Christmas itself, lived something far darker. A curse. A hunger. And every century, when the auroras shifted just the wrong shade of red, a handful of elves would revert to their ancestral form between sundown and sunup. They became twisted, sharp-toothed, fast as blizzards and cruel as winter starvation.

Santa had learned to prepare. He’d built containment halls deep beneath the reindeer stables, reinforced with blessed oak and runes old enough to predate Christmastime. Any elf who began showing signs, a tremor, a fever, pupils narrowing like a wolf’s was guided gently below until dawn. Most years, it worked. Most centuries, the damage was minimal.

But this time… something went wrong.

It started with Grindle. A sweet, tiny elf who baked gingerbread wreaths and cried during snowflake ceremonies. Just before sundown he felt a sting in his skin, like frozen needles under his fingernails. He hurried toward the containment hall, but he didn’t make it. Something in the shadows moved faster. A shape leapt from behind a toy crate. A growl. A flash of jagged teeth.

Grindle screamed.

By the time he staggered back into the main workshop, clutching his arm, the bite had already begun its work. His eyes darkened. His smile cracked. When he lifted his head, his voice came out as a broken hiss.

Too late.

He attacked the nearest elf. A scratch was all it took. A bite was worse. Within minutes two elves had turned. Then four. Then twelve.

Santa’s emergency bells rang, echoing through the frozen rafters. Workers scrambled, dragging barricades, locking doors, herding reindeer into safety pens. Mrs. Claus shouted orders as she pushed trembling elves toward escape tunnels. But the turned ones moved like shadows that cut back. They climbed the walls. They broke through wooden beams with unnatural strength.

Containment had failed.

By moonrise, the entire north end of the village was lost. Sleighs smashed. Candy-cane lamp posts bent like twisted ribs. Laughter replaced with shrieks that didn’t sound entirely elven anymore. The infection spread faster than Santa had ever seen. Almost half the workshop was prowling on all fours, hunting anything that still breathed.

And Christmas Eve was one night away.

In the center of the chaos, Santa stood in the snow, shoulders shaking—not from fear, but from heartbreak. These were his elves. His family. He’d raised them, worked beside them, sung with them through centuries of joy. Watching them become monsters tore him apart.

But Santa Claus did not quit. Not even in hell.

He marched into the storm, boots thudding like war drums. From his coat he drew the ancient staff he kept hidden from the world, a staff carved from the World Tree itself, etched with runes that glowed icy blue. With every step, the air trembled.

Santa spoke one word.

A word older than Christmas. Older than elves. A word that cracked the sky with light.

The aurora above erupted. Green and white flames spilled across the darkness, pouring down like celestial snow. It washed over the village, sweeping through the shadows, blistering against the howls of the turned elves. They screeched as the magic hit them. Their limbs twisted. Their teeth chattered. Their dark spell buckled.

One by one, they collapsed into the snow, shaking violently.

It wasn’t enough to cure them. Not yet. But it froze the transformation kept them in a kind of suspended twilight. Not monsters, but not fully themselves either. It bought Santa time.

Dawn broke.

As the first line of sun crept over the horizon, the elves gasped and convulsed. Their features softened. Their eyes turned warm again. Those who hadn’t been infected emerged from hiding, rushing toward their fallen friends with blankets and cocoa and terrified relief.

By full daylight, the curse was gone.

By afternoon, the workshop was buzzing again, cleaning, repairing, rebuilding. Santa worked beside them, slower than usual, more solemn, but steady. He wouldn’t let this century’s Rebirth stop Christmas. Not now. Not ever.

And on Christmas Eve, as the sleigh lifted into the icy sky, Santa looked down over the village, battered, scorched, but alive. The elves waved up at him, whole again, smiling as though the nightmares of the night before had melted with the morning frost.

All was well.

But somewhere deep beneath the ice, in a forgotten cavern where the auroras couldn’t reach, something stirred. A single, dark elven eye blinked open… waiting for the next century.

For the next rebirth.

For the next Elf Hell.