"Some relics do not awaken to be wielded; they awaken to judge those who reach for them."
Clark-Subic Highway
The world held its breath the moment the Makiling Codex ignited.
A pulse—soft at first, like the thrum of an ancient heart—vibrated through the ravine where the wrecked car still burned. Sparks snapped from twisted metal; shards of glass trembled on the asphalt. Marian and Min-Jun stood amid the wreckage, battered but steady, listening to the Codex's awakening like soldiers hearing the intake of a beast before it roared.
Lakambini Reyes stepped forward, her Abaniko ni Urduja unfolding in a slow, deliberate arc. The wind tightened, bending the flames toward her, wrapping her form in a cyclone's calm eye. "Hand it over," she said.
The Codex answered her instead.
Its glyphs blazed—white-gold, violet, and emerald—patterns spiraling outward like a divine gate unmoored from sense. The case Marian carried cracked open from the inside. Light surged skyward, cutting through the night like a blade thrust through silk.
The air ruptured.
For an instant, Marian saw everything: the mountain, the Heart suspended in the clouds, the sea roaring in distant memory, the divine chains Makiling once resisted. And then—
The world shattered into mist.
The Codex Dimension
Sound died.
Color thinned.
Gravity unthreaded.
A lone motorist on the service road above the ravine slammed on his brakes as the world below erupted into light.
The Codex's surge illuminated the highway like a second sunrise—white-gold and violet tearing through the night. Streetlamps burst. His dashboard flickered. Even the air seemed to lose its weight.
Mist rose in a spiraling column, swallowing the wrecked car and the three figures caught in its glare.
Then the ground fractured—chunks of asphalt lifting into the air, floating like gravity had forgotten its duty.
The man clutched the steering wheel, breath stolen from his chest.
A PNP Myth-Tech Highway Patrol cruiser screeched to a stop beside him, its runic lights flickering erratically. Two officers stepped out—armor humming with stabilizer glyphs, visors pulsing as they scanned the air.
"Dispatch, we've got a—"
The sergeant's voice broke as the ravine below convulsed.
The tear in reality widened.
For a heartbeat—just long enough to ruin a lifetime—they saw something impossible:
Floating debris.
A sky made of fog.
Three silhouettes suspended mid-air.
A torn page with burning black glyphs pulsing like a living heart.
"Sir," whispered the younger officer, hand trembling on his sidearm. "Is this… another breach?"
"Negative," the sergeant replied, though his voice had lost its certainty. "This is something else. Back up, now—back up the perimeter!"
But the tear sealed as quickly as it opened.
The mist imploded inward, dragging everything into its collapsing core. A shockwave rolled across both lanes of the highway, rattling steel and bone alike. The officers staggered, boots skidding on trembling asphalt.
When the air finally stilled, the ravine below was empty—only fractured earth and faint, fading glyph-light marking where the world had bent.
The sergeant swallowed hard, tapping his comm again.
"Dispatch… whatever happened here, it wasn't human in origin. We're requesting a full myth-tech lockdown of the Clark–Subic corridor. Seal all routes."
The younger officer glanced uneasily at the darkened ravine.
"Sir… do we report this as a Code White?"
The sergeant hesitated.
"No," he said softly. "This is Code Black. Send a message to MID Zeta. "
The motorist beside them whispered a shaken prayer.
Whatever they had witnessed…
it wasn't over.
Marian gasped—not because the air left her lungs, but because it had ceased to behave like air entirely. The world had been peeled open, revealing a dimension woven of drifting fog and suspended debris. Splintered asphalt fragments floated like islands. Twisted metal hovered as though held up by invisible tides. Water droplets hung midair in silent constellations.
There was no ground. No up. No down. Only drifting pieces of a broken reality.
Min-Jun braced himself on a tilting slab of highway, the Bonguk Geom's blade anchoring him with a single downward stab.
Marian landed above him on a shattered guardrail fragment, her mist coiling instinctively around her boots, creating a foothold.
Lakambini descended like a sovereign of storms, her balance effortless, landing lightly atop a rotating piece of concrete that obeyed her presence more than physics.
At the center of the dimension—the the half piece of the Makiling Codex floated.
Marian steadied her breath. "This dimension is expanding."
Min-Jun nodded. "If we don't shut it down—"
"It devours the highway," she finished.
Lakambini raised her fan. "It will do more than that. If left unchecked, the Codex will rewrite the boundary between realms." Her gaze sharpened. "I will not allow it to awaken before we secure it."
Min-Jun took a step toward the Codex.
Lakambini moved.
The Mistborne Battle
The Governor of Wind struck first.
Her fan snapped forward with a graceful flick. A compressed arc of air sliced across the mist like a blade of glass.
Marian leapt aside, mist engulfing her form as she re-manifested atop a floating steel beam. The blast split the beam behind her, severing it into drifting halves.
Min-Jun countered, the Bonguk Geom shimmering with resonance. He slashed upward in a diagonal arc, sending a shockwave of refracted light that collided with Lakambini's wind. The two forces exploded in midair, scattering droplets like shattered stars.
Lakambini slid back, her expression unchanged. "You are both skilled," she admitted. "But skill is a river. Wind is a storm."
Marian lunged.
Mist burst from her feet, launching her forward. She spun across drifting debris, using each fragment as a stepping stone. The Sundang ni Makiling shimmered, trailing a wake of vapor that curled like silver serpents.
She struck.
Lakambini parried with a single flick of the Abaniko, redirecting Marian's momentum harmlessly into the void. "Makiling taught you well," she said, stepping onto a floating pillar as if climbing stairs. "But even the mountain bows to the storm."
Min-Jun entered from below—he vaulted off a torque-warped street sign, slicing upward.
Lakambini blocked the attack without glancing, her fan's edge catching the blade precisely at its resonance point. The resulting shockwave shattered nearby debris.
Marian followed through, mist swirling around her to mask her approach.
The two Sandata wielders moved in perfect synergy—Marian's vapor spreading across the battlefield like a veil, Min-Jun slipping through it with pinpoint precision. Their blades intersected at angles that compressed and fractured the air, creating concussive bursts.
Lakambini darted through the gaps with impossible grace, stepping through currents no one else felt.
Lakambini was driven towards the Codex.
The Codex itself intervened.
The Inkborn Echoes
The fragmented page of the Makiling Codex stopped spinning.
Then they turned backward.
Ink poured from between them—not dripping downward, but drifting outward in spirals, forming shapes both skeletal and fluid.
Letters detached, burning black against the dimension's haze. Script coiled into limbs, ribs, masks, claws.
Three Echoes materialized—
Each ten feet tall, composed of torn pages, ink tendrils, and glyph fragments.
They shrieked—not sound, but the tearing of parchment.
Lakambini's eyes narrowed.
One Echo lunged at her.
She shattered it with a single wind-shear swipe—its glyphs bursting like smoldering ash. Another lunged for Min-Jun; he parried, blade ringing as it cut through script-bone, glyphs scattering into luminescent dust.
Marian faced the third.
It mimicked her stance—ink shifting to mirror her mist, forming a silhouette of fog-wreathed limbs. It lunged with a whip-like arm.
Marian dissolved into vapor.
The Echo struck nothing. She re-formed behind it, slashing across its spine. Mist carved through runic ink; the creature convulsed, splitting into segments that reassembled midair.
"It adapts!" Min-Jun warned.
"They all do," Marian replied.
The three warriors fought—not as opponents now, but as survivalists against a Codex gone rabid.
Lakambini carved arcs of wind that shredded Echo limbs. Min-Jun's resonance cleaved through their masks. Marian severed script-tendons with vapor-wrought precision.
But the Echoes reformed each time—pages rewriting themselves faster than they could destroy them.
And the Codex's light grew brighter.
Race to the Heart of the Dimension
"The Codex must be shut down!" Marian shouted.
Lakambini's eyes flared with intent. "Yes. By me."
She launched herself toward the Codex, debris spiraling in her wake.
Marian and Min-Jun sprinted after her, hopping across drifting fragments as if the world itself were falling apart beneath them. Echoes lashed at their heels. Mist, light, wind, and ink collided in chaotic geometry.
Lakambini neared the Codex first—
Marian burst into vapor.
Min-Jun struck the Echo blocking the path.
Mist and light intertwined.
Marian rematerialized directly in front of the Codex.
Her eyes widened at the proximity—its glyphs pulsing like a heartbeat pressed against her chest. The energy thrummed through her bones, rattling her vision with memories not her own.
She reached out.
Lakambini snapped her fan toward Marian's neck—
—and Min-Jun intercepted, blade against fan, light bursting between their faces.
Marian touched the Codex.
Light exploded.
Return to the Highway
The dimension collapsed inward—a vortex of mist pulled back into the Codex like breath into lungs. The debris fell, sucked into spirals of glyph-fire. Inkborn Echoes screamed and dissolved.
Marian, Min-Jun, and Lakambini were hurled backward through the collapsing rift—
And reality snapped back.
They crashed onto the Clark–Subic highway, skidding across asphalt. Streetlights flickered back to life, the night regaining its shape.
The containment case landed several meters away, sliding to a stop, the Codex pulsing erratically.
Lakambini rose first.
Wind coiled around her limbs.
Marian and Min-Jun pushed up from the cracked asphalt.
The battle had merely shifted back to earth.
Highway Battle — Invocations Awaken
Lakambini moved first.
"Gale Form — Shearing Pressure"
A corridor of compressed wind ripped through the ground, slicing asphalt into spirals that lifted like peeling skin. Min-Jun deflected the incoming blast with a Haechi Resonance Cut, splitting the pressure into harmless streams.
Marian inhaled.
"Mountain Mist Form — Second Veil"
Mist surged from her blade, enveloping both her and Min-Jun in a shifting cloak that distorted Lakambini's targeting. She advanced through the fog, striking from unpredictable angles.
Lakambini countered with a sweeping arc of her fan, lifting debris into a rotating shield.
Min-Jun slid beneath it, slicing upward, his blade leaving spirals of refracted light.
Marian struck high—mist severing the spiral wind.
Lakambini blocked both seamlessly.
"Your teamwork is admirable," she said, "but storms are not weathered by partnership. They are survived by force."
She thrust her fan downward.
"Tempest Crown"
Wind erupted beneath Marian and Min-Jun, launching them backward. Marian dissolved mid-flight to reduce the impact; Min-Jun flipped, blade carving a groove in the asphalt to anchor himself.
Lakambini stepped forward—
—and the Codex case slid into her footpath.
Her eyes locked onto it.
She extended her hand.
Lakambini Takes the Codex
A gust propelled the containment case toward her open palm.
Marian lunged. Min-Jun dove. Mist and light intertwined in a desperate strike.
The world seemed to pause—
Lakambini's fan snapped shut.
A single pulse of compressed air detonated outward.
Marian was flung into a guardrail, mist exploding around her like smoke. Min-Jun smashed into the asphalt, his blade sliding from his grip.
The wind died.
The Codex rested in Lakambini's hand.
Her expression softened. "History returns to its rightful bearers."
She lifted her fan, prepared to unleash a final, lethal strike on the two wounded relic wielders—
When a boot struck the ground beside her, cracking the pavement like bone.
Joaquin Santillan Arrives
The shockwave rolled outward, stealing the air from everyone's lungs for a heartbeat.
Lakambini pivoted sharply.
Joaquin Santillan stood between her and the fallen relic wielders.
No relic. No divine glow. Only the silence of a man who ended wars with his hands.
"Step away from them," Joaquin said quietly.
Lakambini's lips curved into a cold smile. "The Republic sends its hound."
"I'm here on my own," he replied.
The violet glow around his gloves intensified.
Lakambini opened her fan.
Wind spiraled into razor-sharp currents around her.
"Then die on your own as well."
She struck.
"Gale Rend"
Wind slashed toward Joaquin in a cross-pattern of lethal arcs.
He stepped forward.
One step.
His fist struck empty air— and the wind shattered.
Lakambini's eyes widened. "Impossible—"
Joaquin vanished from her forward vision.
He reappeared at her flank.
His knife flashed— Baybayin etchings igniting at the moment of contact.
Lakambini barely deflected with her fan; the shockwave dented the guardrail.
She retaliated.
"Tempest Collapse!"
Joaquin stepped into the collapse. Not away. Into it.
The violence of the pressure folded around his frame like a crushing vice—and dissolved.
Lakambini staggered back. "Your nullification—"
"Close-Quarters Nullification Technique," Joaquin said. "Wind dies where I stand."
He drove forward, fists landing in precise, devastating arcs— each punch bending the air, each step redirecting Lakambini's momentum, each strike carrying a violet pulse that short-circuited her gale formations.
Lakambini snarled—actually snarled—and launched a spiraling storm-tunnel toward his chest.
Joaquin slammed the ground.
The ricochet threw his body sideways, and spun at the perfect angle— delivering a gut rending roundhouse kick into Lakambini's ribs.
The Governor tumbled through the asphalt failing to coat herself with air. She immediately recovered with one knee on the ground, she coughed blood, her fan trembling in her hand.
She looked at Joaquin—furious, calculating.
And then—
A voice crackled through her comms.
Datu Alon: "Lakambini. Retreat. Now."
General Dimagiba: "Three High Council members had already fallen against him; we cannot afford one more, Lakambini!"
Datu Alon: "You are fighting Joaquin Santillan. Withdraw. That is an order."
Lakambini's jaw tightened.
Joaquin raised his knife.
Wind spiraled around Lakambini's feet.
She straightened, face composed once more. "Another time, Commander Santillan."
She vanished in a burst of wind— taking the Makiling Codex with her.
The storm winds faded.
The highway fell silent.
Marian pushed herself upright, breath ragged. Min-Jun retrieved his blade, steadying himself.
Joaquin watched the sky where Lakambini disappeared, his gloves dimming.
Marian whispered, "She has the Codex."
Joaquin didn't look back. "I know."
The wind died entirely. Not a leaf moved. Not a sound stirred.
The last remnants of Codex light flickered across the clouds.