Generations later - decades afterward - the scars of Sarim still shaped the land.
New rivers flowed where old ones vanished.
Forests regrew, but slowly, painfully.
Villages moved further inland.
People built stronger homes, yes - but they also built altars of remembrance.
Every year, on the anniversary of Sarim's arrival, families gathered to plant seedlings, to plant bamboo, to plant hope. Elders told children of the guardians. They spoke of mountains that once bled so humans could live. They sang songs by firelight - not of conquest or wealth, but of humility, memory, unity.
The guardians remained - silent, watchful, forever weary.
Sierra Madre's forests healed from the edges inward; young shoots sprouted, reaching toward the sky like new prayers. Cordillera's peaks sealed in scars, stone slowly knitting itself together. Caraballo's rivers grew gentle again, carrying life instead of ruin.
And deep within their hearts, the guardians held a new memory -
not of anger, not of vengeance,
but of hope.
For as long as people remembered -
as long as they honored the land -
the guardians would continue to stand.
And when the next storm came,
they would still be there.
°°°°
Dawn did not break gently.
It crawled - slowly, timidly - across the wreckage as though afraid to look too closely at the ruin left behind. Golden light filtered through the mist, touching broken houses, twisted trees, scattered belongings, and bodies covered in blankets of mud.
For the survivors, the sunlight felt like a lie.
°°°
I. "Bakit?" - The Cry of the Living
A woman knelt beside what remained of her home - a cracked slab of wood and stone. Her hands trembled as she lifted a tiny slipper, caked in brown earth.
Her daughter's slipper.
"Bakit... Diyos ko... bakit..."
Her voice broke into pieces.
She pressed the slipper to her chest, shaking so violently the mud on her clothes crumbled into dust. Around her, the ruins were silent, save for the dripping of water and the snapping of distant falling branches.
A few meters away, an old man staggered through the wreckage of his rice fields. The earth was no longer earth - just mud, water, and shredded stalks.
His entire harvest - his whole year - drowned.
He fell to his knees and screamed so hard his voice cracked.
He dug his hands into the mud as though he could squeeze life back into it.
Behind him, his wife whispered through tears,
"Tapusin na natin... wala na tayo..."
But he only shook his head and cried harder, his soul breaking in the open air.
°°°
At the foot of the mountain, in a narrow valley, a child was found sitting atop a hollow wooden trunk - the only thing floating when the flood came. Her eyes were wide, unfocused, empty.
She did not speak.
Not when rescuers wrapped her in cloth.
Not when someone asked her name.
Not when another survivor whispered, "Nasaan ang magulang mo?"
She only looked at the mountains and whispered a single question:
"Galit ba sila sa amin?"
No one could answer her.
Because in their hearts, they feared the same.
°°°
In a small barangay hall - its roof half torn off - survivors gathered, shivering from cold and shock.
A fisherman spoke first. His boat had vanished, swallowed by the sea.
"Palagi kong sinasabing pagod ang dagat..." he croaked.
"Hindi ko pinakinggan. Lagi ko pa ring pinipilit. Lagi kong sinasagad."
His hands were shaking.
He stared at his palms like they were weapons.
An old woman followed, her voice barely a whisper:
"Araw-araw pinutol natin ang kagubatan... para sa uling, para sa bahay, para sa lupa. Ni minsan hindi tayo humingi ng pahintulot."
Her neighbor sobbed beside her, pressing her forehead to her knees.
"Kaya ba tayo pinarusahan?"
Others started whispering the same.
"Kaya ba kinuha ang anak ko?"
"Kaya ba nawala ang buong bayan?"
"Kaya ba kami naiiwan?"
But no storm spirit came out of the sky to answer.
The only reply was the weight of silence.
°°°
Not far away, sheltered in a sturdier home on higher ground, a group of men - loggers, traders, land-developers - sat in stunned quiet.
They had survived.
Almost all of them.
But their workers had not.
Their landslides had buried the lower camps.
Their felled slopes were the first to collapse.
Their burned clearings had become rivers of mud.
One man - the richest among them - stared at his hands, mud still under his nails.
"I... I built my fortune from those trees..." he whispered.
"Pero bakit...
bakit...
kahit isang puno, wala nang natira?"
His younger cousin, voice hoarse:
"Kuya... naalala mo ba sinabi nila?
'Magpahinga ang kagubatan.'
'Huwag natin ubusin.'
'Huwag natin saktan.'
Hindi tayo nakinig."
The eldest logger - a man hardened by years of chopping and cutting - buried his face in his arms.
His shoulders shook.
He was crying.
"For forty years..." he murmured into his trembling palms,
"I took from the mountains.
Walang paalam.
Walang pasalamat.
Walang pag-iingat."
He paused.
A sob escaped him.
"Ano'ng karapatan kong mabuhay... habang yung mga inosente ang nawala?"
No one answered.
Because no one could.
They were men who had never cried in their lives - until now, when the grief was too heavy to hold inside.
°°°
As they grieved, the land spoke in its own way.
From the broken slopes, wind whispered through shattered branches. From the muddy plains, water carried the scent of sorrow. From the cliffs, stones groaned under the weight of new fractures.
Sierra Madre's breath was faint.
Cordillera's pulse was slow.
Caraballo's rivers whispered like someone dying quietly in the dark.
For the first time in generations, the people felt the guardians' pain.
A farmer pressed his hand to the damp soil and sobbed,
"Patawad... patawad..."
A mother kissed the bark of a fallen tree and cried,
"Hindi ko alam... hindi ko alam..."
Children placed flowers on the mud and whispered,
"Pasensya na po..."
The land could not answer,
but it felt their grief.
Silence had never been so loud.
The storm was gone...
but for days, Luzon sounded like a land trying not to cry.
Homes lay sunken beneath mud.
Trees were stripped bare.
Fields - once gold with rice - were now brown oceans of rotting stalks.
Smoke rose from small fires scattered across the ruins. People sat together, not to talk - but to assure themselves they were not alone.
"Mama... Where is our house?" ask while crying by an innocent son.
Another little girl clutched her mother's skirt, staring at the empty space where their home once stood.
"Mama... Where is lolo's rocking chair?"
Her mother's lips trembled.
"It... it went with the water, anak..."
"And our coconuts? And my books?"
The mother dropped to her knees and hugged her daughter tight - too tight.
"I'm sorry... I should've listened to your lolo.
He always said...
never cut more than we must."
The girl's small voice broke:
"Are the mountains angry at us?"
The mother looked at the torn ridges in the distance - trees ripped from soil like broken arms.
"No... not angry...
They are hurting."
By the ruined riverbank, a man named Dencio stared at the splintered remains of a chainsaw - once his lifeline.
His son approached, shivering from cold and fear.
"Papa... is it true what the elders say?
That cutting the trees made the storm angry?"
Dencio's hands shook.
He could not meet his son's eyes.
"I... I did it for us.
For your school...
for food..."
"But Papa..." the boy whispered,
"... we have nothing now."
The words pierced deeper than any blade.
Dencio sank into the mud, sobbing into his calloused palms.
"I took too much...
I thought the mountains were endless..."
He looked up - Cordillera loomed, cracked and bleeding rock.
Sierra Madre bent like a mother shielding her children.
"I thought they'd always protect us."
The boy wrapped his arms around his father.
"Papa... let's help them now."
On the devastated coast, another fisherman named Mang Hector stood beside his shattered boat.
Beside him, his wife - clutching a damp sack of rice, all that remained.
"Hector... what now?"
He rubbed his forehead, eyes filled with regret.
"We dug up the mangroves...
we leveled them for roads, fish ponds...
We pulled out the sea's shield."
His wife's voice quivered:
"You knew they mattered...
Why didn't you stop?"
Hector's tears mixed with seawater on his cheeks.
"I thought progress meant concrete...
But now the sea comes for us with no guard..."
His wife took his hand.
"Then we rebuild the guard.
With our own hands."
In the remains of his once-grand mansion, Don Marcelo stood alone.
Glass windows shattered. Gates twisted like vines. Luxury drowned in silt.
A worker - barefoot, trembling - approached him.
"Sir... we warned you.
When we cleared the forest for your resort..."
Don Marcelo did not reply.
He stared at the mountains - silent, bowing as if exhausted.
For the first time in his life, he felt small.
Not powerful.
Not in control.
"How much is a tree?" he whispered.
"A mountain?
A life?"
The worker responded:
"You cannot pay what was lost.
You can only help us heal."
Don Marcelo's jaw clenched - not with anger, but shame.
"Tell me what to do..."
Far above, the mountains listened.
Not with ears -
but with roots
with rivers
with the wind brushing bruised canopies.
Sierra Madre felt every regret,
every plea for forgiveness,
every tear that sank into the soil.
Cordillera, still cracked from lightning's wrath, rumbled softly -
a sigh of acknowledgment.
Caraballo pressed his hands deeper into the earth,
reassured by the promise of changed hearts.
The guardians did not speak.
But for the first time since Sarim's rage,
they felt a flicker of hope.
In the ruins of a forest, where the mud lay thick and heavy, where trees lay broken like bones, a young boy knelt beside a tiny green sprout pushing bravely through the dirt.
It was impossible.
Everything around it was ruin.
But the sprout lived.
The boy cupped it gently in his dirty hands, crying hard.
"You're alive..."
He laughed through tears.
"Buhay ka pa..."
The other survivors gathered around him.
For the first time since the storm, they smiled - only a little - but enough to feel something rise in their chests.
Hope.
A small girl whispered,
"If one tree can live...
maybe we can too."
No one contradicted her.
For even the mountains, broken as they were, seemed to exhale a little warmer in the rising sun.