Bayang Alon was a village that moved with the river. Its houses swayed on stilts, nets dangled like wind chimes, and prayers were stitched into daily life like thread into cloth.
Iliya sat on the woven porch of the house he shared with Ka Bino and Turo, watching women scatter salt on the riverbanks. They murmured to the water. Not to the river, but to what lived in it.
"Para sa kaluluwa ng tubig," Turo explained.
"So the spirits don't drag the nets under."
Every act here was a conversation with the unseen placing rice before the door, burning leaves before bathing, never whistling at night.
Iliya found it comforting. The order of it. The rules. Unlike what happened to him under the balete tree.
At the market, an old woman selling woven charms pressed one into Iliya's hand without a word. A token shaped like a spiral, almost like the one on his chest.
He tried asking Ka Bino that night. "What happens if you break the rules?"
The older man stirred the fire. "You invite something in."
"What kind of something?"
Ka Bino looked up. "The kind that doesn't leave."
That night, Iliya dreamt of roots again. But this time, they whispered in voices he didn't recognize not angry, just lonely.
Inside the Babaylan's hut, smoke twisted in sacred circles. Ina Laya lit a bowl of crushed herbs and motioned for Iliya to kneel.
"We begin with the breath," she said. "The breath is the gate."
Iliya obeyed. The smoke entered his lungs like fog. The world slowed.
"Diwa is your soul's thread. Rituals are how we weave it into the world. Without it, you're just shouting into the wind."
She taught him the basics of ritwal:
Tawag – the calling
Alay – the offering
Dalangin – the plea
Pagbukás – the opening of the self
Pagtanggap – the receiving of power
But his mark didn't wait for rituals.
During practice, while the others whispered careful words, Iliya's presence alone stirred the flame.
Smoke moved toward him. Leaves twisted toward his hand. Even Ina Laya stepped back.
"You don't channel," she muttered. "You pull.
That's not power. That's hunger."
She tested his mark with chants. It glowed. She stopped quickly.
"It's not an Anito. Nor a Diwata. Something older. Something buried with the old blood."
"Can I unbind it?" Iliya asked.
"No," she said softly. "But you can learn to carry it."
That night, she gave him a bracelet of kuyapit seeds to calm wandering souls and told him to wear it always.
It began with the forest going quiet.
A boy from the village had gone missing near the eastern grove a place left alone for years, said to house a sleeping Nuno. The villagers dared not enter.
But Iliya did.
Ka Bino and Turo stayed behind, arguing with the elders. Ina Laya said nothing.
The grove was tangled with vines and broken offerings. As Iliya stepped closer, his mark pulsed not pain, but heat. A rhythm like footsteps behind him.
He found the boy beside an old termite mound, eyes glassy, skin fevered. A cracked offering bowl lay nearby. Whatever lived here had been disturbed.
Iliya reached out. Whispered the plea Ina Laya had taught him.
"Kaluluwa ng ugat, pakinggan mo ako."
The ground pulsed.
Something moved in the soil. A hand. A shadow.
But the mark on Iliya's chest flared golden, silent, and hungry.
The presence recoiled.
The spirit fled.
The boy gasped, then blinked dazed but alive.
When Iliya returned to Bayang Alon with him, no one cheered. They only stared.
Ina Laya met him at the river.
"You didn't call the spirit," she said. "You silenced it."
"I didn't mean to"
"You didn't control it. You overpowered it.
That's worse."
He looked at the ground.
"Whatever has claimed you," she continued, "it doesn't follow the laws. It does not ask. It takes."
"And if it takes too much?"
She was quiet.
"Then the world will take you in return."