The Aztecverse
I'm Cesar Torres. I write speculative fiction rooted in Mesoamerican mythology, queer identity, and the collision between ancient cosmology and a world that's falling apart. Every book in my catalog is a portal into a shared universe where the Aztec underworld bleeds into 21st-century reality.
New Release: July 8, 2026
Hall of Mirrors — The Coil, Volume 3
Five years after fumbling his pursuit of the Night Drinker, former NYPD detective Nestor Buñuel has rebuilt his life in Chicago as a private investigator. The serial killer is behind bars. The case is closed.
Then comes the call. Nestor must reconnect with the Night Drinker—a madman who insists there is a secret, parallel world accessible from Earth. What Nestor uncovers will shatter his understanding of reality and open gateways for colossal Aztec gods to step into ours.
Hall of Mirrors is the third volume of The Coil, an Aztec sci-fi epic that spans three cities, two dimensions, and one underworld. If you've read 13 Secret Cities and 9 Lords of Night, this is where the doors blow open.
Ebook: $5.99 — Available July 8 on Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play, and cesartorres.me. Pre-orders launch May 14.
Sign up for the newsletter to get the pre-order drop →The Apex: October 6, 2026
Our Lord of the Flowers
The Novel as Embodiment. This is my vision of what a novel must become to survive the age of AI, technofeudalism, and late-stage capitalism. Our Lord of the Flowers is a poem that manifests as essay, an exploration of gender, grief, and queer love. Using my own queer body and photography as a canvas, I assert that the deity Xochipilli—the Aztec god of flowers, music, and queerness—is present, and here to help humanity create a better world.
This is the novel as embodiment. A ritual to enter.
Enter the House of Our Lord of the Flowers →The Epic Saga
The Coil Series
This epic series tells the story of how 21st-century society begins to make contact with Aztec gods and goddesses through portals on Earth. The vast realm of the Aztec underworld (Mictlān) bleeds into our reality as colonialism, technofeudalism, and climate catastrophe rage on. The series will eventually encompass nine volumes.
Book 1: 13 Secret Cities
Clara Montes has a single goal: social justice. When a protest in Chicago's Millennium Park erupts into a riot, Clara is swept into a horror that changes American history—and her own life. Forbidden by her parents from returning to the streets, she discovers that something followed her home from the chaos. Something ancient. Something Aztec.
Clara's descent into Mictlān—the underworld of the Aztec dead—begins here. She will face the Lords of the Dead, merciless gods who thrive on the taste of human blood. What she finds at the bottom will change everything you think you know about this universe.
Buy 13 Secret Cities →Book 2: 9 Lords of Night
Manhattan. October. A Nor'easter is about to hit, and a killer begins his hunt. He writes symbols on his victims and removes their hearts. The city names him the Night Drinker.
Nestor Buñuel is the NYPD's best detective for this case—and it will be his last before retirement. This killer is driven by something beyond motive: a long-lost film called 9 Lords of Night, rumored to be the work of both a genius and a madman. As Nestor descends into the investigation, the boundary between procedural and surreal dissolves completely.
Featuring a trans Latine detective, a queer academic, and Aztec mythology that creeps from the margins into the center of the page.
Buy 9 Lords of Night →Book 3: Hall of Mirrors
The newest volume in The Coil. See above for details.
Prefer Kindle? Browse the full Cesar Torres catalog on Amazon →
The Root
How to Kill a Superhero
Written as Pablo Greene
The transgressive series that broke the rules of superhero stories. How to Kill a Superhero is a four-volume odyssey of leather, bondage, spandex obsession, and the terrifying price of becoming a god. Roland must learn to harness the powers of the Golden Man, whose secrets are found in an occult book by the same name. The series takes readers deep into a queer underworld of sex, fetish, and transformation—territory that mainstream superhero fiction refuses to touch.
Book 1: A Gay Bondage Manual
Music roars inside Fortress nightclub. Roland dances into the night, hoping to find a brief escape from his loneliness. That night he meets Rick, a jet-setting executive who shares his fetish for superheroes in bondage. Together they travel into a world of masks, rope, and sexual slavery—until monstrous transformations start raging through Roland's body, and their game takes a very bad turn. Time is running out. The only thing that can help Roland is a rare book that reveals the mysteries beyond the borders of pain and bondage.
Buy A Gay Bondage Manual →Book 2: World Without Daylight
Roland has exiled himself from the United States after escaping an FBI manhunt. He travels east across the globe to find David Dallion, a reclusive biologist who can help him reverse his superpowers—powers tied to the occult book The Golden Man. In the savage danger of the Australian outback, Roland discovers he is still vulnerable to sadomasochistic urges he cannot control. His journey pits him against an ancient evil that stains the sky in blood and threatens to unleash the Gold Apocalypse.
Buy World Without Daylight →Book 3: Transformation Fetish
The occult book The Golden Man has granted Roland superpowers and the body of a god. It has also cursed him—his hunger for bondage, pain, and superhero fetish is now as insatiable as his hunger for the book's mystical secrets. Roland and his lover Stefan Pendley must destroy the creature called the Crimson Hand, which shadows them across the world. In New York City, Richard Starck—a key leader of the leather world—draws Roland and Stefan into Ritual, the city's largest fetish event. As Roland learns more about his powers, he faces the most gruesome supernatural secrets yet.
Buy Transformation Fetish →Book 4: Gold
The finale. Roland travels to the heartland of America with three companions, back to the place where his superhero transformation began. Can he reverse the monstrous changes that turned him into a muscle beast? Will his heart find love? And will the Crimson Hand—a cosmic monster with a thirst for blood—slaughter Roland once and for all? The most daring literary adventure in the superhero genre reaches its conclusion.
Buy Gold →The Multiverse
One Mythology. Many Doors.
Every book in this catalog stands alone. You can enter through Clara's riot in Chicago, Nestor's serial killer in Manhattan, Roland's occult transformation, or Xochipilli's sacred embodiment in Our Lord of the Flowers. Each door opens into the same world.
The Aztecverse is built on the Mexica cosmology I inherited and the queer identity I live. Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl—the Smoking Mirror and the Feathered Serpent—are the engine that drives every story. One god catalyzes conflict, desire, and the hidden self. The other catalyzes transformation, memory, and the revealed self. The tension between them is the Coil.
I started building this in 2013 with 13 Secret Cities. Twelve years and nine books later, the architecture holds. The gods keep arriving. The portals keep opening.
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