The Nagual and the Aztecverse: A Shapeshifter's Mythology
In Mesoamerican tradition, a nagual is not a god. But they live in adjacent, liminal space next to them.
That distinction matters. The Aztec pantheon of gods and goddesses—Coyolxauhqui, Tezcatlipoca, Quetzalcóatl, Xochipilli, Coatlicue, among others—operates at the level of cosmic force. A nagual operates at the level of the human. A nagual is a person, or sometimes a spirit, with the power to shapeshift. They can cross the boundary between human and animal form, between the visible world and the one underneath it. Naguales are considered to be witches, sorcerers, cuaranderos and shamans, with potential for both good, and evil.
This nagual has lived at the center of my Aztecverse since the beginning, sometimes visibly, sometimes buried in the architecture of a story where most readers never see it.
In 13 Secret Cities, the first volume of The Coil series, two siblings discover a tunnel beneath their city. This structure forms a passageway built from butterfly wings. The tunnel was constructed by a nagual, years before the Montes children ever found it. The shapeshifter leaves no name, no face, no explanation. Only the passage itself, and the question of what it was built to connect.
In Hall of Mirrors, the third volume, the nagual steps closer to the surface. In the opening chapters, Néstor–a trans private investigator navigating the labyrinthine politics of Mictlán—recounts a legend circulating through CDMX: El Hombre de Oro, a present-day nagual who is also a luchador. A man of gold who moves between worlds, whose mask is not a disguise but a declaration. The legend is told as rumor, as myth, as the kind of story people repeat in the dark. Whether El Hombre de Oro is real inside the world of the novel is a question the book earns the right to ask.
The nagual also moves through the How to Kill a Superhero tetralogy, though differently. Roland — the series' complicated, magnetic protagonist — carries powers given to him by Tezcatlipoca himself. In the final chapters of Book 4, those powers are named: nagualismo. The gift of the shapeshifter, granted by the god of the smoking mirror, the deity of darkness and transformation who sees everything and judges nothing.
The nagual has never felt like a monster to me, even when I heard stories about them as a kid.The nagual is the figure who refuses a single form. Who understands that identity is not a fixed point. A nagual knows that there is a different skin we inhabit differently depending on the hour, the city, or the state of our hearts.
The Coil series begins with 13 Secret Cities. Hall of Mirrors, Vol. 3, publishes July 8, 2026 — pre-orders open soon at 13secretcities.com/hall-of-mirrors. The How to Kill a Superhero tetralogy is available now.