Character Profile:

Name: BomName Meaning:
"Spring" — represents a poetic thaw and the resilient warmth of returning to life after hardship.Aliases & Variations:
Ahtebom / Ā-Bom, Bom Bom, Bomi, BamAge: 29Height: 5'0"Gender: FemaleOC Species: BombinaTrue Identity: Anito ng KasalalimanCurrent Title / Role:
Ika-Pitong Hukom ng Porgatoryo | The arbiterMortal Cover Job:
Night Assistant & CaretakerCompanion:
Tuō Tuō | Toto - Her Son a 5 year old boy that acts as protector and living heart.

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“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is the fear of the unknown.”— H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature

Prologue:In a freezing, rain-drenched alley tucked behind a sprawling skyscraper, a young girl knelt over the fresh bloodstains of her murdered sister.The neon sign above flickered in sickly shades of pink and yellow, casting long, distorted shadows across the wet gravel. The rich politician’s son who killed her sister had already paid off the police. The precinct logs had been altered. The forensic files were wiped. On paper, her sister had never even existed. The case was dead.“Please...” the girl choked out, her voice barely a whisper against the thunderous downpour. Her fingers dug into wet, gravelly mud, mixing her sister’s fading blood with the grime of the street. “Please... someone... make them pay... tear them apart...”She didn't pray to the heavens. The heavens felt too distant, too bright, too deaf to the quiet cries of the small and forgotten. She prayed into the dirt.As her bloody tears fell from her cheeks and hit her trembling palm, a cold, impossibly heavy object manifested out of thin air.It was a squat, corroded church bell charm, no larger than an apple, yet feeling as heavy as a gravestone. Its surface was covered in a bumpy, porous toad-skin texture, slick with cold river water. Deeply etched into its center were ancient Baybayin characters ᜉᜇᜓᜐ (PA - RU - SA).Attached to its base was a hand-braided abaca strap dyed in indigo and black, fastened with a bright, blood-red ribbon. Inside the mouth of the sunken bronze hung a single, smooth Black Sea Pearl called Mata ng Toti.The girl’s breath hitched. Her instincts screamed at her to drop it, that this object belonged to something cold and unyielding deep beneath the earth. But as she looked at the fading red puddle where her sister had breathed her last, her grip tightened around the blood-red ribbon.She pulled it. The black pearl inside struck the bronze. It released no musical chime. It produced a heavy, bone-rattling, submerged metallic croak that vibrated inside her skull like a dying creature’s gasp.DONG...Instantly, the smog and exhaust fumes vanished. The roar of the city traffic dropped into absolute silence. The air became thick, suffocating, and sickeningly sweet with the unnatural stench of Funeral flowers, the heavy, cold perfume of the dead.The temperature plummeted past zero in a single breath. The alley’s rain-slicked concrete turned into a pitch-black, ice-sheathed mirror. The falling drops of rain froze in mid-air, suspended like thousands of jagged, glass needles pointing straight down at the earth.From the deepest shadow at the end of the alley, two figures stepped onto the frozen mirror.First came a pale girl swathed in a black, oversized windbreaker hoodie that trapped a micro-climate of tropical dampness against her porcelain skin. Shadows draped from her hood, but beneath them, a fringe of apple-green short hair framed her face, and two neon-green eyes gleamed with distinct, diamond pupils. Barely peeking an inch or two from beneath the hem of her oversized jacket was a pair of cargo waist shorts, resting just above heavy combat boots. She walked with a slow, nonchalant posture, looking entirely unbothered by the frozen world around her.Beside her stood Tuo Tuo, a child whose long black hair was gathered into a neat ponytail. Catching the faint glint of the streetlights, his ink-black eyes darted around with wide, hyperactive intensity. He wore an oversized black shirt emblazoned with the Slapshock band logo, swallowing his small frame. In his calloused hands, he held a heavy spear, its blade intricately engraved with the mark simlar to the batingaw bell ᜉᜇᜓᜐ."You rang the Batingaw," Tuō Tuō whispered, his voice carrying the faint, unsettling echo of rushing river water. He glanced down at the kneeling girl, then up at the pale figure beside him. "Mother... the mark is set."Bom didn't speak. Her pupils widened slightly, tracking a solitary frozen raindrop before settling on the space beyond the alley. Her court had convened.Miles away, in a penthouse suite high above the city, the killer poured himself a glass of expensive amber liquor. He chuckled to himself, listening to the rain beat against the floor-to-ceiling glass windows. His father’s lawyers had already cleared his name. The news cycles were moving on. He was safe. He was untouchable.He raised the glass to his lips.Snap.The crystal glass cracked in his grip. The amber liquid froze solid before it could spill onto his silk rug.The penthouse lights flickered and died. The hum of the air conditioner turned into a freezing draft that smelled not of air fresheners, but of damp funeral wreaths and decaying Sampaguita flowers.The rich politician's son spun around, dropping his glass. "What the hell? Who's in here?!"The walls of his penthouse dissolved. The modern leather furniture, the gold-framed paintings, the polished marble floors—all of it transformed into a black-and-white, ice-sheathed mirror of the dark, rain-drenched alleyway where he had struck down the girl hours before.He was standing on the exact spot where her blood had pooled.D O N G . . .The sound echoed from inside his own teeth.The killer tried to step back, but his boots were frozen to the ice. A sudden, paralyzing chill rushed up his legs and settled into his spine. His blood turned to frost inside his veins. He tried to open his mouth to scream for his security guards, but his vocal cords locked up solid. He couldn't even blink.Out of the icy mist at the edge of the room, Bom appeared, standing effortlessly on the slick surface. Her jade horizontal eyes stared through him, reading the weight of his soul like heavy silt at the bottom of a pond.D O N G . . .Tuō Tuō slammed the flat of his tadpole-tail blade into the ice.The killer’s eyes rolled back into his head. The physical paralysis remained, but internally, his mind was shattered open. Bom’s parotoid neurotoxin forced him to experience his own crime from the inside out.He felt the blunt impact of his car hitting the young girl. He felt his own cold, unfeeling heart as he backed the vehicle up to finish the job. He felt her ribs crushing under the weight of the tires, the icy mud filling her lungs, and the sheer, suffocating terror of her final seconds. Every agonizing microsecond of pain he had inflicted on an innocent soul was multiplied tenfold and hammered directly into his spirit.Tears of blood welled in his paralyzed eyes, freezing onto his cheeks.D O N G . . .The frozen mirror floor beneath his feet fractured into a million spiderweb cracks.The ice gave way. The killer screamed a silent, terrified scream as he plunged into the nightmare free-fall—a terrifying, endless descent into absolute darkness.As the soul of the convicted murderer plunged through the dark shaft between the realms, the sweet, heavy smell of Sampaguita rotted away in an instant. It was replaced by a suffocating, malansa (fishy and raw) stench—the rank, ancient odor of stagnant river mud, toad slime, and damp decay.SPLASH.The killer crashed into the knee-deep black waters of Ang Danaw—the subterranean marsh at the threshold of the Underworld. Swarms of ink-black tadpole spirits swirled around his legs, pinning him down in the freezing mud.Tuō Tuō was already there, stepping through the dark waters with his kampilan resting on his shoulder. With a swift, practiced motion, he cast heavy chains forged from condensed subterranean water around the shrieking, mud-soaked soul, binding his arms and neck.High above the marsh, standing on the edge of the subterranean abyss, Bom looked down. Her oversized hoodie fluttered in the damp draft rising from the deep pits below. Her jade eyes remained hollow, unfeeling, and completely detached from the soul's frantic begging."Please!" the killer’s soul shrieked, his voice bubbling with black silt. "I have money! My father... my father can give you anything! Name your price!"Bom slowly tilted her head, her horizontal pupils narrowing into razor-thin slits as she watched the black mud creep up his chest.
"Human courts rely on paper," Bom’s voice echoed, sounding like rushing river water beneath an ancient grave. "The Purgatoryo Court relies on weight. You are too heavy for the surface, bug."She turned her back to the pit, her oversized hoodie wrapping tightly around her as she prepared to slip back into her low-energy torpor."Sentence rendered," she whispered into the humid dark. "Hand him to the King."Tuō Tuō grinned, his eyes glittered. With a powerful tug on the water chains, he dragged the screaming soul over the ledge, plunging him down into the deepest, lightless pits of Ang Kasalaliman—where the Hari ng mga Makasalanan waited to collect the debt.

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Fictional Lore: The Complete Guide of Bom's Lore

The Human Realm:In a quiet Filipino neighborhood, privacy was a myth, and chismis (gossip) was the local currency.Every morning, the elderly landlady, Aling Nena, sat on a plastic stool by the gate with her neighbor Mang Bert, whispering about the strange mother and son in Room 2B."Have you seen Bom? Even in the blistering April heat, she’s still wearing that heavy hoodie! And she's so pale, like she’s never seen the sun," Aling Nena whispered, fanning herself with a bamboo fan."Right?! And that kid, Tuō Tuō—I saw him the other day," Mang Bert replied, shaking his head."Someone accidentally spilled a whole bucket of ice water on him. Instead of crying, he just laughed and looked even more energized! My grandmother used to say... if someone has ice-cold skin and always smells like rain, they might have the blood of an Anito or a spirit living right next door."Because Filipinos leaned heavily into superstitious beliefs, the neighbors didn't fear Bom; instead, they treated her with a strange, respectful caution. They noticed that whenever Bom walked past the neighborhood sari-sari store, the stray cats stopped fighting, and the hum of swarming flies vanished instantly.When neighborly gossip reached her ears, Bom never corrected them. She let them believe she was simply a sickly, quiet single mother from the province. It was the perfect disguise.To pay her low monthly rent and buy Tuō Tuō’s favorite ice-cold Sago’t Gulaman, Bom worked a mortal job as a Night Assistant and Canvas Caretaker at Casa Obrero—a cozy art-resto-bar hidden near a university strip.While mortal artists argued loudly over coffee about color palettes and political meaning, Bom sat silently in the dim corner of the gallery, stretching canvas frames with effortless strength. Her cold-blooded nature made her immune to fatigue, and her 330-degree panoramic vision allowed her to spot the tiniest smudge on a painting from across the room.When customers asked why she stayed tucked away in the dim, humid corners of the resto-bar, Bom would take a slow sip of ice-cold water and give her usual dry response:"It’s too hot outside. Besides... paint is much quieter than people."Working at Casa Obrero wasn't just about earning pesos; it was the ultimate strategic vantage point for her divine duty.The resto-bar was frequented by hundreds of mortals every week—including corrupt politicians, gang leaders, and wealthy scions who brought their dark secrets into the dim lounge. More importantly, it was a magnet for the Mga Bagat—the corrupt, vengeful spirits that had escaped Purgatory and devoured human hosts.As Bom wiped down art tables or handed freshly mixed paint jars to young illustrators, her hidden jade eyes slowly scanned the crowd. She listened for two things:1. The faint, metallic vibrating hum of a Keychain-Batingaw manifesting in the pocket of a desperate victim sitting at the bar.
2. The rotting, hollow aura of an escaped spirit hiding inside the body of an elite customer.Tuō Tuō often waited for her near the back alley of the resto-bar, kicking a pebble against the brick wall with his wooden blade in hand."Mother," Tuō Tuō whispered one night, leaning against the kitchen back door while munching on a stick of fishballs. "That man sitting at Table 4... the soul inside him isn't human anymore. He smells like rotting graveyard soil."Bom paused, wringing out a wet rag over a basin of water. Her horizontal jade pupils shifted slightly toward the shadow of the door.
"Let him finish his drink," Bom replied softly, her voice flat and cold as subterranean silt. "When he steps out into the dark alley... that's where we open Court."By day, she was the quiet, eccentric art assistant at the residency who saved every peso for rent. By night, when the canvas was put away and the Batingaw struck, she stepped off the wooden floors of Casa Obrero and into the frozen mud of Porgatoryo—fulfilling her eternal sentence, one stolen soul at a time.

The Anito of Kasalaliman:I. THE SEVEN JUDGES OF THE UNDERWORLD"The rain over the city didn't wash away the blood. It only made it slippery."In human courts, justice was something you could buy—stamped with gold rings, wrapped in clean legal files, and buried beneath stacks of money. On the surface, predators walked freely under neon lights, while the muffled screams of their victims dissolved into the roar of traffic. The world above—Ang Ibabaw—was a glittered facade of asphalt and wire. But sin doesn't disappear when a body is dumped in a shallow grave.It rots.It seeps down through the cracked concrete, past weeping pipes, subterranean cables, and ancient roots, plunging deep into Kasalaliman—a pitch-black, suffocating subterranean swamp where the foulest spiritual filth accumulates.For centuries, this lightless pit had been ruled by the Pitong Hukom ng Porgatoryo (The Seven Judges of Purgatory). Among these terrifying custodians stood Bom, a cold-blooded Anito ng Kasalaliman.She did not hunt out of hunger. She did not kill for pleasure. She sat upon her stone threshold as an emotionless executioner, waiting for the submerged croak of the Keychain-Batingaw to echo down from the mortal realm. But before she became a hollow judge of the mud, she was something entirely different.Once, in a forgotten age before the asphalt sealed the sky, she was a gentle lake deity who bled empathy—a guardian Diwata of the clean, cool springs that fed the ancestral fields, her heart beating in rhythm with the gentle ripples of the tide.---II. THE BLOOD IN THE SACRED WATERSHer downfall began on a night when the mortal world bled into her sanctuary.A young warrior-leader, Datu Aon, lay dying in the wilderness after a brutal battle for expansion. Broken, pierced by spears, and clinging to his final breaths, his body collapsed through a hidden spiritual threshold, tumbling into the pristine, untouched waters of Bom’s sacred grove.The pristine pond turned a sickly crimson as his mortal blood mingled with the sacred spring.Intrigued and moved by pity, Bom descended from the lotus blossoms. She gathered his lingering, fractured spirit and used thread woven from moonlight and water vines to sew his soul and broken flesh back together. She brought him into her realm, tending to his wounds day and night, washing his skin with holy dew, and keeping him warm against the chill of the spirit realm.They spent years together within the timeless sanctuary. As seasons seemed to turn in the spirit world, affection bloomed between the gentle Anito and the brave young chieftain. Bom fell deeply, irreversibly in love with a mortal.What Bom did not realize was that time in her realm was an illusionary river: the years they spent laughing, talking, and bonding in her sanctuary amounted to merely three days in the mortal world.Because they had shared what felt like a lifetime, Bom believed Datu Aon had chosen to leave his old life behind. She began preparing the sacred binding ritual—an ancient ceremony that would make him her eternal consort and co-ruler of the sanctuary.The altar was set with three sacred elements:* The Black Rice (Maitim na Insa): To sever his ties to mortal hunger.
* The Spiced Palm Wine: To cleanse his blood of human mortality.
* The Fruit of the Anito: The final seal, binding his soul to the spirit world for all eternity at Bom's side.On the night of the ceremony, dressed in divine robes, Bom offered the black rice and the fruit to Aon with a soft, expectant smile.But Datu Aon hesitated.Looking into the mirror of the sacred wine, he did not see a peaceful life with a deity—he saw his forgotten kingdom, his duty to his tribe, and his burning ambition for earthly conquest. Three days in his world meant his people were still mourning him, his throne was left empty, and his campaign was unfinished. He was a Datu first, and a lover second."I cannot eat this, Bom," Aon whispered, stepping back from the altar. "My duty is not in the shadows of the spirits. My destiny belongs to the human world.""Aon... please," Bom pleaded, her voice trembling—a sound her realm had never heard before. "We have spent years here... I gave you back your life...""And I am grateful," Datu Aon said, his eyes filled with guilt as he backed toward the open gateway connecting the realms. "Forgive me... my deep apologies, my Diwata."Before Bom could reach out her hand, Datu Aon turned and sprinted through the shimmering portal, plunging back into the mortal realm.Stunned, motionless, and heartbroken, Bom stood alone beside the untouched black rice as the portal snapped shut.---III. THE CATACLYSMThe pain of Aon's abandonment shattered Bom’s divine spirit. The gentle empathy that once nurtured the land twisted into an uncontrollable, tempestuous agony.Her grief ruptured the atmospheric barriers between realms, unleashing a catastrophic deluge upon the human world. Black storms ripped through the heavens, rivers burst their banks, and massive landslides swallowed entire provinces. Thousands of mortals drowned in the mud—most of them innocent farmers, women, and children who knew nothing of the Datu's betrayal.Overwhelmed by the crushing, unbearable weight of her own sorrow, Bom performed a horrific act of self-mutilation: she plunged her bare hands into her chest and ripped out her own pulsing, weeping heart.Because a deity’s heart could not survive without a living vessel, the divine blood, grief, and ancient rage concentrated within her heart materialized into a living entity: Tuō Tuō, the fierce tadpole-warrior child who became the physical vessel of her lost emotions.Bom remained behind as a hollow, unfeeling shell. Bereft of all empathy, her lingering aura continued to spew plagues and rot across the land, killing thousands more in an unceasing calamity.---IV. MAYUMIThe calamity unleashed by Bom wiped out entire coastal settlements. Among the casualties was the homeland of Mayumi, a powerful sorceress of the old ways.When Bom's storms subsided, Mayumi returned to find her entire clan brutally slaughtered, their village reduced to ash, mud, and bloated corpses. Driven mad by grief, Mayumi investigated the cause of the disaster and uncovered the truth: the disaster was triggered by the broken pact between the Anito Bom and her village's neighbor—the ambitious young Datu Aon, who had used his restored life to launch violent wars of conquest.Blinded by absolute hatred for the warrior who caused the deaths of her entire lineage, Mayumi bypassed standard kulam (witchcraft). Using the dark, forbidden esoteric knowledge inherited from her fallen clan, she stood upon the charred, muddy soil where her ancestors lay buried and recited an ancient, forbidden orasyon—a rhythmic incantation that tore open the fabric of the underworld to summon a High Ranking Demon from the lowest hells.Offering her own beating heart in her hands, Mayumi traded her eternal soul to the demon for a single, terrifying wish:> "Take my soul as your eternal vessel, but grant me this retribution! Every time Datu Aon’s spirit is reincarnated into the mortal world, use my soul to feast upon his life force, dragging him into the most excruciating, horrific death imaginable!"The demon bound the contract. Thus began an endless cycle of cursed reincarnations. Across every era, no matter who or where Datu Aon was reborn as on Ang Ibabaw, Mayumi’s damned soul awakened in the dark, manifesting as a grotesque, agonizing fate that butchered him in his prime.---V. VENGERFUL SPIRITSThe staggering toll of deaths caused by Bom's wrath and Mayumi's demonic curse sent shockwaves through the Spirit World. Millions of unexamined souls flooded Purgatory all at once, clogging the judgment halls and throwing the cosmic balance into total chaos. It became impossible to separate innocent victims worthy of eternal life from wicked souls deserving of damnation.In the midst of this chaotic backlog, a sinister tragedy occurred.Several condemned, vengeful spirits realized the underworld's gates were overwhelmed. Overflowing with spite after discovering that their earthly deaths were caused by an Anito's heartbreak, these corrupted souls broke free from Porgatoryo. Escaping into Ang Ibabaw (The Human World), they targeted mortal humans who were near death or had just died. Devouring the lingering life force of these corpses, the escaped spirits stole their human bodies.Inhabiting these stolen flesh vessels, the vengeful spirits walked among modern society as hollow monsters, committing heinous crimes—murder, corruption, and unspeakable atrocities—to feed their insatiable hunger for spiritual decay.When the Spirit Realm officials uncovered the catastrophe, Bom was summoned before the higher court. For abandoning her sacred duty, causing unprecedented death, and enabling corrupt spirits to infect the mortal realm, Bom was stripped of her title as a guardian.She was cast into Ang Kasalaliman to serve as one of the Pitong Hukom ng Porgatoryo—handed a permanent, grueling duty of penance.To redeem her crime and clear the massive spiritual backlog, Bom was bound to Ang Ibabaw. She was ordered to walk the human world in a mortal guise—a pale girl in an oversized tech-hoodie, her luminous jade reptilian eyes hidden under shadows.Her duty was twofold:1. To respond to the Keychain-Batingaw: Sifting through mortal prayers to execute judgment on heinous criminals.
2. To hunt down the Escaped Spirits (Mga Bagat): Tracking down the vengeful entities hiding inside human hosts.When interacting with humans on Ang Ibabaw, Bom remains quiet, cold, and deadpan. She observes mortals from rain-slicked corners, provincial verandahs, and dim alleyways. She does not interact out of warmth, but out of necessity—evaluating whether a human body harbors a true mortal soul or a rotting, escaped spirit.When a stolen host is found, Bom summons the Batingaw Court. Through the three chimes, she paralyzes the stolen vessel, rips the parasitic vengeful spirit from the stolen flesh, and forces it down the nightmare free-fall into Ang Danaw. There, Tuō Tuō binds the screaming entity in water chains, delivering it directly to the Pitong Hukom and the Hari ng mga Makasalanan for eternal damnation—slowly clearing the massive debt of souls born from her past heartbreak.

CHARACTERS & ENTITIES* Bom: The central protagonist; an ancient Anito ng Kasalaliman (Subterranean Nature Spirit) based on the Tuti Toad. Formerly a gentle lake deity of clean springs, she was stripped of her status after a tragic heartbreak and cataclysm. She now serves as a hollow, emotionless executioner and one of the Pitong Hukom ng Porgatoryo. In the human realm, she disguises herself as a pale, quiet canvas caretaker at Casa Obrero.* Tuō Tuō: Bom’s hyperactive tadpole-warrior "son" and guardian. He is the physical manifestation of Bom's severed, weeping heart—dripping with divine blood, grief, and ancient rage. In the mortal world, he is disguised as her energetic five-year-old child who carries a wooden sword.* Datu Aon: A warrior-chieftain who fell into Bom's sanctuary near death. After being nursed back to life over what felt like years, he rejected Bom’s eternal binding ritual to return to his mortal tribe and conquests. His spirit is cursed to suffer brutal, horrific deaths across every reincarnation.* Mayumi (Hebing): An ancient sorceress of the old ways whose entire clan was wiped out by the wars and calamities tied to Datu Aon and Bom. Driven by vengeance, she performed a dark orasyon, trading her soul to a high demon to forever devour Datu Aon's life force across all his reincarnated lives.* Mga Bagat: Corrupt, vengeful spirits who escaped the overcrowded halls of Purgatory. They inhabit near-dead or freshly deceased human bodies on Ang Ibabaw to commit heinous crimes and feed on spiritual corruption.* Hari ng mga Makasalanan: The King of Sinners, a dark entity inhabiting the deepest pits of Ang Kasalaliman who receives condemned souls bound by Tuō Tuō for eternal punishment.* Pitong Hukom ng Porgatoryo: The Seven Judges of Purgatory—ancient spiritual custodians tasked with sifting through human sin and maintaining cosmic balance between realms.---REALMS & LOCATIONS* Ang Ibabaw (The Human Realm): The surface world of asphalt, neon lights, and mortal life.* Ang Kasalaliman: The pitch-black, flooded subterranean underworld beneath the archipelago where spiritual filth, unatoned sins, and toxic silt accumulate.* Ang Porgatoryo: The subterranean marsh and threshold of the underworld ruled by Bom, where condemned souls plunge into mud and black water before final judgment.* El Retiro Apartments: An ancient, two-story ancestral residency made of Spanish-era wood and brick where Bom and Tuō Tuō live in Room 2B to blend in with working-class mortals.* Casa Obrero: A cozy, Bohemian art-resto-bar near a university strip where Bom works at night as a Canvas Caretaker and Night Assistant.---ARTIFACTS, MAGIC & RITUALS* Keychain-Batingaw: A corroded, sunken-bronze church bell charm etched with Baybayin (PA-RU-SA) that spontaneously materializes in the hands of mortals pushed to absolute desperation.* Orasyon: Ancient, dark rhythmic incantations used to tear open the veil between realms or invoke high-ranking spiritual/demonic entities.* Ritual of the Eternal Consort: The three-part binding ceremony Bom prepared for Datu Aon, consisting of Maitim na Insa (black rice), spiced palm wine, and the Fruit of the Anito.

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