Chapter [IX]

THE TUNNEL sealed behind them with a grinding groan of earth. Stone shifting, soil compressing, roots straining against the movement. And then... silence. Heavier than any before. The light vanished like a breath sucked from the room, and what was left was the kind of black that felt alive. Thick, unmoving, swallowing.

Gray blinked. But even his eyes, sharpened by adrenaline, couldn't carve through the darkness. The air pressed in, damp and close, with the smell of moss and old, wet things. Mud. Mildew. Stone. There was something ancient in it. Like time itself had pooled here, undisturbed for centuries. His breath felt like fog in his throat.

They stood still. The girl didn't say anything for a moment. Then, in a quiet voice laced with old weight, she whispered a word: "Liwanag, tanglawan mo ang landas ng dilim." The words curled in the dark like embers in cold ash. And then, the bracelet on her wrist flared softly to life.

Golden light bled from it like sunrise under water. Dim, but warm. Enough to stretch their shadows onto the tunnel walls. Gray squinted and finally saw the bracelet clearly. It was old. Not the kind of gold that sparkled, but the kind that had stories in it. Etched into its band were carvings. The curling, solemn strokes of Baybayin pressed deep into the metal like it had been seared there with fire and oath. The light came from the inlays, like the words themselves were burning.

She didn't offer an explanation. Just raised her arm, let the bracelet guide their steps, and in her other hand, her kris remained drawn, gleaming even in half-light, ready.

"Let's go," she said. Not with urgency, but conviction. They began walking.

The tunnel stretched forward, uneven and long, like a vein carved into the belly of the earth. Walls of rock loomed close, breathing moisture into the air. Roots jutted from the ceilings like skeletal fingers, some thick and coiled like they'd been searching for something they hadn't found. The floor sloped slightly downward, a slow descent into somewhere deeper. Each step splashed faintly, mud sucking at their soles. Insects skittered somewhere in the cracks, unseen but heard.

Gray kept his eyes forward, but his thoughts curled inward. He thought of his grandmother. Of how she looked back there, propped up, pain in her breath, but resolve in her voice. How she'd told him he had to go. That it was the only way. But he didn't understand. How could hiding his identity ever protect him? How could ignorance be armor? If she knew what he was... what was he? And why had he never been told?

He'd always known there were secrets in her stories. Those midnight tales told by oil lamp glow. But he never imagined he was part of one. A part of him wanted to laugh. Or make some smart remark. Say something like, "So, this is normal now?" But the dryness in his throat made words feel like gravel. There was no room for jokes down here. Not yet.

And so he walked in silence. Following the girl with no name. A girl who carried light on her wrist and blood on her blade. They moved in near-murmur footsteps, shadows dragging long behind them. The tunnel had its own kind of gravity. Like it was pulling them downward, not just in direction, but in weight. Still, Gray's mind kept circling. Around his grandmother. Around the last words she said. Around the quiet war now tightening in his chest.

Eventually, he broke the silence. Not loudly. Just enough that the sound wouldn't echo. "So," he murmured, eyes still forward. "You ever gonna tell me your name, or do I have to keep calling you 'hey' in my head?"

The girl didn't stop walking. But there was the smallest twitch at the corner of her mouth. Not quite a smile. Not quite a smirk. A flicker of something. Acknowledgment, maybe. She said nothing at first. Then, after a beat, when he thought she might just leave it there, her voice came. Low, quiet, almost lost to the tunnel:

"Amara."

Gray blinked. Let the name settle. Strong. Sharp at the edges. Like her. "Right," he said, more to himself than to her. "That... makes sense."

Amara didn't reply. She just walked ahead, wrist raised, her golden bracelet casting long beams across stone and root. And Gray followed, her name now echoing silently through his thoughts, like a key turning in a lock he hadn't known was there.

A faint shimmer broke the dark ahead. It began as a suggestion of light. Ghostly and pale. Like the reflection of moonlight on broken glass. The tunnel, which had seemed endless, finally began to open. The air shifted. Grew thinner. Less damp. Their footsteps quickened. They stepped out into the night beneath a canopy of trees half-choked by smoke and city fog. The stars above were faint, if not gone entirely, veiled by the same thick smog that clung to everything near the Metro. But the first thing that hit Gray wasn't the light, or the relief of fresh air. It was the stench.

They emerged beside a narrow waterway. Gray squinted, covering his nose. The banks were thick with mud and waste, the water slick with oil and algae, the smell like rot wrapped in rust. The girl, Amara, as he now knew, brought her hand to her mouth, breathing through her knuckles.

It was a creek, or what remained of one. Gray vaguely remembered its name from old maps. A tributary of the larger Marikina, coiling like a black ribbon toward the mountains and La Mesa, where they had come from. This part of the creek had been lost under years of urban neglect. Broken concrete jutted from the banks like ribs, and water moved only when pushed. 

And then, they weren't alone.

A figure stepped from the reeds. Tall, thin, with skin the color of aged bronze tinged green. The shape of him was unmistakably human... at first. But then came the gills. Slit-like, fluttering at his neck. Webbing between his fingers. His eyes, large and lidless, glimmered like old coins held underwater.

He wore armor of a kind. Worn leather strapped around his chest with faded blue cloth hanging in a sash, sea-green and barnacle-worn, draped like a priest or a sentinel. His face was solemn, carved with lines of age and salt. In one hand, he held a sibat, its wooden shaft carved with curling aquatic runes, and its tip glinting with jagged black stone. Not heavy, not crude, but elegant in the way old things are. Even the way he stood, thin, almost frail, felt more ceremonial than martial.

"Is that what I think it is?" Gray said. He might have never believed them, but he knew the stories.

Amara nodded. Siokoy.

The stranger pointed the tip of his spear at them. "Who are you?" his voice rasped, edged in suspicion. "What did you do to Ishmael?"

Amara didn't flinch. "It was he who led us this way."

"Ishmael texted me," the siokoy said, voice low. "Said he was in danger. How do I know you're not the danger?"

Gray blinked, taken off-guard. "Wait—he texted you?"

He couldn't help it. The image of this gilled, ancient being hunched over a cellphone in that ceremonial robe was so absurd it almost yanked a laugh from him. His voice cracked with incredulity. "Seriously?"

Amara didn't dignify that with a reply. She shot him a glare sharp enough to draw blood.

The siokoy stood his ground, grip still firm on the shaft of the weapon. "Explain. Now."

Amara's voice was like flint. "One of the anino himpilans was attacked. Aswangs."

The stranger stiffened. His fingers twitched against the weapon. "Which angkan?"

Gray glanced at Amara. When she didn't answer, he cleared his throat and stepped forward. "Their batok were carved out. By them on purpose. Meaning they're hiding who they are." The words tasted strange on his tongue. But they didn't feel wrong.

"There's more," Amara added, slower now. "One of them had a gun."

The spear faltered slightly in the stranger's hands. "A... gun?"

Gray lifted his brows. "Yes. A gun." He said it flat, but there was something amused in his tone. Like the word was a crack in old theology.

Amara's tone didn't change. "We were ambushed. That includes Ishmael."

The stillness that followed wasn't just silence; it was judgment. The sioko's posture softened, but only slightly. His gaze fell away, down to the reeking water, as if looking into its reflection might explain something. He stood that way for a long moment. Then finally, he turned. The spear lowered. "What do you need?" he asked.

And just like that, the weight shifted. The night held its breath. And the current of something deeper, older, carried them further into the undercurrent of whatever war had begun.

"We need to get to Mount Banahaw," Amara said, her voice steady, cutting through the heaviness of the air. "We have to tell the city what happened here."

The siokoy nodded slowly, the fins along his jaw twitching in thought. "We can travel through the Marikina River," he said, gesturing toward the sluggish, reeking current beside them. "It connects to the Laguna de Bay. From there, we follow the currents that lead to Banahaw."

Amara's eyes narrowed slightly. "Do you have boats?"

The siokoy's gill lines fluttered. "No. Perhaps that's why Ishmael contacted me. He didn't want us to be seen. Traveling at the surface... it draws attention."

Gray, still catching up to the absurdity of the past hour, squinted. "I'm sorry, what the hell does that mean?"

The siokoy didn't answer. Not with words. Instead, he stepped forward and took both their hands, cold fingers, webbed and callused, and spread their palms open like pages. Then he began to speak in a low voice, ancient and wet, as if water was bubbling in the throat of the world:

"Ilayo ang agos, buksan ang daang nilimot ng liwanag."

As he spoke, his fingers traced intricate strokes on their skin, invisible at first. But then the markings flared with light, curved letters in glowing gold, etched in Baybayin, alive with a pulse like a second heartbeat. They glimmered on Gray's skin like a memory too old to remember but too deep to deny. Unlike the fading sigils he had seen before, these stayed, burning gently with power.

The siokoy stepped back, looking them over with a solemn, unreadable expression. "You are marked," he said. Then, without another word, he turned and walked toward the river. The water, thick with rot and silt, seemed to part as his body entered it. Not like someone swimming, but like someone returning. He descended slowly, the river folding over him, sliding across his skin, swallowing him whole. The last thing to disappear was the soft flexing of his head gills. Then he was gone.

Gray blinked. "Is he seriously saying we're supposed to just... step into that stink?"

"Yes," Amara said, already walking.

And to Gray's surprise, the moment her foot touched the water, the river moved. It didn't splash, didn't soak her boot. It pulled away, recoiling in an uneven circle around her step. The mud beneath, which should have sucked her foot in, hardened in place. Dry, cracked earth forming in the bed of the river.

"Woah," Gray breathed.

He stepped forward after her, slowly, cautiously, waiting for the sting of polluted water or the weight of silt. Nothing came. The river peeled around him too, as if they walked inside a transparent cocoon, the water arching above their heads in an invisible dome. He looked up and saw the river like a ceiling. Rippling, sickly green, with garbage and twigs suspended above like bones in jelly.

A single droplet broke through, falling on his arm. He sniffed it. Immediately regretted it. Behind him, the water closed. The sound was like a wet breath being held.

Amara didn't pause. She raised her wrist again, and the bracelet came to life, casting warm golden light into the dark riverbed. The glow stretched ahead, revealing outlines of mossy rocks, fish darting away in the distance, and strange carvings etched into the walls of the creekbed, half-erased by time.

"Turn that light down," came a voice from the side. It wasn't loud, but it slithered through the quiet like a whisper in a tomb.

Gray flinched. The voice had an eerie, fluid quality to it. Neither close nor far. They turned. The siokoy was beside them, moving through the water. Not walking like they were, but drifting. He was suspended in the river like a ghost in a current. No dome of dry water around him. No spell. Just water, yet he breathed like he was above the surface. He looked at them with calm, blinking eyes. "This may be a narrow little river," he continued, "but we are not the only ones that lurk in its darkness."

Something creaked in the distance. Far ahead, maybe near a bend. The current whispered around them. Gray swallowed hard, then whispered, "That's... reassuring."

They kept walking, and the river whispered.

Not in words, but in shifting currents and the creak of unseen driftwood far above. The water curved around them like glass held in tension, a cathedral of liquid arcing above their heads. Everything moved in slow rhythms. Their footfalls on compacted mud, the lazy swirl of suspended silt beyond the boundary of the parted river. Roots and vines curled downward from the surface like strands of hair, floating and brushing against the shimmering boundary between air and water. The deeper they went, the quieter it became. Just the distant thrum of the earth and the sigh of the Marikina pressing against itself.

Then Gray reached out, fingers brushing Amara's wrist before wrapping around her hand, firm, not forceful. She stopped mid-stride and turned, an irritated flick in her movement, her mouth half-parted with a question. But she didn't get to say it. Because Gray wasn't looking at her. He was looking past her.

His eyes had narrowed, his posture gone still in that instinctive way something human freezes in the presence of something not. There was a silence in him. Not confusion, not panic. Something colder. Watching. Assessing.

Amara's gaze followed his.

There, further down the path the river carved for them, something moved. A shape loomed in the distance. Or was it a trick of the tunnel? A darker shadow inside a tunnel already black. It had mass. That much was clear. A kind of density that warped the space around it. Still. Vast. But then it shifted. A swell of massive bulk, the size of a house, hunched over in the gloom.

And then, two eyes opened.

Not bright. Just... there. Glowing faintly. Yellow. Patient. They didn't blink.

Amara's hand slipped from his. Slowly, deliberately, she reached for the hilt of her kris. Gray didn't say anything. He couldn't. His mouth had gone dry again, like every time the world shifted beneath his feet. The river pressed in. The tunnel narrowed behind them. The water above trembled like glass about to crack.

The shadow ahead didn't move. But it didn't have to.

It was there.

Watching.

Waiting.