Have you ever wondered how a life can change from rags to riches? How a family that lived happily for years can suddenly enter a spiral of decadence and suffering?
No matter how you try to look at it or what justifications you try to give — Rodrick's final actions were, without a doubt, occasioned by the suffering and hatred inflicted upon him over the years.
Rodrick was born into a traditional family. Not a traditional family like others, but a lineage whose ancestors were practitioners of magic. His father, Roberto, the Grand Master of an initiatic order, was a loving man, playful with his children, and a person of extreme trust to everyone who knew him.
At nine years old, Rodrick desperately wanted to follow in his father's footsteps. First, he dreamed of becoming a police officer and, of course, wished one day to be the Grand Master of the initiatic order to which his father was affiliated. But, unfortunately, the world is not a bed of roses. It was at this point that the Mauá family's downfall began.
On May 23, 1984, Roberto, father of Rodrick and Luana, his younger sister, was brutally murdered. Two years passed, and the killer was never found. For Rodrick, this was more than disturbing — it was an open wound that refused to heal. He always wondered why the gods or beings worshipped by his father within the temple did not help him or, worse, did not protect him.
During these internal monologues, Rodrick always remembered his father's words:
"Rodrick, even if we worship ancestral gods or primitive entities, none of this makes us perfect or omnipotent. The gods exist to help and protect us. However, even if they do all this for us, we also have a duty to protect ourselves. Son, do not blame them for everything that goes wrong in your life, and do not thank them for all the good that happens, as you will also achieve incredible things on your own."
Whenever Rodrick began to blame the gods or his guardians for what happened to his father, he remembered these words, which echoed in his mind like a mantra. In the meantime, his mother, Beatriz, seeking to rebuild her life, remarried.
Luiz, who was his father's friend and now his stepfather, did not seem like a bad person. But, as the old saying goes, you can't judge a book by its cover.
Four years passed after his father's murder. And Luiz? Well, during that period he began to show his true colors. At first, it was just shouting in heated arguments with his mother. Gradually, the aggression increased, escalating to the point of physical assaults that left marks not only on the skin but on the soul of everyone.
At times, Rodrick noticed Luiz looking at his sister Luana in a strange way, but, innocent as he was, he couldn't interpret those malicious glances — the glances of a predator stalking its prey.
On Rodrick's 14th birthday, his world completely collapsed. His sister, now 13, had become increasingly quiet and distant. She avoided being in the same environments as her stepfather and, when at home, spent most of her time locked in her room, as if that small space was her only refuge.
On the day before the events, Luiz said he would go on a business trip and would return in a few days. However... he never came back.
Rodrick, calling his sister for lunch before the party that would happen that night, knocked on her bedroom door, but got no answer. He called twice. Nothing. He knocked two more times and, with no alternative, decided to enter.
The scene he saw would never leave his memory, like a permanent scar on his soul.
His sister was hanging by a rope around her neck, her body swaying gently like a macabre pendulum. On the desk, a carefully folded letter. In it, Luana apologized to Rodrick for ruining such an important date and to her mother for bringing even more suffering to the already fragile family.
In the letter, with a trembling handwriting that betrayed her emotional state, Luana revealed all the sexual abuse she suffered at Luiz's hands since she was 12. She said that, due to her early physical development for her age, she awakened her stepfather's perversion.
But what enraged Rodrick the most, what made his blood boil in his veins, was the last revelation:
In the last paragraphs, written with an even more unstable hand, Luana confessed that she never told anyone anything because Luiz constantly threatened her. He said that if she spoke, he would kill her mother — just as he did with her father.
Upon reading this, Rodrick and Beatriz cried uncontrollably. But each for a different reason. While Beatriz suffered from guilt and regret for not having noticed the signs, Rodrick burned with hatred. A visceral hatred directed at Luiz, for having destroyed his family, and at himself, for not having been able to protect his younger sister.
The wake took place the next day, on a gray day that seemed to reflect the family's mourning. Beatriz, with trembling hands, handed the letter to the police, who immediately began the search for Luiz. Rodrick did not leave his sister's coffin for a second.
And before it was closed, he leaned over Luana's cold body and made a promise in a whisper filled with determination:
"I will not rest until I kill him with my own hands."
Five years passed like a blur of pain and planning. Depression consumed his mother like a cancer of the soul, leading her to death two years after Luana's suicide.
Throughout all this time, Rodrick's hatred did not diminish — on the contrary, it grew and strengthened, fueled by loneliness and the desire for revenge.
But he never stopped studying. He delved into his father's books with an almost obsessive dedication and began to practice more and more magical rituals with one of the masters of the order who adopted him.
Until, on a new moon night, he made his first pact.
The chosen deity was not by chance. It was an entity rejected by many, even within the order itself, as it represented disorder and primordial chaos. Its name, whispered only by the initiates: Apep.
In the ritual, performed in a circle of ancient stones, Rodrick made only one request. He did not want prosperity, happiness, or worldly power. Only that Apep would help him find the destroyer of his family, the man who had escaped human justice.
Six months later, after daily rituals and minor sacrifices, Rodrick ascended to 1st Degree Master within the order. During the elevation ceremony, when his blood touched the consecrated altar, Apep granted him a crystal-clear vision: He saw a man living happily with a new family. A small child, about two years old, played in the garden while his father's killer and his sister's abuser smiled, as if he had never committed any atrocity.
With a pounding heart, Rodrick asked the void:
— Apep, is that what I'm thinking?
And the answer came like a chilling whisper in his mind. In the vision, there was a sign in the background, clearly identifying the place where Luiz lived, hidden under a new identity.
Rodrick smiled for the first time in years, a smile that didn't reach his eyes.
— For five years, no clue. The police never found him. But now, I finally have my chance.
He took the car, a gun — the same one his father kept in the safe for protection — and left in the dead of night, without looking back.
Five hours later, he arrived in the city where Luiz lived.
He rented a room in a discreet inn and waited for the right moment to act, patiently observing his prey's routine.
Two days later, he found an abandoned house five kilometers away, the perfect place for what he planned.
When Luiz left to go to the market, Rodrick followed him like a silent shadow. As they passed through a dark alley, away from curious eyes, Rodrick struck him on the back of the neck with precision, knocking him unconscious instantly.
The rest of that night would be filled with pain, blood, and revenge.
— Wake up, you son of a bitch! — Rodrick exclaimed, backhanding Luiz's face, who woke up startled, his eyes wide with terror as he realized he was tied to a chair.
— Woke up, sleeping beauty? — he asked with a cold smile.
Luiz looked at the man standing in front of him. Tall, 1.87 meters, a relatively strong build, jet-black hair, and dark brown eyes that looked like two wells of hatred.
— Who... who the hell are you? What am I doing here? — he stammered, trying to recognize that face partially illuminated by the dim light of a hanging lamp.
A sinister laugh echoed through the abandoned environment, reverberating off the peeling walls, then Rodrick replied, approaching slowly:
— Don't you recognize me, Luiz? Have you forgotten the face of the man's son you killed? Of the sister of the girl you raped for months, who made her take her own life on my fourteenth birthday?
Luiz paled, looking horrified at Rodrick's face, as if seeing a ghost. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out, only the sound of his accelerated breathing filled the silence.
After a few seconds that seemed eternal, he finally screamed:
— You're Rodrick? I... I didn't do anything! I'm innocent! I never touched your sister! And I certainly didn't kill your father, I swear!
Rodrick stared at him with a furious look, the veins in his neck bulging with contained rage. Before Luiz finished speaking, Rodrick delivered a violent punch to his stomach, making him gasp for air, bending as much as the ropes allowed.
— Don't try to fool me, you son of a bitch! — Rodrick vociferated, holding Luiz's face and forcing him to look at him. — I know it was you. Besides my sister's accounts in the letters, Apep, the deity with whom I have a pact, showed me you and how to get here. How dare you live happily with a new family, while you destroyed mine?
Luiz tried to say something in his defense, but he didn't have time. Rodrick kicked his head hard, causing a concussion that made him pass out for a few seconds, blood dripping from his temple.
— I waited years for this moment! — Rodrick declared, pacing in circles around the chair like a predator.
— I imagined thousands and thousands of times in my mind how I would kill you, and today... today I will finally have that opportunity!
As Rodrick spoke these words with a disturbing smile on his face, Luiz, now conscious again, pleaded between sobs:
— Don't kill me, Rodrick! I swear I'll turn myself in to the police! I don't want to leave my wife and daughter behind, please! I know your father, your mother, and your sister wouldn't want this for you.
Rodrick, who had been laughing until that moment, stopped abruptly. His eyes filled with an even more intense hatred, a fury directed solely and exclusively at the man in front of him.
— My father? My mother? MY SISTER? — he roared, his voice growing with each word. — All of them dead because of you, and you dare to talk about them to me? WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE TO TALK ABOUT THEM TO ME?!
Rodrick delivered such a strong punch to Luiz's face that the sound of a tooth breaking echoed through the room, mixing with his groans of pain. — Well. I think it's time we started — he said with an artificial calm, contrasting with the previous violence.
Rodrick gagged Luiz and began a series of tortures meticulously planned during years of hatred. He was in no hurry. Every movement was executed with cruel precision, as if he were following a script rehearsed countless times in his mind.
He began by breaking Luiz's fingers one by one, using a small iron hammer. The dry sound of bone breaking mingled with the muffled creak of screams from behind the gag. Between each finger, he waited, let the pain settle, and observed in Luiz's eyes the transition from pride to terror.
Next, he used a dagger heated in the brazier nearby to make slow cuts along his thighs and arms — not deep enough to cause fainting or death, but with the surgical precision of someone who wanted the victim to feel every inch of the steel burning the living flesh. The smell of burning flesh filled the room, dense and nauseating, as blood flowed everywhere, staining the concrete floor in irregular puddles.
Rodrick then pierced the soles of Luiz's feet with thin, long nails, twisting them slowly to elicit groans that even the gag couldn't contain. Luiz's face, once marked by unshakeable arrogance, now was just a portrait of terror. His eyes, once defiant, now showed only fear, pain, anguish, and perhaps a glimmer of belated regret.
But Rodrick didn't stop there. He took a flask of coarse salt and poured it over the open wounds, rubbing it with the palm of his hand, almost like a gesture of sadistic purification. Luiz writhed in the chair, held by tight chains that kept him immobile, forcing him to feel every detail of the pain.
— This is not punishment... — Rodrick murmured, more to himself than to the victim. — ...it's justice.
And he continued, with fixed eyes, as if every drop of blood that flowed was a tribute to the hatred he had carried for so long.
With a sadistic smile on his face, Rodrick commented, observing his work:
— It seems you're not having fun, Luiz. Your look of fear and anguish makes me very happy, you know?
Silent tears fell from Luiz's swollen eyes, mixing with the blood on his disfigured face. After two hours of pure torture, when Luiz's body was already on the verge of collapse, Rodrick began to draw an elaborate blood sigil on the floor, murmuring words in an ancient language.
After finishing the ritualistic drawing, Rodrick removed the gag from his captive. He looked deeply into his almost lifeless eyes and said:
— Good. I believe you must already be wishing for death. I wanted to play with you a little more, but it's time.
Rodrick paused dramatically, looking directly into Luiz's eyes, and continued in an almost contemplative voice:
— You know, Luiz, as I was coming here, I kept imagining how I would kill you. If I would shoot you in the head with my father's gun. If I would hang you, just like my sister did to herself because of you. But, in the end, I decided to use you as an offering.
He ran his fingers over the bloody sigil on the floor before continuing:
— Yes, I know that human blood is no longer used in modern offerings, but I know that Apep will accept this sacrifice, as she follows no divine law. She is chaos itself, divine disorder personified. Luiz, you destroyed my life and my family's. So, I will use your blood as an offering to Apep, who helped me find you, and after that, I will also leave this world.
After finishing speaking, with a strength that did not seem human, Rodrick dragged Luiz with his hands and feet tied to the center of the circle, where the sigil was drawn with ritualistic precision. Positioning himself behind his victim, Rodrick began to chant the sacred words of his deity, his voice taking on a timbre that did not seem entirely his:
— Oh, great Apep! She who is known for bringing chaos and disorder to divine laws. You who are the divine beast, destined to swallow the sun at the end of time.
As Rodrick spoke, with a fluid and precise movement, he began to cut Luiz's neck with a ritual dagger, blood gushing in a perfect arc over the sigil, which seemed to absorb the liquid like thirsty sand.
— I, Rodrick, who am your pact-bound, offer you this offering in honor and glory to your name! Apep, come and bathe in this blood, and accept me by your side in my disincarnation!
Five minutes passed since Rodrick cut Luiz's throat. The victim's eyes, once a clear blue like the summer sky, were now opaque and unfocused, fixed on the void of death. The blood had stopped flowing, and the sigil on the floor seemed to pulse with a light of its own, almost imperceptible.
Rodrick, looking at Luiz's lifeless body, raised his eyes to the ceiling of the abandoned house, as if he could see through it, directly to the starry sky. His eyes filled with tears that could finally fall freely. Five years had passed since he made the promise at his sister's coffin. Rodrick had finally managed to avenge his family, especially the sister he loved so much and couldn't protect.
And, in the end, with his bloodied body and a smile that mixed triumph and a strange peace, he murmured to the silence of the night:
— Father, mother, sister... I know that wherever you are, you don't approve of what I did. But it was impossible for me to follow the path you wished. Forgive me.
With his father's gun pointed at his own temple, he whispered his last words, a solitary tear rolling down his face:
— May your souls rest in peace. And may mine find what it deserves.
And he pulled the trigger.
The sound of the shot echoed through the abandoned house, startling a solitary crow that took flight into the night, as if carrying Rodrick's tormented soul to its final destination.