Novels by Alwin Twac

The moving boxes were stacked haphazardly across the living room of Apartment 4B, three states away from the city Erick had called home for a decade. The coastal town of Pacific Reach was perpetually wrapped in sea salt, rolling ocean mist, and the muffled cries of gulls. It was quiet, unglamorous, and, most importantly – he hoped – far outside the jurisdictional patrol lines of Vanessa’s former sector. Erick had cashed in every favor he possessed to secure an urgent lateral transfer to the company’s sub-regional data depository. He had packed his life into the back of his sedan over a single panicked weekend, driven fourteen hours through the night with Pearl curled up asleep in the passenger seat, and signed a lease under a newly created LLC. He was safe. For now. Yet, despite the fresh sea air, a pervasive gray gloom seemed to follow Erick into every room. He threw himself into his work with mechanical, joyless precision, leaving early in the morning and returning with dark cir

His mind spun. His resolve wavered. Could he build a happy, normal romance with Vanessa on the foundation of Pearl’s eternal damnation? Could he look at himself in the mirror every morning knowing the woman he loved was smiling beside him while the succubus who trusted him was being tortured somewhere in the Nethers?On Tuesday night, Pearl sat quietly beside him on the sofa. Sensing his profound melancholy, she didn’t try to seduce him or try to playfully distract him. Instead, she gently rested her head against his shoulder, placing her soft, porcelain hand over his trembling fingers.“When you are sad, everything here becomes cold,” Pearl whispered into the quiet room. “Whatever pain I have brought into your life... I am sorry.”Erick swallowed the lump in his throat, his fingers tightening around hers. It felt, in that moment, that the only thing keeping him from collapsing inwards was the grounding warmth of a succubus’s touch.Wednesday morning arrived under a blanket of heavy,

The crisp Sunday air carried the scent of crushed autumn leaves and damp earth as Erick walked beside Vanessa through Riverside Park.For the past forty-eight hours, the atmosphere at the office had been suffocating. Vanessa had barely spoken three sentences to him, maintaining a cool, professional distance that felt entirely manufactured. Then, at five o’clock on Friday, she had slipped a folded sticky note onto his keyboard: Sunday. 2:00 PM. Riverside Park, by the weeping willow. Just us.Now, they walked in heavy silence along the paved path, keeping a deliberate foot of space between their shoulders. Vanessa wore a long camel trench coat, her hands buried deep in her pockets and her chestnut bob rustling in the autumn wind.When they reached a secluded clearing near the riverbank, sheltered beneath the drooping golden boughs of a massive willow tree, Vanessa stopped. She turned to face him, her hazel eyes stripped of her usual office charm.“I

“I… I don’t know,” Pearl said softly. “I’ve told you everything that I’ve heard of them and what I felt.”Erick leaned back against the closet door, his knees almost giving in under his weight.Purgers. They sounded like some old order of witch hunters who would no doubt stop at nothing to extract a demon, and he would just be collateral damage. He wanted to think they were just objects of Pearl’s paranoia, but then, Pearl was a creature from another world. It made sense there was an organization that operated under everyone’s radar to exterminate anything that threatened humanity.He had never asked for an interdimensional war. He hadn’t sought absolute power, forbidden dark sorcery, or dominion over the underworld. He had just been a lonely, broken thirty-five-year-old loser sitting in an empty apartment, tired of feeling like a ghost in his own life. He had wanted a spark. He had wanted someone to look at him like he mattered.Erick looked over at Pearl. She was watching him with w

Erick froze, his brow furrowing. A defensive irritation flared in his chest. “Pearl, come on. Are you... are you jealous? Look, I know this dynamic is weird, but you knew from the start why I performed the summon. I feel like Vanessa is something real… and I don’t want to lose this.”“This is not jealousy!” Pearl cried, her voice rising from the seductive whisper for the first time. Tears swelled at the corners of her eyes. “Master, look at me! Smell the air!”She grabbed Erick’s wrists, pulling him close. Her skin was ice-cold.“Her… her soul does not carry the scent of ordinary people,” Pearl stammered, her chest heaving. “Beneath her perfume she smells of consecrated steel and fire! She is a Purger!”The word hung heavily in the bedroom, foreign and sharp.“A Purger?” Erick repeated, his skepticism warring with the genuine terror that radiated from the succubus. “What are you talking about?”“They are the executioners in this world,” Pearl explained, her voice cracking with dread.

The following weeks passed in a dizzying, golden blur.For the first time in what seemed like forever, Erick felt like the protagonist of his own life rather than an invisible bystander. His dates with Vanessa were effortless. They shared quiet dinners at dimly lit Italian bistros, took midnight walks along the city riverwalk, and exchanged flirty messages throughout the workday.Vanessa was everything Erick had ever dreamed of: brilliant, independent, and disarmingly tender. When she laughed, her hazel eyes crinkled at the corners with genuine warmth. When she reached across a table to brush her fingers against his knuckles, Erick felt a profound, grounding electric current that made the rest of the world fade into static.It was real. It had to be real. The only complication was the secret living inside his apartment.“She’s coming over tonight,” Erick announced on Friday afternoon, pacing across the living room as he adjusted the placement of two wine glasses on the dining table. “