“The final component is the binder,” the old woman said, her voice dropping to a near-whisper. “It is the offering. It is what calls to what is yours.” She produced a small blade, no bigger than her finger, its edge honed to a wicked gleam in the candlelight. “Your hand.”
Lina’s heart hammered against her ribs. This was the precipice. She extended her left hand, palm up. It trembled violently. Nanay Rosita took it, her calloused fingers surprisingly gentle as they enclosed Lina’s. She turned it over and selected the tip of Lina’s index finger. She did not ask for permission. She simply laid the edge of the blade against the skin.
“You are a daughter of the first covenant,” Rosita murmured, her eyes locking with Lina’s. “Your blood remembers the bargain.”
With a quick, precise motion, she drew the blade across Lina’s fingertip. The pain was a sharp, clean fire. A single, perfect bead of dark blood welled up, impossibly red against her skin. Lina gasped, her gaze fixed on it. Rosita guided Lina’s hand over the chalice. The drop clung for a second, then fell, a tiny crimson star into the wooden darkness. Two more followed.
Rosita took a pinch of the scattered herbs and pressed them against the cut. The sting was immediate, but as the herbs touched her bloodied skin, something else happened. A jolt, powerful and electric, shot up Lina’s arm. It was not pain. It was a searing heat that flooded her veins, a torrent of pure energy that made every nerve ending in her body ignite. Her breath caught in a sharp, involuntary gasp. The heat spread from her hand through her entire body, a wildfire that burned away the cold fear and left something else in its place - something vast, ancient, and hungry. It was a power that had been sleeping in her blood for generations, and her own pain had just woken it up.
Nanay Rosita watched, her black eyes narrowed in a look of knowing, grim assessment. She saw the shock on Lina’s face, the widening of her eyes, the flush that rose on her cheeks. She recognized the awakening for what it was. The girl was more than just desperate. She was a true heir.
The initial heat of the awakening receded, leaving behind a low, simmering hum beneath Lina’s skin. The blood had been wiped from her finger, the cut already closing, but the feeling of connection remained. Afternoon sun slanted through the hut’s single dirty window, cutting a dusty gold swath through the gloom and illuminating the chaos of Rosita’s shelves.
“The blood calls it,” Nanay Rosita said, her voice softer now, more pedagogical. “The circle contains it. The words command it. But the name… the name binds it to you.” She gestured to the dark wooden table, where she had laid out a brittle, yellowed scroll. “The name you give the spirit matters. It is a leash and a key. It gives the hunger a shape, a purpose.”
Lina leaned over the scroll. It was covered in a spidery, unfamiliar script, a list of names beside notes written in an older form of Tagalog. She could only decipher a few.Baghawi, The Storm.Talim, The Blade.Anino, The Shadow. Each name was a poem of violence.
“Every woman chooses a name that reflects her need,” Rosita explained, tapping a bony finger on one entry. “This was for a man who beat his wife in public, for all to see. She called the spiritHiya, or Shame, and it did not kill him with claws. It whispered his sins to everyone he met until he threw himself from a bridge.” Another tap. “This one called itGanti, Vengeance. Her husband was found in a dozen pieces, scattered across seven towns.”
Lina felt a chill crawl over her skin despite the hum of power in her veins. She was not just calling a force; she was shaping its intent. What was her intent? Was it just an end to Ramon? Or was it something more?
Rosita placed a flat, gray stone on the table, alongside a small bowl of white ash from a brazier. “You must choose,” she said. “Write the names that come to you. Feel their weight on your tongue.”
Lina’s fingers trembled as she dipped them into the ash. The texture was fine and soft, like powdered bone. She hesitated, then slowly, carefully, wrote a word on the stone:Katahimikan. Silence. She wanted the silence of a house not waiting for a drunken key in the lock. The silence of a mind not rehearsing excuses.
She wiped it away with the heel of her hand and wrote another:Hustisya. Justice. A word that felt too clean, too noble for the bloody act she was contemplating. Then, another:Lakas. Strength. The strength to never be thrown against a wall again.
Rosita watched her, her face impassive. “Be warned,” she said, and her voice dropped low, pulling Lina’s attention from the stone. “The spirit you call… its nature is not only to destroy. It is anEngkantoat its core, an ancient and powerful thing. It is bound to serve, but its service takes many forms. It will offer not only an end to your suffering, but also a beginning. It will sense your desires, even those you hide from yourself.”
Lina looked up, confused.
“His form will reflect what calls to you most deeply,” Rosita whispered, her eyes boring into Lina. “If you crave only a monster, you will get a monster. But if your soul starves for something else… for protection, for beauty, for a strength that does not need to break things to prove itself… he will show you that, too.”
Lina’s cheeks flushed with a sudden, betraying heat. She thought of her secret, foolish dreams: of hands that could hold her without crushing, of a presence that felt like a shield instead of a cage, of a power so absolute it could afford to be gentle. These were desires she had buried so deep she had forgotten they existed. To have them spoken aloud, to have them known by this creature she intended to summon, felt like the most profound nudity. She quickly looked down, hidingher face, her fingers smearing the ash on the stone into a meaningless gray blur.
They did not speak of it again. As dusk began to paint the sky outside in shades of violet and blood orange, Rosita had her perform the full ritual one last time. Lina stepped into the salt circle. This time, there was no hesitation. The ancient words rolled from her throat, resonant and sure, born from a place of deep certainty within her. Her movements were fluid, each gesture practiced and imbued with purpose as she scattered the herbs and placed the shells.
When she finished the final incantation, the air inside the circle crackled. The candle flames danced wildly, stretching toward her. A sweat broke out across her collarbone and at her temples, not from exertion, but from the raw energy she could feel gathering around her, responding to her call, to her blood, to the name she had finally, secretly, chosen. She was no longer just repeating words. She was commanding them.
The last light of day died, and the shadows that had lurked in the corners of the hut finally spilled out to claim the room. The candles seemed to burn brighter in the encompassing dark, their flames the only points of reference in a world that had shrunk to the size of this sacred, suffocating space. Nanay Rosita moved to a dark wooden chest that Lina had not noticed before and lifted the lid. From it, she took a small, crudely stitched pouch of black cloth.
She filled it with pinches of herbs from various jars, crushed shells that shimmered like captured starlight, and a small, empty vial of dark glass stoppered with cork. The components of the ritual, now contained, felt more potent, a satchel of distilled intent. The old woman’s hands were steady as she drew the pouch closed and tied it shut with a single, long, black thread. As the knot tightened, Lina saw that it was not thread at all. It was a strand of human hair, thick and coarse and unnervingly strong.
“Tonight is the night,” Nanay Rosita said. Her voice had lost its human anchor; the layers separated and echoed, seeming to come from the walls, the ceiling, the very earth beneath Lina’s feet. It was the voice of the Sisterhood, speaking through one cracked vessel. “Ramon returns tomorrow. The demon must be called when the veil between worlds is thinnest - at midnight, in the heart of the deepest dark.”
She held the pouch out to Lina. Her eyes, which had been assessing and critical all day, now bored into her, searching for the slightest flicker of hesitation, the last remnant of the frightened woman who had arrived at dawn.
“Are you certain this is what you want?” The question was a physical weight in the air.
Lina did not need to think. Her hand went instinctively to the blood-dark talisman that now hung from a leather cord around her neck, tucked beneath her blouse. She had not been conscious of putting it there; it simply was. She clutched it through the thin fabric, feeling its unnatural warmth against her skin. The stone pulsed, a slow and steady beat that was no longer in counter-rhythm to her heart, but in perfect, resonant time with it. It had become a part of her.
She thought of Ramon’s imminent return. She pictured his heavy tread on the stairs, the sound of his key in the lock, the smell of salt and sweat and cheap liquor that would precede him. She thought ofhis hands, the ones that had once held her face with such tenderness and had later learned to bruise it with the same intimacy. The cycle of hope and pain and apology - a wheel she had been bound to for eight years - was about to begin again. But not for her. She was stepping off.
She met the old woman’s gaze, her own eyes clear and cold in the candlelight. The strength she felt was a terrifying, exhilarating thing. It rose from the pit of her stomach, from the place where the magic had taken root.
“I’m certain,” she said. Her voice carried a new authority, a resonance that surprised even herself. It was the voice of a woman who had chosen her own ending, and her own beginning.
Nanay Rosita nodded once, the ritual complete. She placed the pouch into Lina’s outstretched hand. It was heavy with its grim purpose.
