Baguio City, Philippines — Midnight
Rain tapped against galvanized iron roofs like impatient fingers drumming a warning. The mountain air carried the familiar scent of pine trees, wet cement, and rusted tin. Baguio lay tucked in the folds of misty ridgelines, its lights scattered like fireflies in the fog. Every now and then, a flash of lightning would cast brief halos over slanted rooftops, before disappearing back into the dark.
Inside a run-down internet café squeezed between a closed pharmacy and a row of sari-sari stores, Enzo Dagohoy slammed the spacebar with enough force to shake the entire keyboard.
The screen flickered. Then froze. Again.
"Hayup na brownout," he muttered under his breath. "Stupid blackout."(Hayup na brownout – Damn blackout)
The cursor blinked like it was mocking him, ticking down the last of his prepaid minutes. Enzo leaned back in his chair and let out a frustrated sigh. The third power outage in an hour, and his squad had just started a boss raid.
Another flash. This time brighter, whiter. It wasn't just lightning.
Something moved behind him. He caught the reflection in the cracked glass window.
A tall, dark figure.
Enzo spun around.
Nothing.
A heartbeat later, the lights didn't come back.
Outside, the street had turned deathly quiet. The rain softened to a mist, but the air buzzed with static. The kind of pressure that made your skin itch and your teeth clench. Wind twisted in unnatural spirals through the narrow alley behind the café, past an overturned trash bin and a rusted-out jeepney left to die.
Something was glowing down there.
It wasn't warm, flickering light. It was cold. Blue. Electric.
Enzo stepped into the alley, his slippers slapping on the wet cement. The static thickened with every step. Goosebumps climbed his arms.
There, at the very end of the alley, stood an old Batek totem pole, its carvings faded and chipped, half-swallowed by moss. He'd passed it a hundred times growing up. His lola used to tell him stories about spirits carved in its wood.
Tonight, it pulsed.
Lightning arced across the totem like veins of raw power, and in its patterns, Enzo saw something alive.
He reached out.
And the world exploded.
Symbols spiraled in the air, burning like blue flame.
Ancient Baybayin script, older than any book in his school library:
ᜆᜓᜇ᜔ᜐᜒᜆ᜔Tudsit (Thunderbolt)
ᜈ᜔ᜌ᜔ᜐᜒᜎNiyasil (Chosen One)
The rain stopped. The wind stilled. Even time itself seemed to hold its breath.
From the storm above descended a creature cloaked in thunderclouds and feathers. It was massive, winged, and impossibly regal, its obsidian beak glowing with sparks, lightning trailing from its talons. The old stories had called it Tala'bongaw, the Thunder Crow, Bathala's Herald.
It spoke in a voice older than the mountain winds:
"Enzo Dagohoy, blood of the Sky God. Prince of Thunder. Awaken."
The Sky-Blood Awakens
Enzo gasped, heart pounding like a drumline.
"I'm... what?"
A lightning bolt struck him square in the chest. No pain. No burning.
It entered him.
His veins lit up like a constellation of rivers, every nerve crackling. His breath turned to mist. His feet lifted off the ground an inch, maybe more. The streetlights around him exploded in showers of sparks. His hair stood on end, and his fists buzzed with energy.
He wasn't scared.
He was charged.
Then, a glowing portal opened nearby, swirling white-blue light spilling into the night. Four teenagers stepped through, looking worn and road-weary but somehow... familiar.
Mon from Thailand, still carrying the golden relic blade.Amihan from the Philippines, lightning behind her eyes.Dara from Cambodia, quiet and calculating.Ha-eun from Korea, wrapped in a calm, oceanic stillness.
Enzo bristled. He raised his fists, lightning coiled around them like whips. "You more of those hunter freaks?"
"Whoa, whoa," Mon said, hands raised. "Chill! We're on your side!"
"We felt it too," Amihan added gently. "The call. The storm. You're not alone anymore."
Enzo looked at each of them, faces unfamiliar, but eyes carrying the same strange weight as his own.
But before he could answer, a roar echoed from the mountain ridge.
The Storm and the Shadow
Descending through the mist came a figure unlike anything they'd seen so far.
Larger than the standard Hunters. Its armor fused with obsidian and charged with internal generators. Its blade crackled with high-frequency energy. This was a Warden-class Eliminator, designed to take down hybrids with elemental powers.
Its synthetic voice boomed in mechanical Tagalog:
"Target acquired: Dagohoy, Enzo. Designation: Lightning Spawn. Protocol: Annihilation."
"Great," Enzo muttered. "They've got Tagalog now."
The Warden stepped forward. Rain began to fall again, but slower this time, like even the weather was watching.
"You ready to see what you can do?" Amihan asked beside him.
Enzo didn't answer.
He lifted his arms to the sky.
The clouds responded. The storm roared. And a bolt of lightning, pure and searing, slammed into his open palm. He shaped it, molded it, into a glowing, crackling spear of condensed electricity.
Then he hurled it with everything he had.
Impact.
Explosion.
The shockwave rippled through the street. When the smoke cleared, the Warden stood twitching, sparks flying from its neck. Then it collapsed, hissing and broken.
Mon stared. "Okay… that was insane."
Enzo exhaled, steam curling from his lips. "You had me at Prince of Thunder."
Interlude: The Celestial Map Room – Hidden Realm, Mt. Pulag
Far above the clouds, invisible to mortal eyes, the sacred peak of Mt. Pulag hid a chamber untouched by time.
Inside, a circle of ancient gods watched a shifting sky-map, glowing with scenes of the awakening hybrids.
Bathala, lord of the heavens, nodded. "Another stirs."
Guan Yu of China folded his arms. "Kael's reach spreads faster than expected."
Amaterasu, the light-bringer of Japan, narrowed her eyes. "He's learning."
Hanuman whispered from his perch, "Then we must act before balance is lost."
From the shadows, the Naga Queen of Angkor raised her voice.
"If these five survive… they may not just inherit divinity. They may restore the broken song."