Earthly Realm, Year 2010 of the Second Earth

Day One: When the Cock Crows

As the first rooster cried into the breaking dawn, the babaylans of the four realms met. No longer was this courtship just a spiritual curiosity. it was now a frontline defense strategy. Inside the carved-wood sanctum of Jose Illustre's office, four heads of babaylan joined via a Zoom call framed by veils of protective sigils and old prayers.

Lualhati sat straight-backed, freshly anointed as the Senior Babaylan of the East, her eyes still shadowed from the night before. Across the screen were Maria of the North, Dimas of the South, and elder Celo of the West. All were wary, all had seen too much blood spilled by the Fallen in the last week.

"The Fallen have not withdrawn," The Head babaylan of the South intoned, her voice crisp like Ilocano winds. "They believe this courtship is a ruse. They grow bolder."

"And yet," The Head Babaylan of the North added, pulling his shawl over his battle-worn shoulders, "in every clash, we've witnessed his generals. Cloaked in that infernal leather armor, bearing Abaddon's sigil. They fight for us. They bleed for us."

Jose, arms crossed, interjected, "Let's not romanticize this. The courtship, this engagement, is to keep the King of the Abyss from turning his gaze against mankind. Not to win his army."

But Daniel, Jose's closest ally and head babaylan o the West, leaned into view. "Then why do his generals intervene? Why now?"

Silence followed. Lualhati, still unspoken until now, said only, "Because the King has begun to care."

The others turned to her.

"And that, perhaps," she added, "is more dangerous than if he did not."

They agreed to continue monitoring their respective regions. Yet all eyes turned to her before the call ended.

"Prepare," The Elder Celo warned. "Not just your heart, but your will. He is a patient monster only until he is not."

As the call ended, Lu found herself alone again. Alone with the echo of a name she hadn't expected to mean anything to her heart.

Apollyon Ramos.

The realization had struck her like lightning in the Zoom call. That the man who held her elbow on a turbulent flight, who smiled at old paintings and offered her a flask of ginger tea, that was him. Her fiancé. The monster cloaked in charm.

The very idea that she'd nursed a crush on him now felt humiliating.

Enraged at herself, Lualhati stormed into the courtyard and summoned her balaraw. She threw daggers until her palms bled.

She didn't stop until her mother, Luisa, appeared behind her.

"What happened now?" Luisa asked, arms folded and knowing full well the look in her daughter's eyes.

"He tricked me!" Lualhati seethed, tossing another dagger that embedded into the wood with a loud thunk. "He sat beside me and smiled—like some innocent curator! That wasn't some chance encounter, Mama. That was Abaddon testing me, pretending!"

Luisa blinked. And then... she laughed.

"Of course he did. Jose pulled the same trick on me. He pretended to be a friend of an admirer, and then hijacked the whole thing."

"Mama, that's not the same!"

"No," Luisa agreed, "Jose wasn't the King of the Abyss. But the game? The ruse? The awkward charm? Oh, it's exactly the same."

Lualhati stared at her, caught between disbelief and grief.

Luisa stepped forward. "Let me ask you something."

Lualhati nodded, wary.

"Did you like him? Not the Abyssal King. But Apollyon?"

There was a long silence before Lualhati whispered, "Yes."

Tears pricked her eyes. "I didn't mean to. I didn't want to."

Luisa cupped her daughter's face and kissed her brow.

"Then it's not a trick. It's a beginning."

*******

Day Two: The Research Begins

Lualhati did what any modern babaylan would do.

She Googled him.

And then she stalked him. Deep dives on his social media, his art foundation's website, press articles about the Apollyon Ramos who restored 18th-century churches and funded obscure poetry translations.

She even roped in her father's IT analyst, who handed her thick folders documenting Abaddon's past lives.

Apparently, the King of the Abyss had been:

A Spanish ethnographer in 1898 obsessed with baybayin and Filipino mythologies. An archaeologist in 1920 Manila, arrested for digging too close to the sacred burial sites of the Cordillera. A literature professor in 1953, exiled after he published controversial essays on forgotten deities. A museum director in 1978 Paris under a false name, curating colonial relics from Southeast Asia. A monk in Batanes in the 2000s, who vanished without a trace after ten years of silence.

And always, always, he returned to the Philippines.

He had never stopped watching her land.

******

ABADDON

For the first two days of waiting on Lualhati and her need to "settle earthly matters" before their courtship could start; Abaddon, the Abyss King, did what ancient beings of might and fury do best.

He went to war.

Not out of necessity, but out of restlessness. A king's fury disguised as duty.

He joined his military generals in hunting down the growing plague of the Fallen. Rogue spirits and corrupted nephilims who had slipped through cracks in the veil between realms. With blistering speed and a rage too precise to be anything but celestial, he descended upon battlefields like a judgment made flesh. He didn't just lead.

He outpaced.

Outmatched.

Outraged.

Reports from his scouts barely had time to reach command before he'd already obliterated the threat. His blades, living extensions of his will, sang only to silence. 

The screams of the Fallen gave him no relief. 

The scorched ground, no peace.

The Abyss was stirring.

And it was Darion, oldest of his Council of Eight and once his sword-brother in the great wars, who approached him at last. He stepped carefully over the charred bones of a vanquished horde and bowed low.

"Your Majesty," Darion said, his voice echoing through the hollowed forest of ruined spirits, "your ache is too loud."

Abaddon's obsidian armor steamed in the cold air. His eyes glowed like a dying star.

Darion continued, "The Abyss trembles. The lake churns. Your rage is bleeding into the roots of the realm. You are not made to wait...but neither is this realm made to carry your unrest."

Abaddon did not reply. Not with words. Only the faint clench of his jaw, the soft hiss of his weapons withdrawing.

And so the King of the Abyss returned to his seat of silence, conceding nothing but retreat. And even that, he did not do for peace. He did it for her.

For Lualhati.

For the quiet storm she had become in his soul.

*******

Day Three: The Lake of Memories

In the Abyss, Abaddon stood before the black waters of the Lake of Memories.

The lake shimmered, not with starlight. There were no stars in the Abyss, but with memory.

Fragments of Lualhati danced across the surface like petals drifting in reverse: her childhood laughter echoing beneath mango trees, her trembling hands during her initiation rites, her fierce joy in the rain, the whispered names she had forgotten, the silent tears she shed after her trials.

He watched everything. Again, and again. Not because he needed to; but because he could not stop.

She was haunting him.

Each ripple brought him closer to something he could not name. Something more human than power. More terrifying than prophecy.

Desire.

Not hunger of the body....he could command flesh. But longing. The kind that folds the soul in half.

And when he saw her, under the moon, weeping by the brook, his own chest ached.

She had called for guidance.

And he had almost answered.

But something in her tears held him back. Not shame. But reverence.

In that moment, she had not been his betrothed. She had been sacred.

That night, Abaddon finally turned from the lake, the visions still clinging to the edges of his vision like ash.

He whispered to the darkness that knew his every rage and tenderness:

"I cannot wait anymore."

And the Abyss, ancient and awake, listened.

*****

Day Four: The Jealous Flame

Abaddon crossed into the earthly realm that morning.

He arrived unseen at the Illustre ancestral home. As the shadows coiled beneath his steps, he overheard the guards speaking of Lualhati's upcoming dinner with a "college friend." A man.

Jealousy burned through him like molten iron.

The King of the Abyss was not accustomed to sharing.

He did not storm into the house. Instead, he stood atop the chapel tower and watched the sun rise over the East. her realm. and clenched his fists.

"If this woman thinks I can be patient," he muttered, "then she has forgotten who I am."

And in the quiet hollows of the sky, the spirits stirred again watching, waiting.

For tomorrow, the fifth day, would test them both.

******

LUALHATI

Day Five: The Goodbye in Bohol

The late afternoon light filtered through the large bay windows of Kapihan sa Kanto, a popular café tucked into a quiet commercial lane of Tagbilaran. Inside, the smell of freshly roasted barako beans clung to every breath. The place hadn't changed since college. Same rustic wood interiors, same mismatched chairs, same corner booth by the bookshelf.

That's where Lualhati sat across from Luis Valencia.

She stirred her coffee absently, fingers brushing the rim of the cup with a restless grace. Luis watched her closely, his fingers curled around his own mug like it was a lifeline. There was a hesitation between them, the kind that belonged to people who once almost fell in love but never jumped.

"I'm seeing someone," Lualhati said softly.

Luis blinked. "Oh."

"I thought I should tell you. Before you heard it from someone else." Her voice remained gentle, but unwavering.

Luis leaned back. "Is this serious?"

She nodded. "It's... heading there. I think I'm ready now. I wasn't before, not when you and I were... whatever we were."

He let out a long breath, lips pressed into a thin line. "Funny. I was just waiting for you to be ready. I kept hoping... maybe when you were done figuring things out."

"I am still figuring things out," she replied, a sad smile ghosting across her lips. "I'm not giving up my plans, Luis. I still want to travel. To write. To read in strange languages. To dance in places, I've never seen before."

Luis frowned. "Then how does this new guy fit in? If you're planning on being everywhere, is he just going to follow you around? Or worse hold you back?"

********

ABADDON

Cloaked in shadow and invisibility, Abaddon stood near the bookshelf, breath held like a coiled storm. He had watched the entire thing, the delicate unraveling, the vulnerability, the truth between two humans too late for one another.

He expected to feel victorious. Instead, he felt... hollow.

I've been selfish, he admitted in silence, his Seraphic pride bruised.

All this time he thought binding himself to Lualhati was protection; shielding her from the prophecy that whispered doom if she loved too deeply, too purely. He thought proximity was enough to keep her safe.

But watching her now...so full of dreams, of restless hunger for the world, he realized what he was asking of her. To choose him now was to give up pieces of herself she hadn't even discovered yet.

******