The night sky above Manila should have been ordinary. Ulysses Gonzalez thought so as he leaned against the railing of a rooftop bar in Makati, a cheap beer sweating in his hand, notebook bulging from his back pocket. He had come here for the view, not the drink. Even journalists needed reminders of why they wrote, and the endless sprawl of the city usually gave him plenty of material: neon signs blinking against the dark, jeepneys roaring below, the drone of music from bars competing with one another.
But tonight the horizon had turned unsettling.
At first, it was subtle—the color of the sunset bleeding too long into the night, the last light refusing to fade. Then, as the minutes stretched, the moon rose swollen and red, like a wound hanging above the bay. Ulysses had covered eclipses and supermoons before. This was different. There was no forecast for it, no astronomer had warned. Yet there it hung: a blood moon, heavy and pulsing.
He heard the murmurs ripple across the rooftop. Someone muttered a prayer in Tagalog, crossing themselves. A foreign tourist laughed nervously and snapped photos. A group of teenagers shouted that it was the end of the world and then tried to laugh it off.
Ulysses opened his phone, scrolling through news alerts. Nothing. No astronomical event, no scientific explanation. The feeds were silent, which for a journalist was far more disturbing than noise.
"Anak, nakakatakot," an older woman whispered behind him. My child, it's frightening. Her voice cracked with the tremor of someone who remembered too many disasters.
Ulysses swallowed. He wanted to tell her it was nothing. He wanted to remind her that the Philippines had survived storms, eruptions, floods. This was just another trick of light. But he couldn't make his mouth shape the words. The blood moon looked too alive, as if it were watching.
He thought of his father suddenly, gone three years ago in a typhoon that had eaten half their coastal town. The last time he had seen a sky this red was the morning after they found his father's body tangled in fishing nets. That memory clamped around his chest until he drained the rest of his beer just to steady his hands.
Somewhere, a priest's voice rose through a speaker—probably from a nearby chapel microphone. Ulysses couldn't catch the whole homily, but the words cut sharp through the humid air:
"There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars…"
His pen hand twitched automatically. He pulled the battered notebook free, scribbling the line down. He remembered the verse vaguely from seminary days, before he abandoned it all. He hadn't thought about the Gospels in years, not since he left theology for journalism, but the priest's words wouldn't let go.
The crowd on the rooftop had gone quieter. Even the laughter sounded thin now, like plastic stretched too far. All eyes were drawn to the same wound-colored moon.
And in that silence, Ulysses felt something he hadn't felt in a long time: the beginning of a story he didn't understand.
---
End of Chapter 1