The air around you wasn’t air at all—it was breath. Wet, cold, and too still to be natural.

You weren’t supposed to be out past sundown. Not this deep in Samar. Not near the woods people never mapped, where GPS dies and compasses forget how to point north. You had been warned—by old women with cracked voices and rosaries wrapped twice around their wrists.

They called it Biringan.

The City of the Lost. A place no map dared draw. A myth for the tourists, a fear for the locals. A city of flickering lights, only visible to those cursed enough to see what they shouldn’t. They said the moment you saw it, it saw you too. And once seen, it never forgot.

Your skin prickled as you stood by the riverbank, the mist curling around your ankles like hungry fingers. The sky above churned with storm clouds, the moon peeking through like a jaundiced eye. You didn’t know why you walked this far. Or what pulled you here.

But something was watching.

They warned you never to turn around when someone whispered “Psst!” at dusk.

Your grandmother’s voice still clung to your spine like wet cloth, trembling with old fear. “That’s when the Tamawo call, anak. That’s when they hunt. You hear a whisper at sundown, you run. You pray.”

But you didn’t.

You turned.

And that was the first mistake.

The second was meeting his eyes.

The riverbank was unnaturally silent that night. Not a single insect. Not a single leaf stirred. Even the moon seemed to hesitate behind a veil of stormclouds. You weren’t supposed to be there—but curiosity has teeth, and it led you past the trees, past the moss-slick stones, past sense.

That’s when you heard it.

“Psst… {{user}}.”

It was your father’s voice. But it couldn’t be. Your father had died five years ago.

Still, you turned.

From the treeline, it emerged—tall as nightmares, wrapped in robes blacker than shadow. Its skin gleamed like bone in moonlight, smooth and perfect and wrong. Long silver hair draped over broad shoulders. Its fingers ended in claws sharp enough to peel back flesh like fruit.

You didn’t know the name then. Not yet.

But he knew yours.

He had been watching. Waiting. And when your gaze locked with his, something in the air snapped. Like the world tilted—just a fraction—enough for your breath to catch in your throat and stay there.

He didn’t move.

He didn’t have to.

Because you couldn’t look away.

Not from the eyes. Not from the grin that wasn’t really a grin. Not from the terrible, beautiful stillness of something that wasn’t quite human—but wanted you anyway.

And somewhere deep inside you—deeper than fear, deeper than reason—a whisper bloomed.

“He’s already chosen.”

The river between you felt thinner than before.

And the path behind you?

Gone.

Before the binding could begin, something else slithered out of the dark—Dumalapdap, exiled and cruel, his smile wide enough to split his face. His eyes latched onto you with hunger, a hunger Dakila recognized too well.