📚 Marked Chronicles Presents: The Pontianak’s Favor

The Library Awakens

The Library did not sleep tonight.  

It stirred.

Its wooden ribs expanded and contracted in slow, deliberate breaths. Dust spiraled upward, drifting like ash from burned prayers. The scent of lilies seeped from the shelves—fresh at first, delicate and innocent…then sour, cloying, thick with the rotten sweetness of a casket kept too warm for too long.

Mirrors fogged.  

Not from temperature.  

From breath.

Something exhaled against the glass, slow and patient, as though testing the boundary between reflection and entry.

The air pressure sank sharply, compressing the spines of the books until the entire collection murmured in protest—a soft, relentless shushing, like a thousand voices trapped between pages begging to be heard. Shadows stretched themselves thin across the floor, reaching like skeletal fingers eager to touch new skin.

The Library wasn’t a building.  

It was an organism—ancient, selective, hungry.

It collected people the way other libraries collected stories. And tonight, it had sensed a vulnerability ripening somewhere outside its walls, the precise emotional frequency it favored most.

Not hope.  

Not fear.  

But loneliness.

A page in the Marked Ledger curled upward as though lifted by invisible fingertips. Ink bled, climbing against gravity, forming a name long before the Library allowed itself the pleasure of reading it.

Maya Rahman.

The Ledger hummed—a low, pleased vibration that traveled through the shelves like a purr.

A new meal had been chosen.  

A new favor to be granted.

Hunger. Perfume. Seduce. Consume.

---

The Profile

Unit 7D was not a home.  

It was a holding cell for everything Maya didn’t want to face: overdue notifications, ignored emails, the dull ache of directionless adulthood, and a loneliness so familiar it had become background noise.

Her phone was her only window to the world. Its sickly blue light painted her face in sterile glow, illuminating the exhaustion under her eyes. She scrolled half-asleep, half-hoping someone—anyone—would notice she was alive.

Maya craved connection.  

But she feared it more than she feared isolation.

That tension—the craving and the caution—was exactly the flavor of soul the Library preferred. Not the naive. Not the desperate.  

The almost willing.

Then, without fanfare, a new account appeared:

@LiliesAtMidnight

The profile picture was wrong.  

Not blurred—moving, as though the captured face kept turning away from the camera at the instant the shutter clicked.

White lilies dominated every post, glowing faintly in moonlight. Not roses. Not orchids. But lilies—the symbol of purity, funerals, and premature endings.

The captions whispered to her.  

Not metaphorically.  

She heard them.

- “The things you bury are the things that own you.”  

- “Speak the truth you ache for.”  

- “You deserve to be seen.”

Her wrist tingled.  

The tattoo beneath her skin—her Mark—glimmered faintly in a color she had never noticed before. A pulse. A heat. A memory of belonging she did not recall earning.

It felt like something inside her had just woken up.  

Something tethered.  

Something waiting.

She followed the account.  

Instantly, a DM appeared. Too fast to have been typed.

You are lovely.  

Come outside.  

I want to show you something.

Her stomach dropped into cold nothingness.  

Her mind screamed.  

Her pulse rose.  

Her body disobeyed.

She stood.  

Barefoot.  

On cold laminate.  

Moving toward the door like the air itself had hooked invisible fingers under her ribs and pulled.

---

The Hallway

The hallway was silent.  

But Maya’s footsteps echoed wrong.

They lagged, like a delayed audio track. One step…  

then a second, softer step half a beat behind her.

Someone walking with her.  

Or inside her.

Outside, the night was thick and wet, smelling of asphalt, wilted flowers, and something damp and sweet going bad—like a jewelry box filled with sea-soaked velvet.

Her phone vibrated.  

Once. Twice.  

A rhythm tunneling into her bones, bypassing her ears completely.

Closer. Wet. Whispered. Smile. Seductive. Sharp. Trust me. Final.

Her lips twitched upward.  

A forced smile trying to break through.  

She pressed a hand over her mouth.  

But the smile kept pushing.

And beneath her palm, the faint warmth of the Coin pulsed—though she had not yet seen it.

---

The Woman Under the Lamp

A flickering streetlamp cast a jittery light over a woman waiting at the far end of the block.

Her hair was drenched, dripping onto the pavement though the night was dry. Her white dress fluttered in no wind, its hem frayed as though chewed by small, persistent teeth.

Her shadow bent the wrong way.  

Her eyes glistened with something familiar.  

Recognition. Ownership.

Maya’s breath caught.  

Something inside her—old, primal—begged her to run.

The Mark on her wrist burned hotter.  

The Coin pulsed faintly beneath her skin.  

Stay. You’ve been waiting for this.

---

The Favor

The Pontianak smiled.  

Her smile grew.  

Then grew past reason, past anatomy, past anything a human face could sustain.

Skin split with a soft, wet tearing sound—like old fabric ripping slowly. Beneath was not blood or bone but a pulsing blackness, glossy and wet, perpetually digesting.

Her jaw hinged downward.  

Further.  

Too far.

A cavern of rot opened between her cheeks, rows of teeth glistening with ancient, lacquered blood.

The perfume of lilies thickened until it became suffocating—a syrupy cloud of flower rot, grave dirt, and spoiled sweetness that coated Maya’s lungs.

The Ledger whispered from deep inside her bones:  

Hunger. Perfume. Seduce. Consume.

Cold fingers cupped Maya’s jaw.  

Not harsh—possessive.  

Black nails pierced skin, drawing delicate trails of blood that tasted like spoiled nectar when they touched her lips.

Pain opened her up.  

The lullaby of the Pontianak seeped into her skull, rewriting memories. Maya felt something implanted inside her—a false longing, a fabricated past in which she had always wanted this moment.

Her limbs betrayed her.  

Slack. Empty. Waiting.

The Pontianak’s arms wrapped around her like a lover.  

Bones cracked softly—gentle, efficient. The quiet snapping of stems being prepared for a bouquet.

“You are mine now,” the Pontianak whispered into the hollow behind her ear.  

But she didn’t use her own voice.  

She used Maya’s childhood friend’s voice.  

Her aunt’s.  

Her ex-lover’s.  

Layered together in impossible harmony.

And then—the Coin revealed itself.  

Warm. Pulsing. Alive.  

Not a devouring.  

A recruitment.  

The Pontianak’s favor was not survival.  

It was communion—loneliness repurposed into a leash.

---

The Coin

By dawn, Maya’s neighbors discovered a bouquet outside their door.  

Lilies. Perfect. Fragrant. Still warm.

They smiled at the beauty.  

Never questioned the heat.  

Never noticed the tiny smear of blood on a single petal.

This was their first act of complicity.  

And yours.

Inside Unit 7D, Maya’s phone posted automatically.  

Photos of lilies.  

Captions that sounded like her—but just slightly wrong.  

Too polished. Too shallow. Too borrowed.

A new post appeared:  

> @LiliesAtMidnight: "Such peace in the perfect, white elegance of a quiet night."

The statement was perfectly composed, yet empty. Maya’s true self, crushed into a tiny, aching kernel within her own skull, registered the lie. The silence felt like a heavy blanket soaked in rot, and the elegance was just a shroud for the screaming now trapped behind her too-wide mouth.

When Maya looked in the mirror—her reflection hesitated.  

Half a second late.  

Then it smiled—a wide, testing smile—before quickly correcting itself to match the expression she should have been making.

Her cheek tugged oddly when she swallowed.  

Her jaw felt too loose.  

Her mouth…too wide.  

And she could still taste grave dirt.

The Coin thrummed in her palm.  

A tether. A bond. A claim.  

She had not been devoured.  

She had been favored.

---

The Library Closes the Page

Back within the Library, the Marked Ledger sealed Maya’s chapter with a sound like petals tearing underwater. The page was now closed, but it was not finished. Maya’s story was now an open contract. Ink writhed across the page before settling into the shape of the Pontianak’s Mark—glowing faintly, almost breathing.

The shelves leaned inward, listening.  

Satisfied.

The air tasted powerfully of perfume and rot.  

A phone materialized on a nearby shelf, conjured from dust.  

Its screen flickered awake.  

@LiliesAtMidnight has posted again.

Somewhere deeper in the stacks, another pulse stirred—another vulnerability calling out, drawing another monstrous patron toward the Library

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