It began with dreams.
At first, just flickers—a laugh, a sunlit field, a boy's voice echoing beside yours. Then came the visions. Longer. Sharper. Like watching a memory play on shattered glass. Each image both yours and not yours. A memory that felt worn at the edges, like something retold too many times.
And yet, it was yours.
You saw hands pressed together in childhood vows. You saw shrines made from driftwood, stories scratched in sand. You heard a name you couldn't recall, felt a promise still pulsing in your bones.
Then came the pull.
As the Bakunawa's vessel grew stronger, so did the connection between you. Your powers, unstable but awakening, flared in his presence. Like tide to moon. Heat to shadow. Your soul responded before your mind understood.
He moved through the world like a half-remembered storm, and when your paths crossed, the air itself bent. You felt it in your spine. In the ache beneath your ribs. A presence so familiar it hurt to look at him.
But still—you did not recognize him.
Your memories of him were broken, shattered by time and rebirth. But his...
His were untouched.
He remembered everything. Every word you once whispered beneath the eclipse. Every time your laughter tangled under mangrove roots and starlight. He remembered your light before it fractured. Your voice before it changed.
You, the Fox.
He, the Serpent.
You, the Light.
He, the End.
But not by choice.
He had waited—for you, for the return of the moon. But you never came. And in that silence, the voice found him. Not in speech, but in grief. In the hollowness left by a forgotten friend.
The voice that once poisoned the dragon now crept through the cracks in him.
It did not need to speak to be heard. It simply was. A hunger made of sorrow. A whisper shaped like you.
And when the corruption reached him, the vessel was born.
Not fully. Not yet.
But enough.
Enough for the Bakunawa's breath to stir in mortal lungs. Enough for the tide to shift when he looked at you.
You met him again beneath a sky bruised with eclipse. And when your eyes locked—
You knew.
He wasn't just a stranger.
He wasn't just a friend.
He was a wound.
You turned to the fox spirit. "There's something inside him. Something ancient. Is it…?"
The fox's voice came quiet, heavy with knowing.
> "It is the serpent. But not all of it. Not yet."
You didn't dare ask more. Because deep down, you were already unraveling.
Some part of you knew—the pieces didn't just connect. They ached to. The seal held the dragon's body, but not its hunger. And that hunger had found a home in him.
You were the light.
He was the echo of the end.
And somewhere in the chasm between memory and forgetting, the cycle began again.
Your eyes met with the vessel
And your heart pounded
like you've
seen someone
someone you've lost
Someone you've been waiting.
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