Volume 1: From Ashes and Ink
Chapter 2: The Scripted Horror
---
Part 1: The Unraveling
The village of Mactan was being erased not by sword or fire, but by silence. First, it was Old Man Dagami's raspy morning prayers that went unheard. Then, the two young siblings, Kina and Bayani, vanished from their sleeping mats without a sound. No struggle. No warning. Just… empty spaces where life should have been.
But the horror that truly froze the blood in Luiso's veins was Maya. His mother. He found her at dawn, curled on her side, her hands clutching her stomach. Her eyes were wide, vacant, staring at nothing. And her womb, once beautifully rounded with the promise of a sibling he would never know, was unnaturally, horrifyingly flat. As if the life within had been… unmade.
No. No, no, no. The thought was a silent scream in his mind. This can't be happening. Not to her. Not to... my brother? My sister? The historian in him fought for control, analyzing, dissecting. What kind of invader steals an unborn child without leaving a single mark? But the son in him was crumbling, a cold, sharp grief lancing through his chest. He knelt beside her, his small hands—Luiso's hands—covering hers. They were ice cold.
"Inay..." he whispered, the word feeling both foreign and desperately familiar on his tongue. She didn't respond. It was as if her spirit had been stolen along with the child.
The village was a pot about to boil over. "The pale men!" a warrior named Lakam roared, his voice cracking with rage. "Their magic did this! They curse our water! They steal our future!"
Luiso's own logic agreed through a haze of personal agony. Create a crisis. Position yourself as the solution. He became a phantom in the jungle, his gaze locked on the Spanish camp, his heart a tangled knot of scholarly duty and a son's fury. Did they do this to her? Did they take my family from me... again?
But he found nothing. The Spaniards went about their drills and their prayers with an infuriating, orderly calm. They didn't look like men hiding a terrible secret. They looked like men… waiting.
Why are they so calm? The question gnawed at him, a counterpoint to his grief. If they are the architects of this terror, where is the evidence? Their patterns are too clean. Too… rehearsed. It feels like we're all actors in a play, and only they have the script. But if not them... then who? What could do this to my mother?
He voiced his frustration to Anya in the sacred quiet of her hut, his voice tighter than before. "The Spaniards are the only ones with motive. It has to be them." It has to be. Because if it's not, then the enemy is something I don't understand, and I can't protect her.
Anya's hands stilled over her grinding stone. Her eyes, old and deep as the ocean, held a fear that went beyond the missing villagers. "The mind agrees, little sage. But the spirit… the spirit tastes a different poison in the wind. This does not smell of foreign steel. This smells of a vow, broken. A pact, shattered."
"A pact?" Luiso asked, his historian's instinct prickling, even through the fog of his personal loss.
Before she could answer, the night itself tore open.
---
Part 2: A Performance Written in Light and Blood
It began not with a growl, but with a shriek—a raw, mindless sound of pure frenzy that clawed at the ears. Then another. Three figures burst from the jungle, their movements a jerky, unnatural mockery of life.
ASWANG.
But Luiso's blood ran cold for a new reason. These were not the cunning, shadowy hunters Anya had described. Their eyes glowed with a sickly, unnatural red, like embers of madness. They didn't stalk. They flailed. They didn't hunt with purpose; they attacked everything in their path with a spasmodic, desperate violence.
This is wrong. This is so wrong. The thought was a drumbeat of panic in his skull. Their movements... it's like they're fighting their own bodies. Nothing about this makes sense. Why would they attack so brazenly? Why do they seem... broken?
He saw one of the creatures, a twisted silhouette against the moon, lunge straight for his mother's hut. For Maya, who still sat inside, lost to the world.
A fire he didn't know he possessed erupted in his chest.
NOT HER!
He didn't think. He moved. His small hands came together, and a shield of vibrant green energy flared between the monster and the hut, between the monster and his mother. The impact shook him to his bones.
The Aswang slammed into the barrier, rebounding with a shriek. For a fleeting second, its wild, red eyes met his. And in that moment, Luiso didn't see a calculating predator. He saw... chaos. A frenzy that seemed to pain the creature itself.
What is happening to you? he thought, the question screaming in his mind even as he stood his ground. This isn't how hunters behave. This is... something else. Something terrible.
And then, as if on cue, the "heroes" made their entrance.
"BEHOLD!" a voice thundered, perfectly projected to carry over the chaos. Padre Mateo stood bathed in torchlight, his face a mask of holy wrath. He held his cross aloft like a prop. "See the true face of the evil that infests this land! This is the darkness we have been sent to cleanse!"
Luiso's breath hitched. His timing… it's perfect. He didn't come running. He was already here. Waiting. Did he know they would come for her hut?
"Witness the power of the one true God!"
A wave of cold, golden light—Santo Magic—erupted from the cross. It was nothing like Luiso's living, breathing anito magic. This was rigid. Sterile. Absolute. It didn't strike the Aswang; it captured them, freezing them in cages of solidified light. The creatures didn't burn; they… dissolved. Their forms unraveled into shimmering motes of nothingness, their final screams silenced by the holy light.
It was not a battle. It was an erasure.
In seconds, it was over. The monsters were gone. Only Padre Mateo remained, lowering his cross with a sigh of pious satisfaction. His eyes scanned the crowd and for a split second, seemed to linger on Maya's hut, on Luiso standing protectively before it.
"You see, my children?" he said, his voice dripping with manufactured compassion. "We are your shield. We are the light that drives out this darkness."
The villagers, who moments before had been terrified of the monsters, now stared at the friar with a new, awe-struck terror. The narrative had been seared into their minds: We are victims. They are saviors.
Luiso stood frozen, his magical barrier sputtering out. His mind raced, connecting the horrific dots. The disappearances. His stolen sibling. The rabid, pointless attack that had targeted his mother. The flawless, theatrical rescue.
It's a script. This whole thing was a script. And my family... my family was just used as a prop.
---
Part 3: The Ghost of a Peaceful World
He found Anya by the stream that fed the village. She wasn't praying. She was weeping, her body wracked with sobs that seemed to carry the weight of generations.
"The Pact..." she moaned, her voice thick with grief. "The Pact of the Loom… it is dust."
"Tell me," Luiso urged, kneeling beside her, his own heart a raw wound. The image of his mother's empty eyes and flat stomach was burned onto the back of his eyelids. He needed to understand why.
Through her tears, she painted a picture of a world he could scarcely believe. A world where humans, Diwata, Tikbalang, Kapre, Sirena, and even the Aswang clans were not enemies, but wary neighbors bound by a sacred, generations-old oath. The Aswang, creatures of life force, had sworn a blood oath under the moon to forsake human flesh, to hunt only the abundant energy of the wild. In return, they were left in peace.
"For generations, it held," Anya whispered, her eyes seeing that lost world. "We were threads in the same tapestry. Not friends, perhaps, but not foes. What we saw tonight… that was not natural. That was a corruption. A violation of their very soul. The Pact forbade them from attacking us. Something… something has gone terribly wrong."
The truth began to take shape in Luiso's mind, dark and terrifying.
The missing villagers. His unborn sibling. It wasn't the Spaniards taking them directly. It was the Aswang. But not the Aswang as they should be. Not the Aswang of the Pact. Something had twisted them, broken them. The enemy hadn't just attacked his home—they had turned the very guardians of this land into weapons against it.
They're not just conquering us, he realized, a cold, focused fury igniting in his soul, burning away the grief. They are conquering our story. They are making our protectors into monsters and positioning themselves as the heroes. They used my mother... they used my brother or sister... as a pawn in their game. They are rewriting reality itself.
"I have to know," Luiso said, his voice a low, dangerous thing. "I have to hear it from their own lips."
Anya looked up, her face pale. "Luiso, no. The ships are guarded. It is suicide."
"The greatest weapon they have is this lie," he replied, his eyes hard. The face of a scholar was gone, replaced by the face of an avenger. "They took my family. I'm going to their source. I'm going to steal the script."
---
Part 4: The Architects of Lies
The Spanish galleon, the Trinidad, was a leviathan of wood and shadow. Luiso, a speck in the darkness, moved across its hull like a spider, his anito magic masking his presence, guiding him through the maze of ropes and barrels. The snores of sleeping sailors were his cover. He was a ghost, seeking the heart of the deception that had shattered his world.
He found it in Magellan's cabin. Huddled in a dark space between a beam and the ceiling, he held his breath.
Padre Mateo stood before Magellan, a silver goblet in his hand. All traces of the holy man were gone, replaced by the cold gleam of a master propagandist.
"The demonstration was a complete success, Captain-General," Mateo said, his voice smooth. "Their spirit is broken. They will now cling to us for protection."
"And these… creatures? This method is sustainable?" Magellan's voice was gruff, practical.
"Exceedingly," Mateo replied with a chilling casualness. "We lure them with simple offerings. Then, the Santo Magic… it does not kill. It reprograms. It invades their spirit, burns away their will, their memories of their pathetic 'Pact'. It leaves only the basest instinct—the hunger—and then we turn that hunger into a raging fire. We are not hunters, sir. We are artisans. We take their local fauna and we sculpt it into the perfect, undeniable demon. Then, we publicly slay the demon we created."
Luiso felt the world tilt. Reprogram. Sculpt. The words were so cold, so clinical. This was worse than mere cruelty. This was a science of evil. You sculpted them. You made them attack my home. You made them destroy my mother.
"We are not just conquering land," Mateo continued, a fanatical light in his eyes. "We are conquering truth. We are proving their world is damned and ours is divine. And the stories we write here, the legends of the ravenous Aswang we so righteously vanquish… that will be the only history. In five hundred years, no one will remember them as anything but the monsters we told them to be."
Magellan gave a slow, grim nod. "A manufactured evil. To justify a holy cause. Efficient."
Manufactured evil. The phrase echoed in the silence of Luiso's mind, a tombstone for his sibling, for his mother's sanity, for an entire world's truth.
As the two men finally parted, Luiso slipped away, his movements fueled by a rage so pure it was calm. He had his proof. He had heard the serpent's whisper at the source.
He stole a small boat and drifted back to shore, a single thought burning in his mind.
You are not just soldiers. You are poisoners of memory. You murdered my family to write a better story.
You used my kin as kindling.
He stood on the beach, the vast, dark ships looming behind him.
But you forgot one thing. You left a witness in the ashes. You left a son in the ruins.
And I have just read your final draft.
I will not fight your soldiers. I will destroy your story. I will make sure this world remembers its true name, and I will make sure you remember the family you took from me.
The shadow war was no longer a choice. It was a crusade. And the first shot had been fired not with a weapon, but with the terrible, thrilling burden of a brother's and a son's vengeance.
End of Chapter 2