Earthly Realm, Year 2010 of the Second Earth

Kapihan sa Kanto, Bohol

ABADDON

Abaddon’s eyes narrowed. The shimmering veil between worlds hummed as he stared down the radiant figure before him.

“Enough,” he said, his voice low and sharp. “You will stop this meddling.”

Diyan Masalanta tilted her head, her anklets chiming with each shift of her weight, like laughter made of metal and silk.

“I do not meddle, Abyss King,” she said, serene. “I participate. I heed the cycles that shape this world. Procreation, Birth and in between... love.”

“Love,” he spat, the word curdling on his tongue like poison. “Do not speak to me of that indulgence.”

Diyan’s expression softened. “And yet I feel warm emotions emanating from you. Like tectonic plates beneath your armor of scorn. You’ve felt it.”

“You mistake fleeting interest for fate,” Abaddon growled.

“Do I?” she asked sweetly. “Then why does your mind wander to her---to Lualhati, even now? Why does the mention of her name curl itself like ivy around the cold iron of your will?”

Abaddon waved a hand.

A low, pulsing energy surged from his fingertips. The soft light around Diyan began to wither. Her petals browning, blossoms shrinking into brittle husks as if fall had claimed her all at once. The ylang-ylang wilted. Her golden skin dulled. Her breath hitched, but her resolve remained untouched.

“You may wither the image,” she said calmly, “but not the seed. You cannot undo what blooms, even if it grows in the darkest soil.”

His eyes blazed, but Diyan stood firm, her voice now hushed, reverent.

“Romance, under my influence, isn’t conquest. It is sanctuary. Safety. Truth. It coaxes the soul into bloom, Abaddon. You fear it because it asks something of you you swore to never give again...vulnerability.”

He clenched his jaw.

“You think you’ve shackled the heart. But your thoughts already drift to her. Not as prey. Not as a pawn. But as a presence. Someone who saw you... and did not recoil.”

Abaddon snarled. “You speak as if I’m already lost.”

“No,” she said with a soft smile. “You’re finally being found.”

With an annoyed flick of his fingers, he released the veiling magic. The illusion unraveled like silk pulled from a loom. Diyan reformed, glowing and whole again. Her radiance only brighter for having been dimmed.

He turned from her, unwilling to face the reflection she held up.

But she wasn’t finished.

With the delighted smugness only a deity of love could wear, she said, “Worry not, your Majesty. I’ll tend your bloom carefully. Your love...yes, love for Lualhati now grows in my garden. A precious,magnificent flower. And I guard my flowers well.”

He nearly choked. “You dare---”

“Oh yes,” she beamed. “And you’re in for a very chaotic, beautiful kind of trouble. The kind that even kings like you can’t conquer. So I suggest,” she leaned in with a wink, “be kind to me, if you ever hope to come out of this love story alive.”

And just like that, she vanished.

No shimmer. No fanfare. Just gone, like a sigh carried off by wind.

Abaddon sat there, still cloaked to mortal eyes, seething in silence.

The scent of flowers still hung in the air. The birds in the cage chirped again. Soft, almost like laughter.

And Abaddon, King of the Abyss, conqueror of legions, destroyer of sanctuaries...

...was utterly, maddeningly, alone with a flower blooming inside him he could neither uproot nor ignore.

Uncloaking slowly away from any mortal eyes, Abaddon stepped into the light and approached the counter. Now clothed in an all black suit as Apollyon Ramos.

“One barako, black,” he said in a voice that made the glasses behind the bar vibrate.

The young waiter blinked. “Uh, sure... How’d you hear about this brew? It’s not on the menu.”

Appolyon’s smile barely reached his eyes. “I knew your great-grandfather. Alejandro Valencia.”

The waiter’s face paled. “That’s... my family’s never written about him anywhere.”

Appolyon leaned forward and whispered, “Go.”

The trance took hold, and the boy turned, dazed, to prepare the coffee.

Apollyon sank into the corner table's seat and folded his hands, stewing.

He couldn't bear another day of this wretched betrothal without being near her. Without making her smile. Without giving her reasons to want him over anyone else.

Even if it meant losing control. Even if it meant breaking the prophecy wide open and allowing a curse to bloom.

******

DAY SIX

National Museum, Bohol

LUALHATI

Lualhati didn’t expect to be followed.

But Abaddon was not like other men.

He cloaked himself in shadows, his presence no more than a shift in temperature, a prickling at the edge of awareness. He trailed her the next day to the same café where she had her coffee alone, then to the old Spanish museum tucked between an archdiocese and a crumbling library, where time seemed to breathe from the very walls.

She moved like memory, soft, certain, and alone.

Inside the museum, she paused before a sprawling oil painting of the 15th-century Spanish fleet arriving on Philippine shores. The golden galleons looked eerie against a storm-dark sea, the colonial violence beneath their arrival lost in the romance of canvas.

But Lualhati didn’t look away.

Instead, she pulled out her battered sketchbook and, seated on a carved bench beneath a moth-eaten tapestry, began to draw. Her pencil strokes were light, confident. She wasn’t sketching the ships. She was sketching him.

Or rather, who he used to be.

A renaissance man, she suspected. A literature professor, she imagined. The kind who mused endlessly about forgotten gods and strange symbols in poetry, whose voice could wrap itself around syllables like a silk scarf.

Her pencil slowed. Her breath caught.

She could see him now, not as Abaddon, King of the Abyss; but as Apollyon Ramos. Seated in some university classroom, mulling over myths he had lived through. And the thought of it, a celestial being hiding in plain sight, tracing the shape of his own story across chalkboards made her heart flutter strangely.

And then…

“Your lines are getting softer,” said a low voice beside her.

She jumped. Nearly dropped her sketchbook.

Abaddon was suddenly there, seated beside her on the bench as if he had always belonged. His presence folded into the museum’s gloom like a hidden stanza in a psalm.

“I didn’t hear you come in,” she whispered, trying to still her thundering heart.

“That’s because I didn’t want you to.”

He turned to look at her fully, and in the golden light pouring through the stained-glass window, his eyes softened. The mighty Abyss King, conqueror of realms, looked... almost bashful.

She laughed nervously. “You’re not very good at respecting personal space, you know.”

“I’m ancient,” he replied dryly. “We invented personal space by ignoring it.”

That made her laugh louder than she intended.

The security guard across the hall frowned and held up a hand. “Please, miss. Quiet in the exhibit.”

Lualhati slapped a hand over her mouth, trying to hold in another snort. Abaddon looked sheepishly amused.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, still giggling.

“I’m not,” he said, watching her laugh like it was the only light in his world. And then he added, more seriously, “Your thoughts called to me. I thought you needed me.”

She blinked. “I didn’t---”

“You were sketching me,” he said, gently, and when she blushed, he smiled, satisfied. “That’s enough.”

Lualhati tucked a stray hair behind her ear and shook her head. “You’re impossible.”

“And yet, here I am.”

Lualhati steadied her heart before meeting Abaddon’s heated gaze. “I still have a day to myself, do I not?”

Abaddon’s gaze changed from teasing back to being bashful, “I confess, I am overstepping boundaries…but I can’t help it. I missed you too much already.”

Lualhati’s face suddenly turned pink, and Abaddon chuckled, stunning her.

“Did you just laugh?” In between the heat rising to her cheeks and the welcome surprise of his chuckling, Lualhati heard herself giggle once more.

“Do you like it?” Abaddon, amazed at re-discovering his expressions shared his delight. “I like the sound of it and I’m planning to do it more. More so now that it brings color to your cheeks.”

Lualhati heard herself gasp as she felt the Abaddon’s ice-cold touch prickling her skin as he cupped the side of her face.

“You are so warm to my touch, Lualhati. I like the feel of you too.” Abaddon said almost in a whisper. “I wonder what else will this courtship allow me to enjoy with you?”

The thrill of vivid thoughts of Abaddon touching her suddenly made Lualhati’s throat go dry.

“I like where your mind is going right now…” Abaddon’s breath prickled her lips as his face slowly come down on her almost as if wanting to kiss.

But before the moment could deepen. Before the odd, tender heat curling in her belly could become something bolder, a museum guard approached.

“Ahem---” the guard made his presence known.