Page 105 of Espíritu

Angel’s voice carried now, low and insistent.

“I’m sorry,” Angel was saying. Their golden eyes shone with something unreadable—regret? Determination? Both?

“What are you sorry for?” Felipe asked with a confused laugh.

That’s when Julian saw the flash of black. Their obsidian dagger. Moving fast.

“NO!” Yadriel yelled, lurching forward, fumbling for his portaje.

But it was too late.

The blade plunged into Felipe’s chest—right into the dark spot bleeding shadow.

Felipe screamed.

Not just a scream. A soul-rending wail that ripped through the quiet and sent every bird in the cemetery shrieking into the sky. His light flickered, twisted. His face contorted into something monstrous.

In seconds, Felipe—their Felipe—was gone. And in his place was a maligno, writhing and snarling like a storm made flesh.

Maritza stumbled back in horror. “Holy shit—”

“Yadriel!” Julian yelled.

He didn’t have to.

Yadriel was already moving, sprinting across the grass with his portaje in hand. With practiced precision, he yanked open his jacket, unscrewed the top of his Hydro Flask, and splashed chicken blood along the blade as he ran.

He skidded to a halt just a few feet from the flailing maligno. His eyes locked on the vihuela resting near a cracked headstone—Felipe’s tether.

“¡Muéstrame el enlace!” Yadriel yelled.

A glowing thread snapped into view, connecting the vihuela to Felipe’s writhing form.

“Don’t!” Angel screeched, but Yadriel was too quick.

He raised his portaje, the silver now gleaming with blood and magic.

“¡Te libero a la otra vida!”

In one clean arc—swift and sure—the thread severed.

The maligno gasped, contorted once more, then exhaled a long, shuddering sigh.

A beat of stillness, then Felipe’s spirit disintegrated into a warm cloud of golden marigold petals, drifting peacefully into the wind.

“No!” Angel screamed, rounding on them as Felipe’s spirit vanished in a soft, golden sigh. Marigold petals still drifted in the air, and Angel looked like they might tear the wind apart to gather them back. Their obsidian dagger glinted like a fang, and their eyes blazed with something wild. “What the hell did you do?!”

“You turned him into a maligno!” Yadriel yelled back, voice still taut from the spell that had just surged through him.

Maritza’s voice cracked like a whip. “You stabbed Felipe!”

Julian moved without thinking, his body between them now, fists clenched so tight his knuckles ached. His breath came fast, like he couldn’t quite fill his lungs. “I trusted you,” he said, voice shaking.

His eyes searched Angel’s face, desperate for some glimmer of the person he thought he knew—the sharp-tongued, badass bruje. The person he’d tried so hard to believe in. The one he wanted to be like—fierce, capable, unbothered. Someone who had answers when he didn’t.

Instead, all he saw was rage and guilt and something worse— conviction.

“Where’s Marisol?!” Julian demanded, the words ripping out of him. “If you touched her—!”