When the year begins on the day Ome Acatl, the priests and their assistants make a journey to the top of the Hill of the Star, where there is a special shrine. At that time, all fires in the Anahuac are extinguished. The priests and the men of knowledge then watch, from atop the Hill of the Star, watching for the stars known as the Seven Sisters - the Pleiades - to cross the middle of the sky. If they see them cross, they know that the Fifth Sun has been granted another fifty-two years. They then make new fire on the chest of a man who has just given his service in sacrifice, and new fire is carried throughout the Anahuac.

But if those stars are not seen to cross, then the wise men know that there are fewer than fifty-two years left to the Fifth Sun. Just as a flower dies, as every man and every woman must die, as even the mountains and the seas must die, so must Tonatiuh die, eventually. If there is to be a Sixth World, there must be a new, a Sixth, Sun.