The Illustre Ancestral Home, Earthly Realm, Yearh 2010 of the Second Earth

The air in the Illustre ancestral home felt stretched, tight with unsaid warnings and ancient dread. Candlelight guttered, not from wind, but from something older, unseen. Shadows clung to the woven walls like watchful spirits. Even the hardwood beneath their feet seemed to hold its breath.

The house, perched atop sacred ground, was surrounded by armed men handpicked by Jose Illustre himself. Their fingers twitched near their sidearms; eyes locked on every flicker of movement. They weren't just guarding a home, they were guarding a bloodline. And a prophecy.

Inside, the senior babaylan sat in a silent crescent, robes rustling like dry leaves, their eyes flickering between the doorway and the mat at the center of the ritual hall. Not even the oldest among them could remember a time when pamamanhikan was offered to a being not born of earth.

Jose Illustre stood tall at the threshold; his silhouette framed by the muted glow of sanctified lanterns. His jaw was clenched, his spine rigid. His wife stood just behind him, hands folded, eyes betraying centuries of withheld truths.

The appointed hour arrived, and so did he.

Abaddon stepped through the doorway, dressed once again in a tailored black barong embroidered with thorns and stars. His eyes, ancient and unreadable, scanned the room. The same entourage from the night before followed in near silence: masked figures of shadow and light, otherworldly and solemn.

All eyes turned to him. The temperature shifted.

The senior babaylan exchanged looks as if silently invoking protection rites. The security team gripped their weapons tighter. Jose did not move. He and Abaddon held each other in a stare so sharp it could shear through time itself.

Lualhati knelt on the woven mat, her hands trembling in her lap. The moment felt both sacred and profane.

Without invitation, Abaddon sat cross-legged before her, placing his hands palms-up between them. The symbols etched into the banig...the spiral of union, the blade of discernment, the eye of fate glowed faintly between their bodies.

Jose's voice cut the silence.

"You arrive with no land, no bloodline, no god behind your name. What do you offer us, King of the Abyss?"

Abaddon's voice was low but resonant, as if each word echoed through dimensions. "I offer only the truth. And the judgment of your daughter."

A hush fell so complete that the rain tapping against the capiz windows seemed like a distant drumbeat.

Lualhati swallowed. Her voice emerged as a whisper. "Why now? Why me? Is it love?"

Abaddon turned to her, and for the first time since crossing the veil between realms, he let the mask slip.

"No," he said simply. "Not love. Not yet."

Lualhati stiffened. Her heart felt like a trapped bird.

"It is something older," he continued, "a tether that binds us beyond choice or desire. A bond seared into the threads of time by the hands of the Great Ehyeh and twisted by the rebellion I failed to stop."

Her breath caught. "The prophecy..."

Abaddon nodded. "I was once a Seraph. I bore witness to the war that split heaven. I tried to stop it and failed. My punishment was not exile, but duty. To reign over the Abyss not as a tyrant, but as a warden. A protector of the balance."

Lualhati's hands trembled. She remembered the dreams...distant suns, black wings, a voice calling her name in languages not spoken on earth.

"You came to me... as a child."

"Yes. To warn you. To prepare you."

"For what?" she asked, her voice raw now.

"For this," he whispered. "You are the key to my undoing. And possibly, my salvation."

Her father's voice cut through the silence like a blade. "Touching. The King of the Abyss playing suitor to the girl destined to end him. How quaint."

Lualhati turned to her father, stunned. "You knew?"

Her mother, standing just behind him, laid a hand gently on her husband's arm. Her eyes were heavy with sorrow. "We both did, anak."

Abaddon lowered his head. "It was not my intention to deceive. But the truth... is difficult. I did not wish to burden her too soon."

Lualhati stepped back, her gaze moving from her father to her mother, then back to Abaddon. "Tell me everything. Now."

Her mother stepped forward. "When you were born, the Church of the Keeper of Secrets marked you. You were the first babaylan in a thousand years born under a dying star. The elders feared what it meant, but the prophecy was clear: 'The Lady of Death shall walk with the King of the Abyss, and from their union shall come light or ruin.'"

Lualhati's voice trembled. "Union...? You mean marriage? A child?"

Abaddon raised his eyes to hers, sorrowful. "The prophecy speaks of a child. One born of both divine flame and mortal death. It is said this child will bring about the end of my reign, either through my destruction... or through redemption."

Her father's voice was like thunder. "So you court her not because you choose her, but because you fear what she might become if left unguarded?"

"No," Abaddon said, standing now. "Because if I do not stand beside her, others will twist her fate. I would rather fall by her hand than see her soul corrupted."

Lualhati's voice cut through the room. "So this is what I am? A prophecy? A threat? A womb for some cosmic test?"

"No," her mother said quietly. "You are our daughter. You are Lualhati. The rest... we could never protect you from it. We only hoped you would choose."

Lualhati's eyes shimmered with fury and pain. "And what if I choose neither destruction nor salvation? What if I want to be just me?"

Abaddon looked at her; but not as a prophecy, not as a weapon, but as a woman. "Then I will honor that. Whatever path you walk."

For a long moment, no one moved.

Finally, Lualhati exhaled. "I need air."

She left the house, the silence behind her heavier than any storm. Abaddon remained kneeling, hands open, waiting.

Waiting for her will.

Lualhati stepped onto the veranda of their ancestral home, the moonlight casting silver patterns through the woven balustrades. The air smelled of earth and burning kamangyan, remnants of the earlier rites. She gripped the wooden railing and closed her eyes, but the silence only brought memory rushing in, unrelenting and bright.

It was barely last night at her eighteenth birthday. Her debut had been lavish: warm candlelight, romantic music drifting over laughter, the babaylan's blessings poured like honey on her brow. But it was what happened after the celebration that no one ever forgot.

She remembered slipping out of the tent with Abaddon beside her, the brook calling to them in the forest's hush. Her father, ever watchful, had followed. So did others...cousins, elders, even strangers whose curiosity bested their caution.

They all stood in awe beneath the canopy of fireflies and starlight, watching the confrontation unfold beside the water.

Lualhati had barely grasped what was happening when she heard gasps, then the unmistakable sound of phones being drawn and screens lighting up, guests recording the impossible: The King of the Abyss confronting a mortal father over a betrothal sealed with the blood of a dying seer.

Abaddon turned to the watchers with a dark flash in his eyes, his voice quiet but resonant: "Go."

And they did.

As if bound by an ancient trance, every guest lowered their phone and quietly returned to the tent. None would speak of what they saw that night, not in full, not aloud. But the silence was its own confession.

Lualhati saw the storm in Abaddon's eyes as he turned back to her father, Jose.

"You broke the covenant made by Cassandra," he said, voice low and trembling with restrained power. "She offered Lualhati's hand freely, and in return, I vowed to wait until the stars aligned and the veil between fates thinned. I have honored every seal. Why challenge me now?"

Her father, calm but unyielding, responded, "Yes. I was aware of the pact. But you forget one clause: Cassandra's will was not to rob her granddaughter of choice. You are to court her...not claim her. The betrothal is not ownership."

Abaddon looked at him long, as if weighing millennia of wars and betrayals in one mortal gaze. Then he nodded.

"I accept the terms of tradition. I will kneel. I will wait. But understand, Jose Illustre, this is no ordinary love story. The cosmos waits upon her decision."

And then, both men had turned to her.

She remembered the beat of her own heart, fierce and confused.

"I need time," she had said, her voice loud enough for the trees to carry it. "And if we are to do this, we do it by the rites of my people. Begin with pamamanhikan. I will reconsider when I'm ready."

And now here she was with Abaddon, the King of the Abyss, on one knee inside their home, honoring the tradition of asking for her hand.

She leaned against the railing, eyes scanning the dark. Somewhere in the night, spirits were surely watching. She could feel their weight on her shoulders, their hunger for her to choose wrong...or right. Her fate, her family's survival, perhaps even the fate of existence, sat precariously on her next breath.

She heard the door open quietly behind her.

Abaddon stepped onto the veranda, his presence cool and terrible and intimate all at once. He did not speak at first. He simply stood beside her.

Then, gently, "Lualhati."

She turned to him, gaze unreadable.

"I want you to know," he said slowly, "that no matter what the prophecy says... you are not my prisoner. Nor my savior. I will protect you, with all that I command. Not just because the stars have named you, but because I choose to."

She searched his face. There was no deception there. Only a strange, broken sort of loyalty; and something like fear. Not for himself, but for what might unfold if she said no.

"You swear this?" she asked.

"I swear it," he said. "By the Throne of the Abyss, by the flame of the Seraph I once was, and by every name I have lost."

Lualhati looked back out at the forest, the ancient land of her foremothers. She drew a breath that reached down into the marrow of her spirit.

"Then so be it," she said. "The courtship shall come to pass."

She faced him fully now, no longer trembling. "I will date the King of the Abyss."

And somewhere, deep in the soul of the earth, something shifted, like a seal cracked open, or a future beginning to write itself in fire.

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