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The city never slept, but it also never fully woke. Manila at night was a blur of neon lights, smoke, and the hum of tired souls dragging themselves through another crime-stained dusk.
Ella Vasquez liked it best that way — dim, controlled, detached.
She stood by the precinct window, coffee in hand, eyes scanning the report in front of her. Another body. Female. Early twenties. Same cuts, same calling card: a hand-written line in red ink placed inside the victim’s mouth.
“The world forgets the wicked, so I remember them.”
Third victim in six weeks. The press had already named the killer: The Poet Butcher.
Ella didn’t believe in media names. She believed in patterns, motives, ticks. She believed in darkness. Because she knew it. Grew up with it. Slept beside it.
“Same signature,” Detective Dela Cruz said, walking up behind her. “You going to brief the task force?”
Ella didn’t look away from the report. “After I finish understanding him.”
“Him?” Dela Cruz smirked. “You're sure it's a man?”
“Women don’t write like this. And if they did, they wouldn’t carve into flesh like it’s an art.”
There was something intimate about the killer’s work. Ella felt it in her gut — a quiet obsession. A hunger masked as justice.
Across the city, someone else was reading about the same body.
Vinci Fernandez sat in his cluttered apartment studio, brush poised in one hand, the TV humming muted news in the background. A flicker of the crime scene flashed across the screen. He smiled.
“Another one,” he whispered.
Not he.
We.
Inside him stirred Eon — the other half, the cleaner half. Where Vinci painted in oil and shadow, Eon painted in blood. He didn’t speak much. He didn’t need to. Vinci could feel him in every quiet pause, every skipped heartbeat.
“You’re welcome,” Eon murmured from somewhere deep within. Vinci’s fingers twitched.
He turned the canvas toward himself. A portrait. Not of the victims.
Of her.
Detective Ella Vasquez.
He had seen her once — at a gallery where the first victim used to work. She hadn’t seen him. But he had watched. Observed the way she tucked her hair behind her ear when deep in thought, the way she clenched her jaw when someone spoke nonsense. The kind of sharp beauty that didn’t need decoration.
“She’s getting close,” Vinci whispered.
Eon responded with a cold edge: “Then she dies.”
“No,” Vinci snapped, surprising even himself.
A pause.
“Then control yourself,” Eon finally muttered.
But Vinci couldn’t. Not anymore.
Ella haunted his dreams. Not in the way his victims did. She wasn’t screaming, begging. She was looking at him. Seeing him. And somehow, in those dreams, he wasn’t a monster. He was… loved.
Back at the precinct, Ella flipped through the crime scene photos again. Her team had begun profiling, but none of them felt right.
He wasn't impulsive. He wasn’t disorganized. He was smart. Patient. Deliberate.
A perfectionist. An artist.
She pulled up the background on the third victim — a gallery assistant. The connection was subtle, but her instinct pinged. Art.
A list of names popped up. One in particular stood out.
Vinci Fernandez — surrealist painter, known for his haunting themes, favoring duality, mirrors, and masks.
Single. No criminal record. No active exhibitions since last year. Mysterious. Reclusive.
Ella’s breath caught.
For a split second, she wasn’t Detective Vasquez. She was Ella — woman. Curious. Drawn.
Then the wall slammed back up. She closed the file.
She didn’t need attraction. She needed answers.
Vinci, across the city, dipped his brush into black paint. On the canvas, her face slowly took shape.
“She’s coming,” he said.
And somewhere in his head, Eon smiled.
