The next morning, Manila woke restless.
Ulysses barely slept. The image of the swollen red moon hovered behind his eyelids even when he forced them shut. By sunrise, his inbox was clogged with assignments: eyewitness photos of last night's phenomenon, shaky videos of the moon over EDSA, speculation ranging from Chinese experiments to alien invasion. His editor at the Daily Tribune wanted a column—fast.
At twenty-eight, Ulysses was used to chasing stories that smelled more like smoke than fire. Celebrity scandals, political corruption, the endless parade of typhoon relief failures—he'd written them all. But the moon was different. It wasn't just another headline. It was something that bent people's spines, made them look up with either reverence or terror. That unsettled him most of all.
By midmorning, he rode a crowded jeepney toward Intramuros, notebook on his lap, recording interviews. A vendor swore she saw stars moving "like fireflies" above the bay. A student claimed the moon had whispered his name. Another man said it was just pollution refracting the light, nothing divine about it.
Ulysses scribbled furiously, not because he believed them, but because disbelief didn't stop him from noticing the trembling in their voices.
As the jeepney rattled past Quiapo, he noticed the church overflowing. Hundreds of people pressed toward the steps, holding candles, rosaries, cell phones raised to capture every moment. Street preachers shouted into megaphones, waving their Bibles as though they could swat away the terror.
Ulysses slipped off at Plaza Miranda and pushed through the crowd. The air smelled of sweat, wax, and incense, layered with the sound of prayers muttered like waves. At the base of the church, a priest stood on a wooden crate, his cassock damp with sweat.
"There will be signs in the heavens!" the priest cried. "The nations will tremble at the roaring of the sea. People will faint from terror at what is coming!"
The words struck Ulysses like a bell. They were the same as last night. He pulled his pen out before he even realized it.
"Excuse me, Father," he said, holding up his press ID. "Where is that passage from?"
The priest squinted, sun glinting off his glasses. "Luke. Twenty-one. Verse twenty-five."
Ulysses scribbled it down, though he already knew. Somewhere deep in his memory, the verse unfurled like an old wound. His professors had once spoken of it—eschatology, the study of the end. He remembered laughing at the certainty of it, how some seminarians whispered about fire and judgment while he had called it mythology in a crisp term paper.
Now the verse echoed under his ribs.
He thanked the priest and moved back into the crowd, heart drumming. He wasn't about to fall into fanaticism—he'd built his career on exposing charlatans and false prophets—but the coincidence gnawed at him. The moon, the people's fear, the priest's words. It wasn't journalism anymore. It was prophecy rearing its head in the middle of Manila's chaos.
Ulysses hated that it thrilled him.
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End of Chapter 2