Viloma: El Fantasma & The Djinn Within | Part 1 & 2
Part I | The Ghost Beneath the Altar
May 15, 2025 – Santiago de Compostela, Spain
No one believed the legend anymore. That’s how it managed to slip through.
The Cathedral of Santiago groaned with the weight of centuries. Beneath its stone bones, a team of restoration workers picked through an ancient reliquary, recently unearthed during seismic repairs under the nave. Bone fragments. Rusted tools. Shards. The kind of forgotten objects that made scholars excited and the faithful uneasy.
But Douglas didn’t care about ossuaries or broken censers on this day.
His eyes locked on it the moment they entered the dust-choked chamber. It lay half-buried on a table of discarded debris, near a cracked statue of St. James: a double-edge safety razor, oddly pristine, faintly glowing beneath the dirt and grime.
It didn’t belong here, or anywhere.
“El Fantasma,” Douglas said softly, not daring to blink.
Fran stepped closer. “The ghost razor?”
Aldous flipped through a folio of crumbling parchment. “Wasn’t it supposed to be a lamp or something? Genies go in lamps. Everybody knows that.”
“This one doesn’t,” Doug replied, kneeling beside the table. “This one cuts. Blood binds...” his voice trailed off.
They had arrived in Santiago less than twenty-four hours earlier, after a friend at Universidad de Santiago de Compostela had tipped Douglas off about a “weird little relic” found during the restoration. A break-in had occurred the night before; doors jimmied open, debris scattered, but nothing taken. It would seem the intruder didn't exactly know what they were looking for.
The razor looked harmless enough. Encrusted with age. Dirty. But when Fran brushed away the grime, it pulsed faintly. Green. Like moonlight caught in a bottle. Huxley growled, low and uneasy. And CUBE, silent, as always, hovered over the relic, its shell flickering in sync with the glow.
“Is it reacting to us?” Fran asked.
Douglas said nothing because he too was baffled by the phenomenon. He didn't remember reading about this in the lore.
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The Legend
On August 10th, 997, the Moorish general Al-Mansur sacked the city of Santiago. But unlike most conquerors of the era, he spared the Cathedral’s main shrine. For centuries, this act was considered an odd moment of mercy in an otherwise brutal campaign.
But the old monks whispered another version.
Al-Mansur hadn’t spared the shrine out of reverence. He had left something behind. A Djinn, imprisoned in an object that didn’t belong to this world or any other. Not a lamp. A razor. A device forged from a strange, glowing material that defied time. Something the friars eventually called El Fantasma or The Ghost.
The Djinn wasn’t evil. But it was clever. Mercurial. Prone to trickery and temptation. And worst of all, it could influence the hearts of men…even buried beneath sacred stone it turned out. Over the centuries, as the Spanish church waxed and waned in power, so too did tales of corruption, hauntings, and strange visions. The monks sealed the razor beneath the altar and wrote it out of history.
But they never destroyed it.
And now it was back.
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Guided by the Blade
Later that night, in their hotel room, Aldous set the razor, now cleaned and wrapped in linen, on a table beside a world map they’d been using to plot their next leg. No sooner had he turned his back than it moved.
Just an inch. Then another. like a possessed planchette on a Ouija Board.
A straight line. Northeast. Until the tip of the top cap hovered over Naples.
“It’s pointing,” Fran said, trying to make her voice steady. “It wants something.”
Douglas stared at the trembling map. “Or someone.”
They debated burying it. Sealing it in lead. Hurling it into the ocean or launching it into space. But something deeper than logic pulled at Douglas. Curiosity. Duty. A shot at shaving with it? His motivation was even unclear to himself.
By morning, they were on a plane.
CUBE remained silent. But it pulsed constantly now, like a black heart held midair. Huxley slept only in short bursts. Fran kept a hand near her belt where lived a knife that would make John Rambo feel inadequate. And Aldous, once skeptical, began scribbling translations from old grimoires and half-lost Sumerian manuscripts.
Whatever they were headed toward, it was ancient. Alive. Watching.
Viloma: El Fantasma & The Djinn Within
May 16, 2025 | A Forgotten Basilica, Beneath Naples | Part II
The air was heavy, thick with salt, dust, and something older than language. CUBE hovered above the cracked stonework, pulsing violet, its surface rippling like oil on water. The shifting sigils it cast danced across the mosaic floor in rhythmic patterns Aldous couldn’t quite decipher.
From within Doug’s sling bag came a low, insistent hum. El Fantasma was glowing again, its strange, green radiance seeping through the fabric like a lighthouse through fog.
“It’s getting stronger,” Fran muttered, adjusting her headlamp.
Doug paused at the edge of the worn staircase, casting a glance back toward Huxley, who sniffed the stale air and let out a low growl. “The closer we get,” Doug said quietly, “the more alive it feels.”
Aldous trailed behind, scribbling notes on the back of an old museum flyer. “Maybe that’s the point,” he said. “Maybe we’re not chasing it. Maybe it’s leading us?”
They descended into the crypt, boots echoing off curved stone. At the far end stood an altar, blackened by time, inscribed with both Sumerian glyphs and Vrilic markings that shimmered under CUBE’s glow. Atop the altar flickered an oil lamp, impossibly lit, its flame the color of an electric storm on the horizon.
Then came the sound.
An inhalation. A pause. An inhalation. A pause.
Breath, but not theirs.
“She’s here,” Aldous said, halting mid-step.
From the shadows emerged the figure of Maria Orsic, her cloak trailing like liquid obsidian, her eyes closed, lips parted in slow, methodical breathing. Each interrupted inhale echoed unnaturally in the chamber; unsettling, deliberate.
Fran whispered, “Viloma…”
Doug stiffened. “Not meditation. A summoning.”
Maria opened her eyes, yellow and evil. “Every inversion is a doorway,” she said softly. “Every breath you withhold...is one the Djinn takes in.”
The sling bag on Doug’s chest throbbed with heat. He winced as El Fantasma pushed against its confines, pulsing green like a heart under pressure.
Fran stepped forward, hand hovering over the hilt of her knife. “You’re not just summoning it…you’re syncing with it.”
Maria smiled, not with menace, but pity. “My dear child, I’m simply reminding it who holds the leash.”
CUBE, motionless until now, began strobing erratically. A keening hum filled the chamber, registering in the bones rather than the ears. Even Huxley whined and backed away.
Doug tore open the bag and lifted the razor into view. The glow flared, bathing the walls in spectral green.
“You’re not getting this,” he shouted.
Maria tilted her head. The flame in the lamp guttered out. Metal, ancient shackles scraped across unseen stone. And something cold, not imagined, brushed against Doug’s arm.
“Oh, Douglas,” she whispered. “I already have.”
Then came the wind, not from the tunnels behind them, but from the razor itself.
Something had awakened.
To Be Continued...
"More Than Just Shaving, Phoenix Shaving!"