Chapter Three – The First Sickness
Night fell heavy over Cebu. The feasting had ended, and the warriors of Mactan made camp on the outskirts of the village. Tuyok sat with Balangaw and a handful of others near the fire, sharpening his kampilan. The smoke carried the scent of roasted fish and palm wine, but beneath it lingered something else—something sour, like rot.
Balangaw nudged him. "You are quiet, cousin. Do these strangers trouble you so?"
Tuyok did not answer at first. He stared out toward the harbor, where the pale men's ships rocked against the tide. The water lapped at their hulls with an odd rhythm, not like waves but like breath.
"They do not belong here," Tuyok said finally. "Even the sea rejects them."
Before Balangaw could reply, a shout carried from the foreigners' camp. Another. Then a scream. Warriors of Cebu rushed toward the sound, and Lapu-Lapu's men followed.
What Tuyok saw by torchlight would never leave him.
A man—one of the strangers—writhed on the ground, clutching his throat as black water poured from his mouth. His skin was blistered, studded with what looked like barnacles, as though the sea itself had claimed him. His eyes rolled back, pale and drowned. The other pale men held him down, their voices frantic, but the man's body convulsed like a fish dragged onto land.
Then he stilled.
The foreigners, desperate and ashamed, dragged the corpse toward the water. But when the tide touched the body, the skin bubbled, and the corpse's limbs twitched again. The Cebuano witnesses gasped, crossing themselves or calling to their ancestors. Even the bravest among them stepped back.
"Do you see?" whispered the babaylan, who had appeared at Tuyok's side without sound. Her voice was heavy with dread. "The sea does not give back what it takes. It remakes. It remembers."
Another cry rose—not from a foreigner this time, but from a young Cebuano boy who had helped serve at the feast. He clutched his belly, veins blackening beneath his skin. His mother screamed as he collapsed, and the crowd erupted in panic.
Lapu-Lapu's voice cut through the chaos like steel. "Back! Keep the sick away!" His warriors formed a wall, but Tuyok could not move his eyes from the child. The boy's small frame shuddered as though something beneath his skin fought to crawl free.
Magellan himself appeared then, his crimson cloak stark in the torchlight. He barked orders to his men, his face tight with fury—not sorrow, not pity, but anger that his feast had been spoiled. He gestured, and his soldiers lifted the sick boy as if he were nothing more than a carcass.
"Do you see it?" Tuyok whispered. His voice trembled, but his grip on his kampilan did not.
Balangaw swallowed hard. "What… what are they?"
Tuyok did not know. He only knew the whispers in his dreams were no longer distant. They were here, alive, coiling in the dark waves beyond the shore.
The sea was spawning its first children.
And the islanders were caught between conquerors and something far older.