"GUNS!? They're using guns now!?" Trisha screamed from behind the café bar, a hand pressed tight to her cheek where a sliver of glass had grazed her skin. Her voice was filled with a kind of disbelief that was louder than fear. Something ancient, something insulted.
Gray, hunched low behind an overturned chair, blinked at her with wide eyes. The smell of gunpowder was still thick in the air, and the soft hiss of a ruined espresso machine filled the silence between shots. The whole place stank of broken things. Porcelain, rules, and safety. Guns? Why would that be such a big deal?
His questioning look didn't go unnoticed. "They're forbidden," Ishmael answered, voice steady, eyes locked forward. He crouched beside a splintered table leg, his hand moving quickly through the air—his fingers slicing invisible ink across space. "By the gods. They're a jealous kind, you see. Guns are foreign. So for us anitos, guns mean certain death by law."
As he spoke, the Baybayin symbols materialized in the air, burning gold lines that twisted and shimmered like smoke caught in sunlight. The shapes hung there, vibrating, and then slowly began to fade like mist into the breeze. And in their place, a weapon was born. First, as glimmering air, then as substance. A bow, dark and curved, lacquered with deep reds like dried blood and streaked with runes that pulsed faintly at the grip. It dropped into Ishmael's outstretched hand with a heavy thunk, as though reality just remembered to give it weight.
Montenegro was next. He pulled a small charm from his left breast pocket. A patch of fabric with an old sigil stitched in gold thread. As his hand moved through the same sacred gestures, the amulet flared alive. The air before him shimmered with tension until a weapon tore itself out of nothing: a bolo unlike any Gray had seen. Its blade was broad, blackened at the edges, and curved like a crescent moon mid-swing. Spiraling engravings traced the blade's flat, whispering of fire. In his other hand appeared a kalasag, but not the simple wooden kind from history books, but wood that looked ancient than trees, and marked with the sun of Bathala at its center, glimmering like it was alive.
"Form the triangle," Montenegro barked. "Ishmael, take the left line. Trisha, you're on the center pull. We hold them until the rift fades." His voice was all command. No fear, no hesitation, just war. "Stay down," he snapped to Gray, who was still shielding Lola Basyang with his arms. "And keep her breathing."
Gray would've made a joke, but something in the old soldier's tone made his mouth snap shut. The moment shattered like bone.
The first two aswangs came through the broken glass door, their body twisted, feral, eyes glowing like dim coals in a pit. Their form was human-shaped but wrong. Limbs too long, skin hanging too loose, and jaws that split too far across their faces. Another two crashed through the window near the espresso machine, flinging shards in all directions as it shrieked.
They were in.
Ishmael was already moving; his bow sang like a storm. Arrows, made of light and something older than wood, pierced the first creature mid-leap, sending it slamming against the bar wall in a twitching heap. Trisha flowed between tables, her kris in hand, a beautiful, wavy blade with a guard shaped like a phoenix's wings. She danced more than fought, slashing low and fast. Her blade hissed through one aswang's thigh, then spun to catch it in the throat.
Montenegro was the storm wall. His bolo blocked the snapping jaw of the biggest one, pushing it back with brutal strength. The kalasag rang a heavy sound as claws struck it, but it held. Then came his counterstrike, a fast, brutal arc of steel across the beast's chest. Black blood hissed on the tiles. The café groaned under the weight of war. Tables flipped. Walls splintered. Shelves of pastries crashed to the floor as chaos reigned.
And then, a crack of glass. Just inches from Gray. He turned just in time to see the jagged remains of a side window give way, and the fifth one came through. This one was leaner. Smarter. It slithered more than walked. And it was fast. Gray shoved Lola Basyang to the ground and rolled, grabbing the broken leg of a barstool. The creature pounced. Gray brought the wood up just in time, jamming it into its shoulder, the impact jarring his arms.
He couldn't out-muscle it. But he could out-think it. He yanked the creature forward with the stuck stool, used its momentum, and twisted, sending both of them crashing into a table. He scrambled up, kicking a steel thermos into the thing's face before ducking behind the bar. His eyes scanned plates, cups, and a bread knife. He grabbed the obvious choice.
No, not the plate. He grabbed the bread knife.
The aswang snarled, stalking around the corner. Gray ducked low and threw a sugar jar at its face. It shattered, and the creature screamed, blinded for a second. He didn't hesitate. Gray leapt, tackled it back, and jammed the bread knife deep into its side. Not fatal, but enough to slow it. And that was all he needed.
"Lola! Move!" he shouted.
He didn't stop to think. He dragged a table down to barricade the door behind them, locking the monster out for just a few seconds. His heart thundered in his chest, the knife still slick in his grip, but his mind raced.
Lola Basyang was crawling toward the kitchen, gasping with each movement. The crashing and screaming from the main floor hadn't stopped. He could hear Montenegro barking orders like a war general, heard Trisha's blade singing in the air. Then came the thud. The aswang slammed against the barricade. The wood cracked.
Gray backed away instinctively, but that's when something caught his eye. A small bowl on the counter beside the breadboard. Garlic. Whole cloves, peeled and pungent, still waiting to be minced. Wait a minute.
Gray grinned. "If the tales are true..." he whispered to himself. "...aswangs hate garlic, right?"
The creature roared again, its long, sinewy arm slipping through a gap in the barricade. Gray didn't think. He snatched a handful of the garlic, kicked the table aside, and charged. The aswang lunged, its claws reaching, jaw unhinged, saliva dripping like acid. Gray shoved a fistful of garlic into the monster's open mouth. And then, without hesitation, he drew his arm back and uppercutted the creature with everything he had.
There was a horrible crack, a burst of impact, and then a moment of silence. Then came the scream. The aswang's eyes bulged. Smoke began to pour from its throat. Gray stumbled back, watching in stunned horror as its head burst into flame from the inside. Skin bubbling, mouth shrieking, a glow seeping through its skull like magma through a cracked mountain.
It thrashed once, twice. Then fell. Still. A few wisps of fire flickered around its jaw, curling out from the mouth like hell's own incense. Gray blinked. His hands still trembled. Then he looked down at the crushed garlic still stuck to his knuckles and let out a shaky breath. "...I'm never making fun of Lola's folk remedies again."
He turned back to his grandmother, who was halfway to the pantry. She gave him a sharp look, half shock, half disapproval, and Gray, despite the moment, grinned. "Hey," he said, breathless. "Saved your life with cooking ingredients. That's gotta earn me points." Then the café shook again from outside.
Gray burst through the swinging kitchen door like a bullet loosed from a gun, his lungs starving for air, chest heaving, his breath catching with the sharp sting of smoke. His pulse roared in his ears. Steady, relentless, like the pounding of war drums echoing across a battlefield. The café beyond had transformed into a warzone. What was once a cozy little Grecian-themed space was now a wreck of fire, fury, and shadows.
Tables lay overturned like barricades in a rebellion. Curtains were ablaze, their cloth melting in slow, writhing trails of flame. The soft amber light of before was gone, replaced now by flickering orange and angry reds that danced against the smoke-filled air. The scent of burnt coffee and gunpowder clung thick to the walls.
From somewhere within the haze, Lieutenant Montenegro's voice cut through, sharp and commanding, barking orders with the clipped discipline of a man who had seen war before. Trisha's kris slashed past the smoke like a streak of lightning, carving through the gloom in quick, deadly arcs. Beside her, Ishmael stood before a wall now scorched with fire, his fingers finishing the final flourish of a sigil that erupted in a burst of flame. The wall responded, a vertical rune burning bright in glowing baybayin, fire licking at the air like it had been summoned from a different world entirely.
But Gray saw none of that clearly. Because the moment he stepped into the café's battlefield, something was already there, waiting.
A low snarl. The shimmer of movement. A blur of limbs, too fast, too silent. He didn't have time to scream. Didn't even see the claws. Only heard it, the whistle of air being cut, the hiss of something slicing toward flesh. But it never reached him. It reached her.
There was a sickening thud. A gasp. And then Gray saw Lola Basyang take the hit meant for him.
"Lola—!"
The word tore from his throat like a wound. The air around him thickened, the world slowing to a crawl as if time itself mourned what had just happened. He saw her eyes widen, blinking in confusion, in pain, before her legs buckled beneath her. Her body dropped in an instant, hitting the floor with the terrible, soft finality of something precious being broken. No scream. No cry. Just silence. Deafening. Infinite.
And then, something in Gray snapped.
He lunged forward, wild and furious. His legs didn't wait for instruction. His mind didn't have time for thought. All he knew was movement, momentum, desperation. But the aswang was faster.
It surged toward him, claws tearing through the air, and they collided. Flesh against flesh. Bone against bone. The impact threw Gray back, slamming him against the cold tile with a shattering thud. His breath exploded from his lungs in a sharp, ragged gasp as pain erupted across his ribs, hot and spreading. But he had no time to feel it. Not with the weight of something monstrous pressing down on him.
The bread knife shimmered above, catching the firelight. The creature gripped it tight, its knuckles gnarled, its fingers twitching like things that had forgotten they were once human. The blade descended, slow and unrelenting, aimed straight for the beating heart beneath Gray's chest.
He caught its wrist just in time.
Their hands locked. Gray grunted, his arms shaking from the strain. His back arched. Muscles screamed. Sweat poured down his face, stinging his eyes. But the blade inched closer, millimeter by millimeter. He could feel the chill of its metal, like the touch of death's own hand, resting just above his heart.
And now they were face to face.
The aswang's breath reeked of rot and blood. Its eyes were wrong. Too deep, like pits that led to something ancient and hollow. With yellow inside it. Its skin looked stretched over its skull, ashen gray and cracked in places like dried leather. Blood still dribbled from its chin, slick and dark. Its teeth were yellowed shards, crooked and inhuman.
And then, it smiled.
Its mouth opened wider than it should have. Far wider. And from between its lips, something slithered out. A tongue. Not wet or soft like a human's, but scaled and dark, like the body of a serpent. It moved with a slow, deliberate rhythm, sliding forward, forked at the base, glistening with some vile secretion. The tip of it, razor-sharp, gleamed with a cruel kind of beauty. Long, curved, deadly. A tongue made to pierce.
Gray's heart nearly stopped.
The stories were true. All of them. The tongue didn't drain blood. It carved straight into the skull. His fingers began to shake. The creature pressed harder. The knife trembled, so close now it kissed the fabric of his shirt. The tongue so close to pierce through his eyes. And he knew he was going to die. Alone. Helpless. With Lola lying somewhere behind him, motionless.
His arms buckled. The blade sank lower.
But then, a whisper of steel. A sound not made by human hands. It was not a scream. Not a cry for help. Just the perfect, clean song of a blade as it cut the air. Then, metal burst through the aswang's skull, entering from the back and pushing clean through its open mouth. The blade glinted with firelight, now slick with gore. The monster froze, spasmed once, then collapsed, a lifeless heap of skin and claws.
Gray's whole body trembled as he shoved the corpse off his chest, the weight of the creature leaving a cold absence on his ribs. His palms were slick with blood. His own, the aswang's, he couldn't tell. His chest rose and fell in shallow bursts. His limbs screamed for rest, but his eyes... his eyes were wide, locked forward, transfixed.
Because that's when he saw her.
Time did not simply slow; it fractured.
Smoke curled at her boots like something alive, coiling and parting as if afraid to touch her. Shards of glass lay scattered at her feet, glinting under the firelight like pieces of a shattered star. The flickering flames behind her outlined her silhouette like a divine etching. Not quite human, not quite myth. Everything else blurred: the roaring fire, the distant shouts, the collapsing ceiling. The world quieted to a throb, as if his heartbeat alone dared mark the moment.
She stood there, looking at Gray, unmoving, carved from something older than stone.
Her hair, long, dark brown hair as midnight, whipped gently in the breath of battle, strands trailing across her face like ribbons of shadow. One lock clung to her cheek, then drifted away, weightless. Her eyes were obsidian. Sharp, unsparing. No fear. No recognition. Only a gaze that had seen monsters die and did not flinch. Her brows were set, her jaw locked, her mouth a straight line that seemed foreign to laughter.
She was young. His age, perhaps. But she moved with none of youth's hesitation.
The blades, two kris, both in her hands, still slick with blood, hung low, like it was merely resting before the next kill. Her light skin shimmered under the wavering glow, not soft, not delicate, but soft like a feather. She looked as though she had been summoned, not born. As if the fire had shaped her, and the smoke had learned to bow around her shoulders.
She was not like Trisha, who carried danger with a grin. Nor like Ishmael, who walked with mystery like a cloak. No pretense. She was silent. Sharpened. Gray couldn't breathe. Couldn't look away. He knew her. Not from this life. But from the fog between dreams. The quiet place before waking. The endless, drifting void where only memory and omen existed. She had walked there. Sword drawn. Face unreadable.
The girl was wearing the same outfit Gray saw in his first nightmare. In that hospital dream. White hooded sherpa jacket with black tops inside, jeans, and black boots.
Gray's lips parted, but no words came. The café, the fight, the pain in his ribs, all faded into a blur, because she was real now. No longer a phantom from his sleep. That girl who seemed to guide him in his endless, unspeakable dream or nightmare.
She was here.
And Gray knew, as certainly as he knew his name, she had stepped out of his dreams like a prophecy with a sword.