The quake lasted less than a minute, but fear stretched it into eternity.
When the ground finally stilled, Manila erupted into chaos. Families clutched their belongings, rushing away from the seawall. Vendors abandoned carts, candles toppled, soldiers shouted orders that no one obeyed. Sirens wailed in the distance as emergency vehicles barreled toward the bay.
Ulysses forced himself to steady his breathing. He had covered disasters before—typhoons, fires, even volcanic eruptions—but this was different. Nature wasn't simply lashing out. The quake and the moon felt connected, as though one pulsed in rhythm with the other.
He pressed his recorder into the hands of a teenage boy who had just fallen to his knees. "Tell me what you saw," Ulysses urged.
The boy's eyes were wide with terror. "It looked like the moon was… angry. Like it wanted to break free." His voice cracked. "Kuya, my mother fainted. I—I don't know what to do."
Ulysses helped him up, then flagged down soldiers to guide the boy to safety. As he watched them disappear into the panicked crowd, guilt gnawed at him. He was here to document, not to save—but how could he separate the two when lives unraveled in front of him?
The seawall groaned again as another wave slammed into it. Spray drenched Ulysses's shirt, cold and briny. He turned toward the ocean. The waves weren't just higher; they were surging with a rhythm that matched the pulsing of the moon.
A memory clawed at him: his father's final night. The storm winds shrieking like demons. The sea ripping boats apart. The desperate search through the wreckage. He remembered the weight of his father's soaked jacket in his hands when they found it tangled in the nets. He remembered the silence in his mother's eyes.
Now the same dread flooded his chest.
"Papa," he muttered under his breath, "is this how it ends for all of us?"
The crowd's cries rose again. People pointed skyward. Ulysses looked up—and felt his throat go dry.
The moon was changing.
It no longer glowed a steady red. Dark streaks spidered across its surface, like veins bulging under skin. The pulsing grew faster, each beat sending ripples of crimson light across the bay. Some swore they saw cracks spreading, as if the moon itself might shatter.
The priest from the night before appeared again, lifted onto shoulders by frantic believers. His voice boomed above the chaos:
"Behold! The heavens declare His coming! Lift up your heads, for redemption draws near!"
The words pierced Ulysses. He wanted to dismiss them as fanaticism, yet his body betrayed him—his neck craned upward, his chest tightened, his legs trembled.
Around him, half the crowd fell to their knees. The other half ran screaming into the city.
And Ulysses stood caught between them—between belief and disbelief, between fear and awe—his pen useless in his hand, his eyes locked on a bleeding sky.
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End of Chapter 7