Chapter 12 Waning Season #2
His story settled over her, not as a myth, but as a shared history of violation.
The same forces that had twisted him from a god into a monster had created the world she was born into, a world where men like her husband used the same foreign god’s name to justify their cruelty.
He was not an evil entity she had summoned from a pit; he was a casualty of the same war, a brother in a centuries-long line of victims.
An agonizing empathy bloomed in her chest. All at once, her moral clarity felt like a luxury, a petty righteousness in the face of his monumental suffering. What was the soul of one more worthless man against the slow extinction of a being like him?
The thought was a venomous snake, and she recoiled from it. But it was too late. The seed had been planted.
That night, she couldn’t sleep. The moon was a sliver short of full, a swollen, pregnant orb in the sky.
One more day. Panic was a physical thing, a cold pressure building behind her sternum.
She turned on her side and watched him. He stood by the vast window, a motionless silhouette against the moonlight on the water.
He was pretending not to notice her watching him, and she was pretending to be asleep.
His form was less stable than ever. At the edges of his silhouette, the air shimmered, his outline blurring and resolving like a faulty projection.
He looked like a memory fighting to hold its shape.
And in the oppressive silence of their beautiful, conjured room, all Lina could hear was the frantic, desperate ticking of a clock that only she could hear, counting down the last hours of her salvation.
The sun bled into the sea, painting the horizon with violent streaks of orange and purple.
They walked in silence along the water’s edge, where each wave surrendered to the shore with a sound like someone letting go their final breath.
Lina couldn’t stop counting the hours. By the night of the full moon, everything would end.
“The house will remain,” Maruz said, his voice the low rumble of distant thunder. “It is a part of the bargain. Your safety is guaranteed.”
“My safety from what?” Lina asked, her voice quiet.
“When the thing I’m afraid of is you leaving.
” She kept her eyes fixed on the horizon, not daring to look at him.
To look at him was to see the shimmering at his edges, the constant, heartbreaking reminder that he was becoming a ghost before her eyes.
“You are stronger than you were, Lina. You have tasted power. You will not be a victim again.”
“I don’t want to be strong,” she whispered, the words stolen by the wind. “I want to be with you.”
The confession hung in the air, fragile and final.
Before he could respond, a movement down the beach caught her eye.
A man was setting up a tripod, his back to them, a large camera with a telephoto lens pointed at the dramatic cloud formations over the water.
He was tall, white, dressed in expensive-looking technical clothing that marked him as a tourist as surely as a brand.
The sight of him was a jarring intrusion on their sacred, finite time.
He must have felt their presence, for he turned, and a wide, friendly smile spread across his face. He packed up his gear with an easy efficiency and walked toward them, his long strides eating up the distance on the sand.
“Sorry to intrude,” he said as he drew near, his English tinged with a distinct American accent.
He shifted his expensive camera in his hands.
“Mind if I snap a few shots from this vantage point? It’s for a little book I’m putting together.
” His eyes, a surprising shade of green, landed on Lina and stayed there, his smile brightening with an entirely different kind of interest. “My name’s Michael Richardson by the way. ”
“Lina,” she replied, her voice barely audible.
Beside her, Maruz went rigid. Only Lina could detect the subtle shift in his posture, the way power gathered around him like an electrical charge before lightning strikes.
Michael’s gaze passed over where Maruz stood without a flicker of recognition - the man was utterly blind to the presence looming at her side.
“Lina,” Michael repeated, tasting the name.
“That’s beautiful. I’m a writer, sort of an anthropologist. I’m researching the folklore of the region.
Utterly fascinating.” His hands moved with practiced efficiency over the tripod’s joints as he kept his eyes on Lina, words flowing without pause.
“I’ve been hearing the most incredible stories about the old spirits, the guardians of the islands.
Engkato, they call them. This very spot was supposedly home to one of the most powerful ones, according to the locals.
That’s why I’m getting these shots. I bet you’ve heard all the stories growing up here.
” His eyes darted to the house visible on the cliff above.
“Beautiful place. Must get lonely though, all the way out here by yourself?”
Lina’s breath caught in her throat. She could feel the pressure in the air changing, the atmospheric pressure dropping as if a typhoon was about to make landfall. Maruz was utterly still beside her, a statue carved from gathering shadow.
The word “Engkato” landed like a stone in still water, ripples of alarm spreading through her body.
Michael, oblivious, leaned in slightly, lowering his voice into a conspiratorial tone.
“The stories say they would sometimes take a human consort. A beautiful local woman, of course.” His green eyes roamed over her face, her body, with an ownership that was infuriatingly familiar.He leaned in closer, his camera forgotten at his side.
“You know, I’d really value a local perspective for my research.
” His eyes lingered on the curve of her neck before returning to her face.
“I have an excellent bottle of wine back at my rental. Or I could bring it here tomorrow night? We could discuss the... legends.” The way he said the last word made it clear what he was really proposing.
The moment the invitation left his lips, the world fractured.
The warm, golden light of the sunset vanished, snuffed out like a candle flame.
An instantaneous, deep blue twilight fell over the beach, cold and absolute.
A frigid gust of wind tore across the sand, whipping Lina’s hair across her face and raising goosebumps on her arms. It was a cold that felt ancient and unnatural, a cold that came from a place where no sun had ever shone.
Lina looked at Maruz and what she saw made her heart stop.
For one terrifying second, he was no longer wearing his handsome human mask.
His form seemed to expand, to swell with shadow and rage, his shoulders broadening, his height increasing until he loomed like a dark god against the bruised sky.
His eyes were no longer black glass but burning pits of amber coal, and from his silhouette, she thought she saw tenebrous shapes unfurling like wings of smoke.
The air around him seemed to warp and crackle with a silent, violet energy.
It was a glimpse of the raw, untamed thing she had summoned, a being of pure judgment and devastating power.
Then, as quickly as it came, it was gone. He was himself again, contained, solid, perfectly still. But the cold remained.
Michael shivered, a violent, full-body tremor.
Michael’s eyes darted around, searching for the source of the unnatural cold, seeing nothing but finding everything changed.
His shoulders hunched forward as if he’d been struck.
He wrapped his arms around himself, his confident expression replaced by a look of bewildered discomfort.
“Whoa. Where did that come from?” He glanced up at the now-dark sky, then back at them, his eyes wide.
The flirty, predatory light was gone, replaced by a primal unease he clearly didn’t understand.
“You know what, I should... I should get back,” he stammered, already backing away, his fingers fumbling with his equipment, the lens cap slipping repeatedly from his trembling hands.
“It’s getting late. But, uh, I’ll find you tomorrow.
For sure.” He gave a weak, unconvincing smile and then turned, almost running back down the beach toward the path to the main road.
Lina stood frozen, the unnatural chill seeping into her bones. She watched Michael’s retreating figure disappear into the gloom. The golden sunset did not return. The world remained locked in that cold, tense, and unforgiving twilight.
They walked back to the house without speaking, the unnatural twilight clinging to them like a shroud. The usual night sounds of the coast were absent, swallowed by the profound, ringing silence that followed Maruz’s display of power. The path, usually so familiar, felt alien and menacing.
He finally broke the silence, and his voice was not the warm, resonant murmur she had grown to love. It was sharp and cold, like a shard of obsidian. “That man,” he said, the words cutting through the stillness. “Perhaps he deserves judgment.”
Lina stopped dead on the path. The blood drained from her face. To hear the thought she had been desperately suppressing spoken aloud was a violation. “Don’t,” she breathed.
Maruz turned to face her, his features hard and impassive in the gloom.
“Why not? I saw into his mind as he stood before you. It is a shallow, selfish place. He moves through the world as if it is a marketplace laid out for his consumption. Women, to him, are not people. They are artifacts of a culture, exotic experiences to be collected, catalogued in his journal, and then forgotten.” His fingers traced a complex shape in the air, and for a moment, a trail of black smoke lingered where they passed.
“He leaves them emptier than he finds them. A small cruelty, perhaps, not worthy of a storm or a flood. But it is a poison nonetheless. The kind I was made to purge.”
His justification was so clinical, so reasonable. It was a tempting logic, a clean moral equation that made a monstrous act feel like a service.
“One more judgment, Lina,” he said, his voice dropping to an intimate, seductive whisper.
He stepped closer, and the cold radiating from him was no longer a sign of his power, but the chill of the void he was destined for.
“His name, spoken with intent. A drop of your blood on a new vessel. It is all that is required.” He lifted a hand, his fingertips hovering a millimeter from her cheek.
“He would be erased. A brief, ugly memory. And we would have another season. Months together.”
She stared at him, at the breathtakingly beautiful face that was promising her a future in exchange for a man’s soul.
And the most terrifying part was the dark, eager thing in the pit of her stomach that leapt at the offer.
A voice that was her own whispered, *He’s right. What is one man like that?*
The thought horrified her more than any threat he could make.
It was his corruption seeping into her, twisting her own pain into a weapon.
She flinched away from his hand as if it were a hot iron and took a stumbling step back.
She saw him not as a tragic, fallen god, but as an addiction, a poison she was beginning to crave.
Without another word, she turned and fled.
She ran up the path, burst through the doors of the silent, perfect house, and did not stop until she reached her bedroom, shutting the heavy wooden door behind her and leaning against it, her body trembling.
She had shut him out. But she feared the more dangerous monster was the one she had just locked in with her.
She fell onto the bed and into a sleep that was not sleep, but a black, feverish pit.
The dream came instantly. She was standing on the beach alone, the full moon a predatory silver eye in the sky.
The waves were black and oily, crashing on the sand with the sound of breaking bones.
In her hands, she held a new talisman, a piece of sharp, volcanic rock.
She knew what she had to do. With a sense of grim purpose, she drew an obsidian blade across her palm and let her blood drip onto the stone.
She spoke the American’s name. “Michael Richardson.”
The air tore open. Maruz appeared before her, not in his handsome disguise, but in his true form - a being of shadow, lightning, and ancient rage, his eyes burning suns.
The dream-Michael appeared on the sand, screaming, and Maruz rendered a judgment that was swift and apocalyptic.
But the dream wasn’t about them. It was about her.
As she watched, she felt not horror, but a surge of exhilarating, ecstatic power.
It flooded her veins, a feeling more potent than desire, more profound than any pleasure she had ever known.
It was the power to balance the scales, to correct an injustice, to *unmake*. And it was intoxicating.