GRAY STOOD frozen, one hand still clenched from the punch he'd thrown minutes ago. His knuckles ached, but adrenaline still surged through his veins like a current refusing to die down. The creature's body lay crumpled at his feet, grotesque and still, its blood seeping into the rug like black ink spilled on a page. But the silence wasn't peace, it was just the eye of a different storm.
"Ma'am," he said, voice measured, rough like gravel, "Please. We're not here to drag anyone back. But you and your grandson are in danger."
"In danger?" Gray scoffed, raising a brow as he wiped blood from his lip. "Wow. Thanks, Lieutenant Obvious. I thought this thing was here to sell me cookies."
Montenegro gave him a flat stare. Ishmael, meanwhile, had already crouched by the creature's body. He rummaged through its pockets with the precision of someone who'd done this before. A pocketknife, a cracked cellphone, a few charms tied in dried string. The man sniffed one of them and made a face.
Gray blinked. Lola Basyang hadn't moved. She stood stiff, her fists clenched, her back turned away from them all. "He told me this would happen," she said, her voice brittle with anger, "My husband and I fought about it for years. About Gray and his future. He told me one day something like this would come back to haunt us." She finally turned, her eyes like daggers. "But I didn't want your people in our lives again. Never again!"
Montenegro's face tensed. He looked older, for a moment. Not tired. Just heavy. "Calm down, Lola. We didn't come to meddle. We're just as confused as you are about this."
She didn't answer, only breathed hard through her nose.
Montenegro tried again, gentler this time. "Would you... Would you care to explain why you think this thing came here tonight?"
Lola Basyang's laugh was sharp and bitter. "Why don't you explain? You're all anitos." The word anito landed in the room like a curse.
Ishmael didn't even flinch. He was too busy tapping through the creature's phone, smirking to himself like he was scrolling through someone's embarrassing playlist.
"Like I told you," Montenegro muttered, ignoring the insult, "we don't know what's happening either. I got a report of an incident with... anomalies. That's why I called another anino and came to investigate. We followed the signs to one name: your grandson." He nodded toward Gray. "Look, I don't know who you are, or who your grandson really is. But someone clearly wants him."
Montenegro's voice dropped low. "And you're not safe anymore. Aswangs don't work alone. They hunt in packs. Which means—"
Gray let out a dry snicker at the mention of the creature. All eyes turned to him. "What?" He sighed with an obvious tiredness. "Look, man. Can someone please explain to me what's happening first? I just knocked some weird-looking, low-budget Dracula creature here and you all pretend like this is your normal evening."
There was a pause. Montenegro and Ishmael exchanged a glance. An unspoken question hanging between them. Does he know? Lola Basyang looked away, avoiding their eyes. Her chin trembled, not with fear, but with pride smothered by a bit of regret. "...He doesn't know your world," she said softly.
Gray's smile faded. The room suddenly felt colder. The broken furniture, the blood-streaked floor, the strange men standing in front of him like characters out of a fantasy novel gone wrong. None of it made sense. He stepped forward, voice quieter now. "What world?"
Lola Basyang's hands trembled as she slowly walked toward the sofa, sitting down as if her bones had finally given up holding her together. "My... my husband, Samuel," she began, ignoring Gray's remark, her voice barely above a whisper, "was an anito himself. And he was a bayani." She looked at Ishmael and Montenegro without softness. "Until we met. When we got married... he gave it up."
Gray's chest tightened.
"We had a daughter. Manawari." She looked at him Gray now, tired, aching. "But Samuel... still had that anito blood running in him. So he taught Manawari your ways." She looked at Lieutenant Montenegro with a scornful look. "Things I begged him not to. But Manawari she was stubborn. But brave. And reckless. And brilliant. Just like him." She tried to smile. Failed. "These anito ways..."
Tears rolled down her cheeks, silent and slow. She didn't wipe them away.
Gray couldn't speak. He wanted to say something, anything sarcastic. Anything to make the heaviness in his chest break into something easier to feel. But there was nothing to throw at the moment except silence. So he stayed still.
And the room grew quiet, thick with it. Outside, a dog barked once in the distance, then nothing. Just the soft sound of Lola Basyang's breathing and the faint hum of the busted electric fan still spinning in circles as if trying to keep the air from collapsing entirely.
Gray didn't understand any of it. That doesn't explain anything. But he felt it. The pain in his grandmother's words, the weight in Montenegro's voice, the strange solemnity in Ishmael's hands as he flipped the creature's body and traced something under its shirt.
Montenegro finally spoke. "I knew Manawari." Lola Basyang's head shot up. Gray looked at him, stunned. "She was one of my students," Montenegro said quietly. "In the academy. Brilliant. A good warrior. I heard she became a bayani herself." Silence. "I never knew she passed away."
For a second, the room felt like it was holding its breath. Even Ishmael had stopped moving. Gray stared at the policeman, trying to find a lie in his voice. A trick in his face. Something. Anything. But all he saw was a man who had known someone Gray only remembered in fragments. A smile here. A lullaby there. A gentle hand pulling him away from the road. His mom, Manawari. Now suddenly this warrior everyone's talking about.
He didn't know her like they did. That hurt more than he expected.
The silence thickened again. Until someone broke it. "We need to move." It was Ishmael. All eyes turned to him. He stood up, holding a cheap phone in one hand. "His friends are coming."
Montenegro's brows furrowed. "Did you find any tattoos around the body of his Angkan?"
Ishmael shook his head. "No markings. But I found this." He yanked the creature's shirt up. A scar, a perfect, unnatural-looking wound, ran down the center of its ribs, long healed but deliberately placed. "This wasn't an accident. It was an intended cut, done by himself most likely. To erase something." Gray stared at the scar, his stomach churning. Ishmael looked back at Montenegro. "He didn't want anyone to know which Angkan he belonged to. They're hiding who they are."