“You have called me, Linang.”
The voice did not strike her ears. It entered through her bones, a low, resonant vibration that seemed to shake her from the inside out. It was deep and beautiful, laced with the echo of centuries. And the name…Linang. An old, affectionate diminutive of her name, one the elders in her childhood province had used. No one apart from Camela had called her that in fifteen years. The sound of it on this creature’s lips was an act of impossible intimacy, as if he were a memory she’d forgotten she had.
She could only stare, her mouth dry, the matchstick burning down to her fingertips. She dropped it with a small hiss.
“What judgment do you seek?” he asked, the words formal, contractual, yet carrying that same devastating, intimate resonance.
The question broke her paralysis. This was her purpose. This was her choice. Slowly, unsteadily, Lina rose to her feet. The movement made her thin nightgown shift, and in the flickering candlelight, the dark geography of her bruises stood out in sharp relief against her skin. A dark purple stain bloomed on her shoulder where Ramon had grabbed her and shoved her against a wall. A cluster of fading yellow-green marks circled her throat. She was suddenly, keenly aware of herself as a document, her body the evidence of a crime.
She lifted her chin. Her voice, when it came, was a reedy whisper. “My husband. Ramon Delos Santos.”
The demon’s fiery eyes narrowed slightly. He did not speak, but his stillness was a command to continue.
“He… he hurts me,” she said, and the simple truth of the words, spoken aloud into this supernatural space, seemed to unlock something inside her. The whisper grew stronger, steadier. “He calls me from the ship and accuses me of things I have not done. He tells me he can smell other men on me. When he comes home, he drinks. And he hits me.” She raised a hand and unconsciously traced the faded line of a scar near her temple, hidden by her hairline. “He says he loves me, afterward. He says it is my fault, for making him angry. He says if I were a better wife, he would be a better man.”
She stepped forward, a single, reckless step that brought her to the edge of the salt circle. She held out her arm, turning it so a particularly dark bruise on her inner wrist was visible in the candlelight. “He did this the last time he was home, because I bought the wrong brand of coffee.”
Each word was a stone she had carried, and now she was laying them at his feet. She spoke of the humiliation, the quiet terror, the slow, grinding erosion of her soul until she had become a creature of careful smiles and silent screams.
As she spoke, Maruz listened. His perfect face was an unreadable mask, but his eyes burned hotter, the amber within them churning like a forge. A profound change was happening in the room. The initial chill had vanished, replaced by a rising warmth that grew with every crime she named. The single candle flame, which had been flickering, now straightened, burning tall and unnaturally bright, as if fed by the demon’s growing rage. The air grew warm, then hot, the heat pressing against Lina’s skin not with the damp humidity of Manila, but witha dry, elemental fire. His anger was a palpable force, a furnace igniting in the center of her living room on her behalf.
When she finished speaking, the room was silent save for the hiss of the unnaturally bright candle flame. The heat was a dry, living thing, pressing in from all sides, the physical manifestation of his fury. For the first time since he had appeared, Maruz moved. He took a step, then another, his bare feet making no sound on the polished wood. He began to circle her, his movements possessing a liquid grace that was both fluid and predatory. He was a panther stalking the edges of a cage, but Lina knew the cage was for her husband, not for her. She stood her ground in the center of the room, her chin held high, and watched him.
He was all coiled power and lethal elegance, and she found, to her astonishment, that she was not afraid. The fear that had been her constant companion for eight years had been burned away by the heat of his anger. She felt seen, her pain finally validated by a power far greater than her husband’s petty tyranny.
He completed his circle and came to a stop directly in front of her, so close she could feel the heat radiating from his skin. He was a towering figure of shadow and fire, and she had to tilt her head back to meet his gaze. The amber flames in his obsidian eyes were turbulent now, a storm of ancient rage. Slowly, he raised a hand. His fingers were long and elegant, the nails like polished shards of jet. Lina bracedherself for a touch that would burn, that would be a new kind of claim on her flesh.
He did not touch her face, or her hands, or her waist. His fingers went to the dark, ugly bruise on her shoulder, the one Ramon had left when he’d thrown her against the wall. He traced its discolored edge with the tip of one finger, his touch impossibly light. And it was cool. Not the cold of the grave, but the deep, soothing cool of a river stone pulled from the fastest part of the current. The touch did not make her flinch. Instead, a wave of profound relief washed through her. The deep, throbbing ache that had been a permanent fixture in her shoulder for days simply vanished, silenced by his cool, gentle pressure. It was the kindest touch she had felt in years.
“He returns tomorrow, I mean, tonight” she whispered, and despite her newfound resolve, the words came out laced with the old, familiar terror. The monster she knew was on his way home.
Maruz’s gaze dropped from her eyes to the bruise his finger was tracing. He did not ask for more stories, for proof, or for anything in return. He simply nodded, a slow, deliberate movement that was an oath in itself. The sigils on his chest pulsed with a brighter, angrier light.
“His judgment is sealed,” he said, his voice a low, guttural rumble that she felt in her own chest, a vibration that resonated with the talisman resting against her skin. It was not a threat. It was a statement of celestial fact, as certain as the rising of the sun. The judgment had been passed. All that remained was the sentence.
An unfamiliar mix of emotions washed over Lina - awe, an intoxicating sense of safety, and something else, something sharp and thrilling that she hadn’t felt in so long she barely recognized it. Desire. She was drawn to him, to this magnificent, terrible being who had looked upon her brokenness and had not seen a victim, but acause. She took a half-step closer, an unconscious closing of the distance between them. She breathed in his scent, the burning cedar and night-blooming flowers, and it was the scent of protection, of a power so absolute it could afford to be gentle.
Their eyes locked again, and in the fiery depths of his, she saw her own reflection. She was no longer just a frightened woman. She was the one who had called the storm. He was here because of her, for her. He was the answer to a prayer she had been too afraid to speak.
The pact was sealed.
He was no longer a visitor contained by a fragile boundary. He was here, in her home, bound to her until his terrible work was done.
Unexpected Connection
The last crystalline grain of salt sank into the dark wood of the floor, and the boundary was gone. The room exhaled, the oppressive tension of the ritual replaced by a different kind of pressure, one that came not from magic, but from a solid, breathing presence. Maruz stood in the center of her living room, a magnificent, impossible creature of bronze and shadow no longer constrained by a fragile white line. The four black candles smoldered in their pools of wax, their smoke curling toward himas if in offering.
He turned his head slowly, the movement a liquid ripple of muscle, and his volcanic eyes surveyed the small apartment. He was a god of a forgotten world trapped in a cage of cheap plaster and peeling laminate. He took a step, and the floorboards did not creak but seemed to groan, the old wood complaining under a weight it was never meant to bear. The air, heavy with the scent of jasmine and the electric tang of ozone, moved with him, a personal atmosphere that displaced the mundane smells of bleach and old cooking oil. Lina pressed herself back against the wall, the cool plaster a stark contrast to the heat blooming in her chest. Her every nerve ending was a live wire, humming with a terror so profound it felt like a kind of ecstasy.
With a predator’s grace, he began to explore. He moved past the low taupe sofa, his height making the ceiling seem to shrink. His long, jet-black hair swayed with his movement, a curtain of night against his luminous skin. He stopped at a small side table where a single framed photograph sat. It was of her and Ramon, taken five years ago on a beach in Batangas. She was smiling, a genuine, unpracticed smile that made her look painfully young. Ramon had his arm around her, his hand possessive even then, but his face was softer, the lines of suspicion not yet carved so deep.
Maruz reached out, his long, elegant fingers hovering over the glass. He did not touch it. He simply looked, and Lina felt the demon’s judgment not as a thought, but as a wave of cold emanating from him. It was a coldness of pure contempt, a dismissal so absolute it felt like an erasure. The glass of the picture frame cracked, a thin, spidery line appearing from top to bottom, though he had not made contact.
He moved on, his gaze sweeping over the room, cataloging the pathetic artifacts of the man he was here to unmake. He paused by the armchair where Ramon’s work jacket was slung, the fabric smelling faintly of diesel and salt. He ran a single finger down the sleeve, leavinga trail of condensation that sizzled for a moment before vanishing, as if the cloth had been touched by something both ice-cold and burning hot.
Lina’s breath hitched. She was a spectator to this silent, damning inventory of her life.
Finally, he turned to face her again. The smoldering candles cast his perfect, inhuman face in a battle of light and shadow. The sigils on his chest pulsed with a soft, infernal glow, their rhythm matching the beat of the talisman hidden beneath her nightgown.
