NO ONE REALLY spoke after what happened the night before. Not during the breaking of the camp, not during the quiet stretch of morning as they wound their way down the sloping trail that carved through the mist-veiled jungle. Even the birds, it seemed, had decided to keep their songs to themselves. It wasn't just the usual silence of exhaustion. It felt deliberate. Fragile. As if one wrong word would tilt the balance and send everything tumbling.
Gray walked in the middle of the group, hands tucked in his pockets, eyes shifting from one tree to the next. There were glimpses of stone, carved paths, and smoke trails rising like thin fingers. They were getting close to the city gate.
But his eyes weren't really on the trail. They kept drifting toward the two girls walking just a few steps ahead. Amara's back was rigid as always, every motion measured, like she was willing herself to be untouchable. Mayumi walked beside her with a nervous bounce in her step, occasionally glancing Amara's way before looking straight ahead again. Something was off ever since they saw each other last night. Something deeper than just new faces and old grudges. Gray couldn't name it. But it was there.
Then Amara turned slightly, as if sensing his gaze. Their eyes met for half a second before she looked away again, jaw tightening.
That was when Troy appeared beside him, falling into step like a shadow with a story. His voice was lower than usual, almost casual, like they were just two guys on a long walk with nothing better to do.
"Wanna hear a little story?" he asked.
Gray blinked. "What?"
Troy slowed his pace, and Gray did too, letting the others drift a few steps ahead. "Both Amara and Mayumi," Troy said, nodding toward the girls, "they come from two of the oldest angkans in the city. Strongest ones too. Like, carved-into-history strong."
Gray's brows pulled together, but he didn't say anything. He just kept walking.
"But remember that thing I told you," Troy continued, "about what happened to Amara's clan? The killing. The slaughter. How they were ambushed in their own territory?"
Gray nodded once.
Troy looked forward again, lowering his voice. "It was Mayumi's angkan who sold them out. I'm not sure, but people say not directly. Not the whole clan. They say someone high enough in her bloodline made a deal with the enemy. Gave them the route, the weak points. Didn't warn Amara's people. By the time the city found out, it was already done."
Gray stopped walking.
Troy turned back to him. "Amara and Mayumi..." he paused, choosing the words like they were blades, "used to be really close. Friends. Trained together in the academy. Mayumi even stayed at Amara's home for a time."
Gray exhaled, but it caught in his throat halfway out. The air around them seemed to shift again, like a veil being lifted. All the strange silences from the night before, the way Amara avoided looking at Mayumi, the way Mayumi kept her cheeriness at a strange, nervous pitch, suddenly it all clicked into place.
Betrayal that wasn't hers. Guilt that wasn't asked for. Grief that couldn't be returned. Gray stared at the girls' backs again, and this time he didn't just see two warriors walking in silence. He saw a friendship hanging by a thread no one had the courage to pull on.
They walked in silence after that. Troy's words still lingered. Yet Gray followed without a sound, steps awkward and a little too loud on the forest trail, his eyes lowered, mouth shut. Even Troy didn't say anything more. The air changed before the view did. A stillness in the wind, the kind that held its breath. Gray lifted his head and froze.
The mountain had opened.
A wall of stone loomed in front of them, wide and solid, its surface carved with age and power. The gate itself was sunk into the mountain's flesh, an entrance not built but bored, like a wound carved by giants and later sealed with myth. It stood over thirty feet tall, a titanic slab of dark stone reinforced with veins of metal and wrapped in roots that hadn't dared to grow too close.
Flanking the entryway were two massive statues, humanoid in shape but monstrous in presence. They sat in eternal vigil, knees curled to their chests, arms draped around their legs like monks in prayer, though there was no peace in their eyes. Their faces were weathered but distinct, and though unmoving, they stared down at the world with a judgment that did not fade.
Above the gate, carved into the stone like a balcony or a watchtower swallowed by the mountain, figures moved. Another group of engkantos who served as a watch.
Each one wore the same forest-dark uniform Gray that the engkantos with them are wearing. They were serious and cold. Yet when they looked down and saw them approaching, they didn't raise a challenge. Didn't ask questions. No words passed. The gate groaned to life with a sound like the earth letting out a buried breath, ancient and unwilling. It parted slowly, and Gray swore he felt the vibration in his chest before he even heard it.
The inside was no warmer.
A tunnel stretched before them, chiseled and smooth, the stone lined on both sides with more statues just like those outside. But these were closer. Narrower. And worse, their eyes followed. Not literally, at first. They were eyeless, blank, with smooth sockets where irises should have been. But the moment they stepped inside, a flicker began. A glow. One pair at first, then another. A low, eerie pulse of light gathered behind stone lids, as if something had woken inside. One after the other, the tunnel lit up with eyes that weren't human.
Gray flinched. "Yeah, great. Nothing says 'friendly welcome' like the ghost stares of fifty stone creepers."
Troy glanced at him, lips twitching. "They like you. Probably think you're tasty."
"Good to know," Gray muttered. "I'll remember to bring snacks for the murder statues next time."
"Don't bother. You are the snack."
They walked. The tunnel narrowed, then widened again, curving gently like a throat preparing to spit them out. And then, ahead, light. Real light. It wasn't fire or spellcraft or artificial glow. It was sunlight, refracted and fresh, and it struck Gray full in the face as he stepped past the final threshold. He squinted, and then—
He stopped walking. So did the thoughts in his head.
The lake spread before him like a mirror for the sky, wide and impossibly still. It stretched in every direction, rimmed by stone and jungle, glimmering like glass held too long in the sun. At its center, rising from the water like a floating fortress, was the city.
Walled. Massive. Built in layers, one rising above the next, like terraces of stone and steel carved directly from the lakebed. The walls shimmered slightly with enchantment, but they weren't just for beauty. They were for protection. Power hummed across their surface like heat waves. At three points, long bridges reached out like arms—one directly ahead of them, the other two arcing from the far left and right, almost too distant to see clearly. But even from here, Gray knew there was another bridge they couldn't see. One that connected from across the city.
But his eyes weren't on the bridges. They were on the people.
Stalls lined the shore, woven from bamboo and stretched canvas, each one manned by figures that shouldn't have existed, at least not outside bedtime warnings. Gray stepped forward instinctively, caught in a haze of wonder and disbelief.
Anitos bartered with merchants over smoked fish and shining cloth. A group of engkantos stood by a dock, their boats sleek and long, loading baskets of bait while chatting. One wore a broad-brimmed hat, feathers tucked into the lining like it was some badge of honor. And on a farther dock, two women laughed, their voices soft and strange.
They weren't human.
They looked like it, at a glance, but the moment Gray saw their eyes, he knew better. Slitted, ocean-deep, reflecting the light with an oily sheen that turned too sharp at the edges. Their skin shimmered like fish-scale, and where legs should have been, tails glimmered beneath wrap-around skirts. They smiled at the engkanto struggling with his fishing net and said something low that made him flush and nearly trip into the water. They were one of the most beautiful halimaws he's ever seen.
"Let me guess," Gray said, eyes not leaving them. "Those are sirena."
"Good guess," Troy said behind him. "Don't get any ideas."
"I thought they had fangs or anything. I can't believe children feared for them once."
"A piece of advice. Hold on to that story, sometimes there are truths to every myths," Troy said, smirking at him.
A bark of command interrupted the flow of thoughts. "Move!"
Gray jumped aside just in time to avoid a squat figure pushing a metal cart packed with rocks. He blinked. The man barely reached his waist, with arms thick as logs and a beard that spilled down to his chest like braided smoke. He wore a woven salakot, slanted low over his brow, and grunted as he passed. Two more followed behind him, both dragging shovels, and one gave Gray a glance that could have curdled milk.
Gray stared. "Are those... duwende?"
"They are," Troy muttered. "And they don't like tourists."
Gray watched them roll past. "I thought they were supposed to be kidnapping kids and offering them to the earth god."
"Times change. Now they just build roads and argue over mining rights."
"They grow up so fast. You know back in the Sangkatauhan, we'd say 'tabi-tabi po' whenever we pee around to avoid getting cursed by these creatures." Gray said, as he watched them walk. "Never thought they'd be saying it to me."
The three duwende stopped briefly at the edge of the lake, muttering something to another figure. This one was thin, pale, and unmistakable. Skin sagged slightly at the joints, as if her frame was wrong for her body. Her eyes were sharp. Too sharp. Her mouth was too wide.
Gray froze.
Aswang.
She was smiling at the duwende. Talking like old friends. And they laughed. She looks so friendly. Genuinely friendly. Not the one who would try to shoot me with a gun or stick his long sharp thing type of friendly, Gray thought. He looked around. More and more of them, creatures from bedtime horror stories, standing beside creatures of grace and gold, buying produce, trading fish, arguing over weights and prices. This wasn't just a city of magic.
It was a city of myth. And somehow, they all lived here. Together.
Gray exhaled, low and long. The moment expanded inside his chest until he didn't know if it was awe or fear or something in between. He felt something move in him then. A shift. Like the last piece of the map in his mind falling into place. He wasn't just walking through a story anymore. He was inside it. And it was alive.
They lingered near the edge of the lake, the foot of the bridge yawning before them like a road into another kind of silence. Gray shifted his weight from one foot to the other. It wasn't impatience exactly, more like the strange hum of energy that didn't know where to go. The city loomed across the water, walls gleaming, towers stabbing at the sky. People moved, boats floated, commerce thrived. Yet here they stood, waiting, with no instructions, no welcome, and no sign of what came next.
He turned to Troy, about to ask if this was the part where they were expected to just walk in and hope for the best, when the sound of hooves broke the quiet.
Two riders emerged from the right side of the path, mounted on black horses with silver-lined reins, their hooves kicking up pebbles with the rhythm of approaching authority. They didn't rush. They didn't need to. The moment Gray saw them, he knew they were coming for their group. The riders never looked at anything else, never glanced at the lake or the market stalls or the sirenas watching from the docks. Their eyes were fixed. Steady. Sharp.
"And who are these guys?" Gray asked under his breath, his posture relaxing into its default: halfway between sarcasm and alarm.
It wasn't Troy who answered.
"They're from the Ministry of Anino," said a voice beside him, light and melodic, but with an edge of clarity that made it stick. It was the first time Gray had heard her voice since last night, when she had descended from the air like a song half-remembered and smiled at them like they were old friends. Mayumi stood beside him now, short hair brushing her cheeks in the wind, her denim jacket catching a shaft of light from the mountain. Her smile never faded. Not even when she turned toward him fully and extended her hand.
"I never got to introduce myself properly. Mayumi Alcantara, from the Angkan of Alcantara," she said, her voice light but firm, her tone as breezy as a street vendor asking if he wanted chili sauce with his kwek-kwek. "Troy mentioned you just found out. That you're an anito."
Gray took her hand, surprised by how warm it was. "Gray Sandoval," he said. "Apparently descended from some god I've never met. Pretty standard stuff."
"Well, that's alright," Mayumi said, thumbing her chest with pride. "It's a mess of a world out here. If you ever get lost in it, ask me anything. Seriously. I mean it."
Gray grinned. "That's good to know. Especially since someone," he said, jerking his head toward Troy, "treats every question like it's an insult to his genius."
Mayumi giggled, and for a second, the tension lifted. It wasn't gone, not completely. But it softened at the edges. And for Gray, that was something.
Then it shifted again.
He felt it before he saw it. A pair of eyes. Not hostile. Not friendly either. Just watching. Gray turned his head slightly, pretending to stretch, and caught sight of her. A woman on the far end of the stone landing, half-shadowed by a column of stacked crates. Amara's eyes met his for only a second before she looked away, her hair catching in the wind like a veil.
The sound of hooves drew his attention back. One of the riders dismounted. The horse barely stirred. The woman was tall, broad-shouldered, her face unreadable beneath a wide-brimmed hat similar to Ishmael's hat. Her boots touched the stone with the confidence of someone who never had to ask permission.
Troy stepped forward without hesitation. They met halfway.
The woman extended her hand. Her grip was swift, military. "Are you Troy Confiado?"
"I am," he replied, shoulders squared, voice even.
She didn't smile. Didn't blink. "The Director wants to see you."
Troy's brow lifted. Just slightly. "Director Montefalco?"
The woman gave a single nod.
That was all.
Troy turned to the others, and for the first time in hours, something cracked beneath the surface of his usual stoicism. Not fear. Not entirely. But something close. Like the ghost of fear wrapped in a ribbon of anticipation. Excitement too, maybe. Or something like it. His eyes found Gray, then flicked briefly to Amara. He said nothing. But his expression said plenty.