"When truth is pursued, silence becomes the first casualty—and the last warning."
Previously on Sandata
The storm over Luzon learned to hold its breath.
On the Clark–Subic highway, the Makiling Codex tore open a rift, pulling Marian, Min-Jun, and Lakambini into a drifting mist dimension. They managed to close the rift, but Lakambini escaped with half of the Codex, while General Dimagiba infiltrated the Mandirigma and seized the remaining portion.
At the Subic Base, President Sinukuan briefed the Sandata Unit on the ritual known as the of Heart That Commands Creation—confirmed through Marian's intelligence. Gregorio, Renato, and Agosto were mobilized to protect the Crown of the Naga alongside Prasert Rattanachai in Thailand.
Meanwhile, Marian and Min-Jun remained behind to recuperate, while MID-Zeta was tasked with locating the missing Vice President, Crisostomo Andres.
However, Manila had already transformed.
Under the control of Ahas ng mga Lakan, checkpoints proliferated, and drones hovered ominously. Shadows seemed to observe from every corner, and beneath this altered city, something ancient began to stir.
Ricardo Magno and Sybill Lucero traced the Vice President's convoy to a forgotten flood-control building. His footprints ended abruptly—vanishing before a cold imprint on the wall, as if he had stepped out of reality.
Outside, a solitary thread of Anino-grade textile awaited their discovery.
Then came Senator Datu Alon.
Jade light radiated from his Dahong Palay as he tested their resolve—not to kill, but to gauge how much they had uncovered.
He vanished with a warning:
"This is your last chance to turn back."
But they did not.
And as a consequence—
they were now marked.
Marked for silence.
Subic Myth-Tech Aerial & Naval Base
0400H
Stormlight clung to the hangar rafters like bruised fog.
Inside, engineers swarmed the Adarna, performing final checks on its resonance anchors and myth-tech stabilizers. Gregorio stood beside the boarding ramp, his forearms glowing faintly—Kamay ni Bathala pulsing like a quiet heartbeat.
Renato adjusted the strap across his chest, the Kalasag ni Bernardo Carpio resting in its ancient badge form—heavy with calm authority.
Joaquin arrived with a datapad.
"You will rendezvous with Agosto and Prasert at the Thai border," he informed.
"Defenses are already detecting disturbances. They anticipate a strike from the High Council."
Gregorio nodded once. "Then we must act before they do."
Marian entered with Min-Jun, both still in recovery but resolute.
"Don't get yourselves killed," Marian cautioned.
"Not today," Gregorio replied.
The alert tone echoed:
"ADARNA—CLEAR FOR DEPARTURE."
The Sandata Unit boarded.
The storm watched them depart.
The Moment They Saw Too Much
The jade afterglow of Datu Alon's departure faded into the river fog,
leaving only the soft hiss of rain against rusted concrete.
Ricardo and Sybill stood still—not out of fear, but calculation.
Alon had tested them… and then let them walk away.
Which meant he believed they hadn't found the one thing worth killing for.
That was his mistake.
Sybill's eyes were the first to narrow.
Something metallic peeked through the fractured concrete near the waterline—
a corner glinting faintly beneath dirt and silt.
She knelt.
"Ricardo… look."
He joined her, brushing aside debris.
A datapoint capsule. Damaged, scorched—
but unmistakably stamped with the emblem no outsider should ever possess:
**MID-Zeta.**
Standard issue for
double agents.
Ricardo's breath tightened.
"This node wasn't left behind by accident."
Sybill's voice lowered. "Someone embedded in Anino operations intentionally hid this here."
Which explained everything.
Why the Vice President came here.
Why Datu Alon accompanied him.
Why no trace of a struggle existed.
They weren't ambushed.
They were looking for something too.
Ricardo touched the datapoint's fractured surface.
A trembling projection sputtered to life:
A dim chamber lined with crimson sigils.
Figures kneeling, heads bowed.
Shadows forming a circle around a central silhouette—a man giving orders
with the confidence of someone obeyed,
not someone commanded.
The perspective shifted—
a lapel pin glinted.
A tone of voice they had heard on national broadcasts.
A presence impossible to mistake.
Sybill's breath caught.
"Ricardo… that's—"
The projection imploded into static.
The datapoint dissolved into ash.
Silence pressed in.
"He wasn't taken," Ricardo whispered.
Sybill finished, pale:
"He arrived here by choice."
A small sound broke the air—
a *flutter*, soft and deliberate.
Ricardo drew Alab halfway.
Sybill turned slowly.
A crow perched on a broken railing—
eyes glowing, reflections shifting inside them like refracted glyph-light.
Aura Medina's crow.
A surveillance familiar and witness.
Sybill reacted instantly.
Black witchflame erupted from her Kandila ng Dilim—
the crow shrieked once before burning into a smear of embers.
But the damage was done.
Ricardo exhaled sharply.
"She saw everything."
The datapoint.
The projection.
Their realization.
Aura Medina now knew
they had crossed the threshold of ignorance.
Sybill tightened her grip.
"So that's why Alon didn't kill us. Doing so will initiate a full blown search of this area leading to the discovery of this item."
Ricardo nodded, jaw steel.
"But now the Oracle knows we found it."
A cold shift passed through the rain—
not wind,
but attention.
Somewhere in Manila,
two High Council members changed course.
The Scribe who rewrote reality.
The Oracle who read futures before they happened.
They were not coming to test Ricardo and Sybill.
They were coming to claim the silence owed.
And the hunt
had already begun.
MID-Zeta Safehouse, Mandaluyong
0500H
Ricardo sensed it before the door fully opened.
Silence.
Not the ordinary kind—engineered silence.
Sybill's witchflame pulsed along her wrist.
"Something's amiss."
Every console froze.
Every myth-tech display locked.
Every access level flashed red.
ACCESS: RED-SIGIL
OVERRIDE: UNKNOWN
"Someone has gotten here before us," Ricardo whispered.
Footsteps echoed.
Two masked figures emerged—Class A Engineered Anino Relic Operatives. Their shadow-fields fluttered like torn paper suspended in water.
"Operatives Magno. Lucero. Stand down."
Sybill responded by igniting the Kandila ng Dilim in pitch black fire.
Ricardo drew Alab ng Tala—molten gold cutting through the gloom.
Shadows peeled from the walls.
A Silence Veil
The first operative flickered—appearing at Sybill's flank.
Ricardo intercepted with Three Stars; three molten arcs smashed into the shadow-field, forcing him back.
The second operative lunged at Sybill. Kandila ignited and deflected the blow from its cudgel type Sandata relic.
Then a third Anino appeared from nowhere—a short-range slip.
He raised his weapon and murmured...
Myth-tech Blackout
The entire facility powered down.
Locks engaged.
Exits sealed.
Communications ceased.
Sybill spat, "We're boxed in."
Ricardo moved first.
Solar Spiral
The molten coil slammed into the wall, carving an escape shaft upward.
Sybill melted the frame with Kandila's pitch black witchflame.
They climbed—
Shadows surged behind them.
They barely escaped onto the rain-slick rooftop— Only to find three more Anino already waiting.
Sybill exhaled. "They anticipated our exit."
Ricardo's grip tightened on Alab ng Tala.
"No… something else."
The rain surrounding the rooftop shifted—
not by wind, but by correction.
A thin ripple passed over the neon skyline, as if a stroke of invisible ink had rewritten the air itself.
The rooftop's edge straightened by a fraction of an inch.
A puddle changed shape.
A shadow moved without a source.
Sybill froze.
"This is a God Tier Relic Behavior."
Ricardo swallowed.
"These are not illussions like the ones Marian, Magda, or Mia conjure. This is a short range reality rewrite and I know only one person capable of doing such a feat."
A single Baybayin character momentarily flickered against the wet concrete—then vanished.
Sybill's voice dropped to a whisper, breath trembling despite her discipline:
…Tala."
Then the world bent again—subtle, deliberate—
as the reflections of streetlights refracted in impossible angles, forming momentary geometric patterns across the asphalt below.
"Prediction glyphs!", Ricardo growled.
"High Level, at least 3 steps ahead!"
Ricardo felt the hairs rise at the back of his neck.
"Aura," he murmured.
No attack came.
No words followed.
Just the unmistakable signature of two High Council relics:
The scribe who rewrote the battlefield.
The oracle who read the future inside the light.
And both were now watching them.
Urban Pursuit — The Scribe & The Oracle
The neon lights flickered—not a blackout, but a signal.
Sybill stiffened. "Ricardo… they're here."
Shadows shifted.
Tala Martinez stepped out from the alley's mouth—her coat whispering against rain-washed concrete. The Panulat ng mga Makata glowed between her fingers, strokes of silver already floating like unfinished sentences.
Opposite her emerged Aura Medina—Bolang Kristal hovering above her palms, refracting city light into shifting geometries.
Sybill whispered, "Cornered...again."
Aura simply stated:
"Ricardo will pivot left in three seconds."
Ricardo froze—
He hadn't even considered moving yet.
Tala's pen moved.
One stroke.
A line of rewritten reality.
The path Ricardo would have taken simply… vanished.
Sybill lashed tendrils of witchflame.
Aura tilted the crystal.
The tendrils curved mid-air—redirected into the pavement.
Ricardo sprinted with the speed and power of a nova and and launched a cosmic slash towards Tala.
She did not block.
She edited the world.
A slight curve in the air—
the arc of molten gold bent away, harmless.
Aura murmured, "Sybill, high vector next."
Sybill's attack was predicted before she acted.
Tala's pen completed the glyph.
The roof beneath Sybill softened—just enough to break her footing.
They co-authored the battlefield.
Ricardo's eyes narrowed. "This is containment."
Aura's gaze sharpened.
"You acquired something you were never meant to hold."
Tala lifted the pen.
Reality flexed.
"The hunt ends here."
Ricardo and Sybill reacted in the only way possible—
They ran.
Because no one confronts Tala and Aura head-on.
Not without rewriting fate itself.
The First Shadows of the Hunt
They escaped across fire escapes, neon-lit alleys, and collapsing roofs.
But not from the truth:
They were no longer being pursued by just Anino Sandata Relic Operatives.
They were being hunted by
High Council members.
Shadows moved behind the Anino teams.
Then beside them.
Then ahead.
A precise formation tightened like a noose.
Ricardo and Sybill vanished into the city's arteries—
But the storm had already chosen their names. Marked. For silence.