The storm tore across the night, lightning splitting the heavens, rain lashing the earth in a relentless torrent. Amid the chaos, a lone figure raced, her soaked hair clinging to her face, her bare feet slipping across slick stones. Selena ran not from fear, but from desperation—the kind that could shatter hearts and summon gods. Her brother's life was in peril, and in that moment, no mortal law, no human limit, could restrain her.
At the peak of the sacred shrine, she fell to her knees, rain dripping down her cheeks, mingling with tears she did not attempt to hide. "My Bathala[1]! Please... save my brother! I will do anything! Anything at all!" Her voice, raw and trembling, rose above the roar of the storm.
Somewhere far above, in the realm of divine light and shadow, her plea rippled across the heavens. In the Spring of Wishes, Idianale watched the reflection of the desperate maiden with widened eyes. "My Bathala... she has come," the vigilant diwata[2] whispered, her voice trembling with urgency.
Bathala descended, a figure of both awe and inevitability, moving through clouds as if the night itself had parted to make way. Around him, the whispers of diwata and anitos hushed, as if the world held its breath. For centuries, the balance between heaven and earth had been maintained, the mortal and the divine kept apart. Yet tonight, a single mortal—small, fragile, yet unyielding—had crossed the threshold, calling upon powers that had not intervened in centuries.
And at the edge of vision, where shadows of the lost and the divine intertwined, a single presence stirred. The goddess of the Moon, Mayari, long vanished and feared forever lost, hovered on the horizon of fate. Her absence had allowed darkness to wander freely, yet now the tides of destiny shifted. The mortal's courage, born from love and desperation, would awaken ancient powers, stir old wounds, and reshape the path of gods and men alike.
The rain paused. The storm held its breath. And Selena, standing at the center of worlds she barely understood, would learn that even a mortal's plea could echo across eternity—and that the threads of destiny were never so fragile as when hope burned brightest.
Tonight, the heavens would watch. The gods would act. And a new story would begin.
[1] Almighty God in Philippine Mythology
[2] Deity