Bathala's Sky of Knives
Part I: The Blades Begin
The sun, a searing, relentless eye in the vast expanse of the Philippine sky, beat down on the parched earth. Farmer Lino, a man whose life was inextricably woven with the rhythms of the land, wiped sweat from his brow with a forearm already caked with dust. For months, the fields had not merely thirsted; they had suffered a slow, agonizing death. The once-fertile soil, usually rich and dark after the monsoon rains, had cracked into a mosaic of gaping wounds, each fissure a silent scream. No rain had fallen, not a single drop, and no wind, not even a whisper, stirred the oppressive air. The air hung thick and still, tasting of dry soil and desperation. His crops, stalks of what should have been abundant rice, stood brittle and withered, their husks rattling like the bones of dead children in the phantom breeze, a mournful, mocking dirge.
At the village shrine, a small, humble structure built from bamboo and woven palm leaves, dedicated to the supreme deity, Lino knelt. The stone before him, worn smooth by generations of prayers, felt impossibly hot beneath his calloused knees. He raised his arms, his palms open to the indifferent heavens, a gesture of supplication born of utter despair. His voice, raspy from thirst and fear, was a desperate plea against the vast, silent judgment above.
"Bathala," he begged, his voice cracking, "god above all, maker of earth and sky, please, help us. We are your children. We toil your land, we honor your name. Why have you forsaken us? The hunger is deep, Lord. The thirst is unbearable. Have mercy, great one."
The sky, which had been a uniform, blinding blue, pulsed. Not with the familiar, comforting gray of gathering clouds, nor the ominous dark of a coming storm. But with a shimmering light, sharp and silver, flickering across the entire heavens like countless fish scales, each catching and reflecting the cruel sun. It was an unnatural phenomenon, beautiful in its terrifying intensity, a vast, celestial kaleidoscope of glittering precision. The air grew strangely still, the very birds ceasing their calls, the cicadas falling silent, as if all of nature held its breath.
Lino's neighbors, drawn by the strange light, gathered at the edges of the fields, their faces etched with the same hunger and desperation. Their eyes, wide with a fragile, dawning hope, were fixed on the sky. "Rain," they whispered, a collective murmur rising from their parched throats. "At last. Bathala has heard us." A few even began to weep with relief, their tears mirroring the longed-for moisture.
Then the first one fell.
It began as an imperceptible glint, a flash of silver against the overwhelming brightness. Then it became a streak, impossibly fast, impossibly precise, descending from the shimmering expanse. A blade. Long, impossibly thin, its edges catching the sunlight with lethal brilliance, whistling through the air with a faint, chilling hum, like a forgotten melody of the wind. It was not a random fall; it was directed, aimed, an arrow of divine judgment.
It sank into Lino's shoulder. Not with a brutal thud, but with a horrifying, surgical precision, as if it had found its intended mark with effortless grace. He gasped, a guttural cry ripped from his throat, stumbling back, clutching at the hilt that protruded from his flesh. Blood, hot and shockingly vivid, bloomed red against his sun-bleached shirt, staining the dusty fabric. The pain was immediate, sharp, but almost secondary to the profound shock, the sickening realization of what was truly happening.
More blades followed. Dozens. Then hundreds. Then thousands. They descended not like rain, a gentle, nurturing shower, but like judgment, each one a gleaming, falling shard of celestial fury. They fell with purpose, with a terrifying accuracy, piercing the dry earth, striking the withered crops, burying themselves in the cracked soil around Lino with soft, chilling thwips. The air filled with their whistling descent, a symphony of destruction, growing louder, more frantic, turning into a deafening, terrifying crescendo.
"You call me," a voice thundered, vast and resonant, not a sound of a single entity, but a layered chorus that vibrated through the very ground, through Lino's bones, bypassing his ears and settling in the core of his being. "But do you know me? Do you know the essence of what I am? The balance I demand? The truth of my nature?"
The villagers, their initial hope shattered, their faces now contorted with abject terror, shrieked. They turned and ran, scrambling over the parched fields, their cries swallowed by the whistling onslaught. They ran not for cover, but for escape, for any refuge from the sky that had turned weapon. Lino remained, pinned by the blade in his shoulder, his eyes wide with a horrifying understanding, staring up at the heavens that had betrayed his prayers. The sky above him shimmered with an unbearable intensity. No clouds. No stars. Only knives, countless, endless, falling edge-first, a shimmering, deadly curtain descending upon the earth. The air around him crackled with the scent of ozone and freshly cut metal, a terrifying perfume of divine wrath.
Part II: Wrath Carved in Flesh
Lino tried to crawl, to drag his wounded body away from the epicenter of this celestial assault, but the ground beneath him slicked with something warm and viscous. It was not wet from rain; it was red. His own blood, gushing from his shoulder, mingling with the spray of fine, arterial mist that erupted from the earth where other blades struck. The dust became a gruesome paste, holding him fast.
The blades continued to fall, not directly upon him yet, but all around him, a shimmering, deadly forest erupting from the cracked soil. They pierced the earth with soft, sickening thuds, then stood upright, trembling, their razor edges catching the light, vibrating with a high, thin hum, like a thousand tuning forks struck by an unseen hand. The collective sound was not musical; it was a chorus of agony, a metallic wail that resonated with ancient power. Each hum, Lino realized with a chilling dread, spoke a word. Each word spoke a curse. Words of judgment, of retribution, of the land's suffering.
"You ask for mercy," the layered voice thundered again, closer now, emanating from the very blades that surrounded him. "You beg for sustenance, for favor, for my gentle hand. But you forget respect. You forget gratitude. You forget the sacred covenant." The words were not just heard; they were felt, vibrating through the hilt of the blade in his shoulder, burrowing into his bones. "You till my body, turning over the very skin of the world without thought for its spirit. You carve my forests, stripping the very hair from my head for your fleeting needs. You drink my rivers, until their veins run dry, leaving them parched and empty. You poison the very breath I give you with your refuse, your neglect, your greed. Did you think Bathala was blind? Did you think I slept while you defiled my creation?"
Lino felt his skin shiver, not from cold or fear alone, but as if the air itself, filled with the presence of countless invisible blades, sliced through him. Tiny cuts, so fine they were initially painless, opened across his arms, his chest, his face. They were myriad, infinitesimal fissures, each one a whisper of the impending dissection. He sobbed, a dry, ragged sound torn from his throat, but the tears that welled in his eyes turned sharp—not chemically, but with a horrifying, magical transformation. As they fell, they split into thin, crystalline rivulets, each droplet hardening into a tiny, razor-sharp shard that sliced his cheeks as they descended, leaving fine lines of fresh blood. The tears were not cleansing; they were instruments of his own torment.
Above, the sky split wider still. The original fissure, a monstrous maw, now distended, stretching across the entire visible heavens. From its very center, where the lightless hunger had been, poured not just more blades, but something else entirely: faces. Ghostly, vast, shimmering visages, shaped from pure light and sharpened steel, began to manifest within the cosmic wound. They were not human, yet held an ancient, terrible recognition. The ancestors, their eyes burning with cold fire. The spirits of the land, their forms twisting with the agony of desecration. The unseen watchers, entities from the unseen realms, now made visible, their silent judgment manifest. Their eyes, endless and piercing, fixed on Lino, on the dying village, on the despoiled land.
They spoke, a chorus of spectral voices that split the very wind, resonating with a power that vibrated the ground, the remaining buildings, Lino's very being.
"Let the land drink you," they intoned, their voices a symphony of cold fury, "as you have drunk it dry. Let your flesh become the soil. Let your blood water the barren earth. You have taken from the world; now the world shall take from you. This is the balance. This is the price."
Lino's body arched, no longer resisting, but contorting in a final, agonizing spasm. The blades, now a relentless, blinding storm, rained down upon him. Each one struck not with random cruelty, but with deliberate, chilling purpose, carving symbols into his flesh. Runes of punishment, ancient and burning, etched themselves into his skin. Glyphs of memory, each one a testament to human transgression, inscribed themselves onto his very being. He was not just a man anymore; he was transformed into a living tablet, a terrible warning, written in wounds, a testament to Bathala's uncompromising justice. His screams were swallowed by the whistling blades, his lifeblood sacrificed to the thirsty earth.
When the storm finally ended, as abruptly as it had begun, an eerie silence descended. The sun, having watched the entire spectacle, returned to its normal, blinding intensity. The village emerged from their makeshift shelters, their faces pale and drawn, trembling figures creeping towards the fields.
The fields were cut clean, stripped bare of even the brittle husks of the failed crops. The earth was harrowed, turned over not by plow, but by the relentless, surgical precision of the blades. In the center, where Lino had knelt, a pillar of knives remained, an impossible monument, glittering under the unforgiving dawn. Thousands upon thousands of blades, impaled point-down into the earth, their hilts forming a jagged, horrifying sculpture, impossibly tall, impossibly stable.
No body remained. Lino was gone, utterly consumed.
Only blood. A vast, dark stain spreading around the base of the knife pillar, slowly sinking into the parched earth, a gruesome offering.
And above, Bathala's sky, now clear and sharp, no longer shimmering, but an impossibly vast, silent blue, watching still. Its brilliance felt colder, its expanse more terrifying, its silence more profound. It was a sky that had reminded humanity, in the most brutal way imaginable, of the true nature of its supreme deity: powerful, omnipresent, and utterly uncompromising when the balance of its creation was defied.