The ocean always whispered to Lukas Alon.
Sometimes it murmured his name in the hush of the tide. Other times it screamed through typhoons and howling winds, clawing at the shore like a wounded beast. But today, the sea was silent—unnaturally still, as if holding its breath.
Lukas stood barefoot on the rocks of San Esteban's eastern cliffs, his sketchpad balanced on his knee. Below him, the waves barely touched the shoreline. Not a gull in the sky. Not a single ripple on the horizon. Just blue.
He hated this kind of quiet. It was the kind that came before something terrible.
He pressed his pencil down, sketching the same shape he'd drawn a hundred times: an enormous serpent curling around the sun, eyes like moons, scales made of stars. He didn't know what it meant, only that it came to him in dreams and wouldn't leave.
Behind him, the rusted church bell rang once. Noon.
He closed his notebook, slung his satchel over his shoulder, and made his way back down the cliffs, his slippers dangling from two fingers. The village below was busier than usual. Vendors lined the streets selling eclipse glasses, sunflower seeds, and pancit in paper cups. Children ran barefoot with makeshift cardboard suns strapped to their backs, pretending to fight monsters in the sky.
Today was the Araw ng Itim na Araw — the Day of the Black Sun.
It was the town's oldest festival, rooted in old superstitions and forgotten stories. According to his lola, the eclipse was when the world held its breath and the dead could speak. Lukas never believed in that stuff. But he did know this: every year during the eclipse, he dreamed of fire.
He reached their small nipa hut just as the shadow of the moon began to crawl across the sun.
"You're late," said his Lola Rosa, sitting on the bamboo steps with a rosary in one hand and a bowl of salt in the other.
"I was drawing."
"You were chasing ghosts again. You feel it, don't you?"
Lukas paused. "The sea's too quiet."
Lola Rosa looked up at the sky, then back at him. "Today is a thin day. The kind when things slip through. You stay inside, anak. Do not go to the shore. Not until the sun comes back."
He opened his mouth to argue, but something shifted. The wind stopped.
Birds stopped chirping.
Then—a low hum, like thunder underwater.
They both turned toward the sea.
A shape had washed up on the black sand.
Something pale.
Someone.
---
They ran.
By the time they reached the shore, a crowd had already gathered. Some whispered prayers. Others crossed themselves and backed away. Lukas pushed through the circle and froze.
It was a woman, wrapped in torn red cloth and strands of seaweed, skin marked with old baybayin tattoos. Her arms were stretched forward, fingers wrapped around a glowing object—a stone, no larger than a heart, pulsing faintly with gold light.
A symbol was carved into it. He didn't recognize it, but something inside him did.
The woman coughed, blood and seawater spilling from her mouth. She looked straight at Lukas.
"Tagapagmana..." she gasped. Heir.
The light flared.
And the eclipse went dark.
Truly dark.
As if something enormous had covered not just the sun, but the sky itself.
The waves roared.
Lukas fell to his knees, clutching his head as the sound of ancient voices flooded his mind—names, memories, fragments of a god who had been silent for centuries.
The stone flew from the woman's hand into his chest.
And the sea screamed.
---
The last thing Lukas saw before losing consciousness was the shape in the water— a coiled serpent, larger than mountains, rising just beneath the waves.
It had seven glowing eyes.
And all of them were looking at him.