GRAY WOKE TO the sterile hum of fluorescent lights. His breath caught before his memory did. A pounding headache. A tight chest. A throat like sandpaper. For a few seconds, he thought he might've woken in the belly of some monster, until he blinked and the ceiling tiles came into focus: off-white, cracked in some places, with a cockroach parked just on the edge of a flickering bulb.
A hospital.
Well, more like one of those old, underfunded provincial hospitals in the country where the paint peeled like sunburnt skin and the air smelled of alcohol, betadine, and resignation. The walls were yellowed, the linoleum floor discolored and brittle from time and mops soaked too many times in cheap bleach. One rusty electric fan buzzed in the corner, doing the bare minimum.
Gray was lying on a thin mattress wrapped in hospital sheets that were somehow both too stiff and too damp. A privacy curtain hung lopsided from a bent rod. There were five beds in total, his included, and three were occupied. One to his left, with a man whose face was wrapped in gauze like some sad attempt at a Halloween mummy. On his right were two others. One woman with tubes in her nose and a guy with bandages running down from his neck to his chest. All of them, thankfully, are asleep.
The last bed, farthest from his, was empty, but its blanket was crumpled, like someone had been there. Recently. Across from Gray was an enormous wall-sized mirror. Not a window pretending to be one, a genuine mirror. It stretched the entire width of the room. Cold, spotless, unnatural.
Gray stared at it. His reflection stared back, looking like a train wreck. Deep black hair messed up in all directions, lip swollen, bruises along his cheekbones and temple. His eyes were so black, it looked like they were huge holes with those black eyes. He looked like a car crash victim who lost the fight to the car. "Damn," he muttered. "Didn't know I signed up for a Saw prequel."
Then the lights flickered.
Gray paused. One blink. Two. Then a rapid pulse, like the hospital had skipped a heartbeat. He stayed still. Unshaken. "Okay. If a white lady floats through the ceiling, I swear to Bathala, I'm throwing my IV stand like a javelin."
Silence answered. Then, the lights went out completely. Total darkness. "Uh, hello?" he called into the void. "Yo, nurse? I think you forgot to pay your electric bill." No response. Just the sound of the electric fan winding down, its blades clicking into a dead halt.
And then, the lights returned.
But something was wrong. The three patients, those who had been asleep just moments ago, were now sitting upright. Perfectly still. Perfectly straight. Like switch dolls powered back on. Their heads slowly turned, synchronized, in Gray's direction. His grin faded. Their eyes... there were no whites. No irises. Just void. Pitch black, starless, infinite. "Right. Okay. Dream. This is a dream. Very high-budget, highly cursed dream."
He glanced at the mirror and stopped breathing. The reflection had changed. The Gray on the mirror didn't wear a hospital gown. He wore nothing but pants. His skin was inked in foreign lines and symbols that crawled like vines across his chest, shoulders, arms, and throat. Ancient, jagged tattoos glowed faintly black, not shiny or fiery, but pulsing with shadow. A line started from under his right eye, curved along his cheek, and vanished under his jaw like a blade's edge etched into him.
Gray's head went closer, trying to observe the reflection in the mirror. They moved in sync, but something about the way it blinked—delayed, almost hesitant—sent a new kind of chill up his spine. His chest tightened. The air grew thick. The walls shuddered. A tremor. Small at first. Then the beds began to rattle. IV stands toppled. Ceiling tiles cracked and fell like ash. The mirror shook violently, waves rippling across its surface as if it had turned to water. The black-eyed patients now stood, slowly shuffling forward toward him, their necks snapping with every step.
Gray backed up, his hands trembling. But the mirror held him still. He couldn't take his eyes off it. The tattoos burned. He gasped. The ground opened. The world twisted. But before the world shattered, before it all gave way to the gaping dark, Gray saw something shift in the mirror. Not himself. Not the inked version of him. Someone else.
A girl.
She wasn't there a second ago. Just... appeared, like a thought too quiet to notice at first. She stood behind his reflection, barely a hand's breadth away. Not ghost-like, not floating, not translucent. Solid. Real. And yet... impossible.
She looked his age, maybe around eighteen. Her long, dark brown hair spilled past her shoulders, the ends of it tangled slightly across her face as if the wind had once played with it and never returned to fix it. She had the kind of face no one forgets. Soft angles and symmetry, like her features had been carved patiently, deliberately, forehead smooth, brows full and finely shaped, eyes almond and deep-set beneath long, dark lashes. Her nose had that gentle, mestiza curve, and her lips were full, not in any overly dramatic way, but in a way that made someone believe they carried ancient names, whispered promises.
Her skin was warm brown, with that soft, effortless glow one can see at golden hour on the shoulders of mountains. There was nothing elaborate in how she stood. Her white dress was simple, plain, almost out of place in the sterile, flickering light of the dream-hospital. And yet, the air changed around her. The kind of change that makes the birds hush in a forest. That makes fireflies slow in their blinking. As if the dream itself had paused to make room for her.
She was wearing a white hooded sherpa jacket with black tops inside, jeans, and black boots. But something that caught Gray's eyes was the golden bracelet on her small but powerful wrist. It looked weird, unnatural, powerful. Ancient, Gray thought.
"Wake up," she said. Her voice was soft. Not a whisper. Not commanding. But it cut through everything else. But as she spoke, the glow of her bracelet accompanied her words.
He couldn't move. He wasn't sure if it was fear or awe, or just the sheer weight of the unknown pressing on his ribs.
Then, finally, her head turned and looked at him through the mirror.
"Wake up!" she said.
Gray jolted awake, breath ragged, fingers clenched into the hospital sheets like they were the only thing keeping him from flying apart. The room was still. Quiet. Daylight filtered gently through the half-open jalousie windows, warming the room in a soft gold. The walls were freshly painted in a pastel green. The floors are clean. The electric fan was running again, humming peacefully. The five beds were there, too, but this time, two were empty. One was peacefully asleep, IVs intact, breathing softly, while an old man was talking normally with a relative of his.
No mirror. No black eyes. No shuddering walls. No girl. Just... a hospital. A real one. Still not fancy. Still government-run. But clean enough not to trigger an exorcism.
Gray exhaled, long and heavy, pressing the back of his hand to his forehead. "Okay," he murmured. "Next time I steal from a gang, I'm adding an exorcist fee to my cut."
He sat up, head still aching but clearer now. The pain in his ribs throbbed with every movement, but it was real pain—tangible, physical. That, at least, was something he could punch back. Somewhere nearby, a nurse's shoes squeaked in the hallway. A rooster crowed faintly outside the hospital walls. A faint whiff of lugaw drifted through the air.
Gray stared at his hands. Normal. No tattoos. No glowing lines. Just the old scar on his palm from that fight back in fifth grade. Whatever that had been, it wasn't just a dream. But it wasn't all real either. Right? He leaned back on the pillows, eyes half-closed, but sleep didn't come. He was wide awake now.
Gray groaned and shifted against the bed's stiff mattress, the rough hospital sheets rustling under him. Pain throbbed through his side in rhythmic pulses, like a drumbeat inside his bones. He winced, hand going to his ribs, bandaged. Breathing hurt. Moving hurt. Living, at the moment, was a pain in the ass. But it wasn't just the pain that made him squint, it was the figure slouched beside his bed.
Julius.
He was asleep in the world's most uncomfortable-looking chair, one leg hooked over the other, arms folded tight like he'd been guarding Gray through the night. His leather jacket had been stripped off and was now used as a makeshift pillow. His face bore scrapes and faint cuts, less brutal than Gray's, but he didn't exactly look like he came from a spa retreat either.
Gray narrowed his eyes. Then, without ceremony, he reached for the rolled-up newspaper on the bedside table, arched his wrist, and smacked it down on Julius' forehead. Julius jerked upright with a loud, "A—!" His fists shot up like he was ready to take on three burglars and a carjack squad.
Gray leaned back on the bed and grinned through the ache. "Relax. It's not yet the apocalypse."
Julius blinked around, shoulders heaving. When he saw Gray alive and smirking, his jaw unclenched. "Really," he muttered, rubbing his forehead. "You scared the hell out of me. I thought it was the demon guy again."
"You'd know if it was. The demon guy doesn't smell like old Lucky Me pancit canton."
"Haha." Julius lowered his fists, then snorted as he flopped back into his chair. "Next time I'll let you ride solo."
"You did let me ride solo. Through the air. Off a bike. Face first."
Julius gave him a sideways look. "Be thankful you didn't land on concrete. Else you'd eat mashed adobo using straw."
Gray stretched his neck and winced again. "So what happened?"
Julius exhaled and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Yo, that dude that we hit. After we fell—I swear, Gray, we hit him—he just... vanished." Gray raised an eyebrow. "Vanished as in, poof! Like hitting smoke. No body, no blood, no dent on the bike." There was silence for a moment. Only the hum of the electric fan and the distant clang of a nurse's cart filled the room. Gray's expression changed, curiosity pried beneath his sarcasm.
"Why, what do you think happened?"
Julius tilted his head, serious now. "No joke? My Nana told me stories before," he said, his voice in an eerie whisper. "About halimaws. She said they don't just show up for no reason. They live in places people forget—deep forests, old rivers, cracks between rocks where sunlight doesn't reach. And if you disturb them... if you speak their names wrong, step on sacred ground, or laugh too loud where you're not supposed to... they find you. Not right away. But they do. My Nana used to say, if the wind suddenly turns cold and the trees go quiet, you already did something wrong, and by then, they're already watching."
For a moment, Gray stared at Julius with thoughtful eyes. Then he snorted so loudly, throwing his head back on the pillow. "Are you serious? Bathala and friends?"
"I'm serious."
"Oh, come on, Jules. You actually believe in that stuff?"
Julius leaned forward, eyes sharp. "So? My Nana was from the province, and she swore, she swore that she saw the eyes of the star goddess, Tala, in her dreams and spoke to her of richness."
"I don't wanna sound like the bad guy here, Julius, but like, are you rich?"
"Man, shut up. See, they're real."
Gray turned toward the ceiling, lips twisted in that familiar smirk. "Where were they when your cousin got mugged last week? Or when half the children were massacred in the lower region? Let me guess. Bathala was on vacation. Maybe that war god—what was his name? Oh—Apolaki's sword was in for maintenance."
Julius shook his head. "Not everything is a punchline, Gray."
Gray paused. Then he said, quieter, "I'll start believing when they show up with receipts." Silence fell between them. The kind that wasn't empty, but full of too many things unsaid. Weighty. Outside, a dog barked twice, and then fell silent.
Finally, Julius leaned back again, his tone softer now. "I called your Lola."
Gray blinked. "What?"
"She's on her way. Brought some of your clothes. Said she'll be here before sundown."
Gray looked away, jaw tight. "Gods!"
"Man, they were calling me for two straight days asking for you!"
"TWO DAYS!?"
Julius his eyes roamed around in his sarcastic realization. "Right, I never told you how long you were gone."
"TWO DAYS!?"
"Actually, it's three days."
Gray didn't respond right away. He muttered, "You better not have told her about the Andong thing and bike inci—"
"I told her you tripped over and hit a pole."
Gray smiled. "That's the worst excuse I've ever heard—"
The door creaked open, and the air shifted before she even stepped in. There was something about the weight of a grandmother's disappointment that carried farther than sound, like humidity before a storm. Gray didn't even need to look to know it was her. The firm thump of her old rubber slippers on hospital tile was unmistakable, and the rustle of her bayong full of home-cooked meals cut through the sterile quiet like thunder through glass.
His grandmother Lola Basyang stood in the doorway, floral blouse clashing against the pale green of the hospital walls, her eyes blazing with that familiar fire—one that had terrified school principals and barangay tanods alike. She didn't speak right away. She just stood there, lips pressed thin, her gaze raking over the bandages wrapped around his torso, the IV line taped to his arm, the bruises blooming like ink stains along his cheek. Julius stiffened in his chair, probably reconsidering every life decision that led him to be the messenger who called her.
"Ay, Diyos ko," she said finally, stepping forward with a voice both tired and angry. "What is it this time?"
Gray, propped against his pillow like some beat-up statue, didn't flinch. He just blinked at her, dryly turning his head toward Julius as if to say, Told you. He couldn't even muster his usual grin—his lip was too swollen. But sarcasm, that still came easily.
"Tripped over a pothole," he muttered. "You know how Manila is. Urban jungle."
Lola Basyang's eyes flared. "Pothole? He said pothole." She looked at one of the patients and his relative, who was now looking at their side, as if they were someone she knew. She faced Gray. "You think I'm stupid? You think I don't know what a tripped-over-a-pothole injury looks like? Hah! If your Lolo were still here, he'd drag you out of that bed and beat your behind raw for using his teachings to get into this mess."
That made Gray chuckle, just barely. "Ironic. I'm pretty sure that's what got me out of the mess."
"You think this is funny?" she snapped, pulling a chair beside his bed and slamming the bayong onto the table with enough force to make Julius twitch. "You could've died, apo. You could've ended up in a morgue. You think your Lolo trained you to fight criminals in the dead of night like some vigilante in those stupid komiks?"
At the mention of his Lolo, something shifted in Gray's expression, even if just for a flicker. Every memory of his grandfather came flooding back in a quiet, strange wave. The old man's voice—sharp but never cruel—cutting through the humid air of their small backyard. The scent of sweat and wood polish. The grunts that came with every move. While other kids spent weekends learning piano or math enrichment classes they didn't care about, Gray's childhood was built on sweat, bruises, and combat forms. His Lolo was kind, the gentlest man in Gray's life, except when it came to training. When it was time to train, everything softened in the house except him.
Gray never knew why. Never knew what ghosts haunted the old man enough to pass on all those skills, all those patterns of violence, like they were heirlooms. At the time, Gray didn't think much of it. Treated it like a weird family quirk. A leftover from some war story the old man never told. He'd roll his eyes during sparring drills, laugh when he got knocked flat, and curse under his breath when blisters formed on his palms. He never asked where his Lolo learned to move like that. Never thought to ask why his training always ended with that same quiet phrase: "You'll understand one day, apo."
But he never got the chance to know. His Lolo had died two years ago. A quiet death in a quiet house. No warning. Just a call from a neighbor, and the silence that followed.
Gray tilted his head lazily, masking whatever stirred in him, like always. "To be fair, the guy wasn't exactly in costume."
She slapped the edge of his mattress, hard. "You think this makes you strong? No. It makes you reckless. Foolish."
He raised a hand in surrender. "Alright, alright. I get it. Lesson learned. Don't crash motorcycles into mysterious shadowy figures in abandoned warehouses."
Lola Basyang didn't laugh. Her jaw tightened, and she leaned forward, voice low now—not gentler, just heavier. "You know who would've really scolded you for this?"
Gray paused, sensing the turn.
"Your mother," she said.
The smirk faded from his face—not abruptly, but like steam pulled from a cup. His body stilled, breath shallow. He didn't look at her. Just stared ahead at the wall across from him. That same crack in the paint he'd been pretending not to notice suddenly became the most fascinating thing in the room.
"She—"
"Don't," Gray said. His voice was quiet but firm. "Let's not."
His Lola continued, quieter now. "She had your fire, too. But she knew when to control it. You got that from her—"
"She's not here, is she?" The edge crept into his voice like rust on steel. "She's not anywhere."
His grandmother's face tightened. "You don't get to pretend she didn't exist just because you don't remember her."
"I'm not pretending," Gray said, eyes locked on the wall across from him. "I'm just not playing make-believe anymore."
"You think I made her up?" she asked, offended.
"I think you made her into something perfect. Something untouchable. Something so good she couldn't possibly be real."
"She was your mother."
The bed creaked as Gray shifted, avoiding her eyes. "You always talk about her like she was a saint. Beautiful, kind, strong. But I never saw her. Never heard her voice. Not even a stupid photo, Lola. Not even one."
His grandmother flinched like he'd struck her. "You don't understand."
"Don't I?" Gray shifted slightly, grimacing at the pull of the stitches along his ribs. "You want me to believe in this woman I've never met? That she was real? Fine. But maybe I'm tired of hearing the fables. Maybe I'm tired of feeling guilty for not missing someone I never got to know."
Her lips pressed into a thin line. "She's your mother."
"Is she?" He looked at her now, not with anger, just a tired sort of soft honesty. "Maybe once. But right now... she feels more like a story people keep telling me, hoping I'll still believe it's real."
His Lola stood there, rigid, the fire in her dimming into embers. For a moment, the silence stretched too long. Julius looked like he wanted to dissolve into the chair. Then she spoke again, quieter now. "You think I'm telling you about her because I want to guilt you? No. I tell you because I want you to remember she was more than the silence she left behind."
"You're too much like her. Stubborn as a stump. Always charging ahead like the world owes you answers." Then, her mouth twitched. A smile formed on her mouth. "It's like the both of you were born arguing with the wind."
Gray didn't answer. He kept his gaze low, hands on the blanket, fingers twitching slightly. Not anger. Not sorrow. Just restlessness. His grandmother turned to the table and began pulling out plastic containers—dinuguan, pansit, fruit. Her motions were mechanical now, routine, a way to reclaim calm. She folded a small towel, laid it neatly on the bedside table, and finally stepped back toward the door. "I'll come back tomorrow," she said simply. "Eat. Heal. Stop wasting your Lolo's name."
She left without waiting for his reply.
Gray stared at the ceiling. The hum of the air-conditioning returned. The hallway beyond the door fell quiet again. And then he finally exhaled and faced Julius. "She brought dinuguan. You want it?"
Julius nodded and made a reverent face. "Your Lola's scary, but a blessing."
Gray didn't answer right away. He stared at the steaming food, but his appetite was gone. "She keeps talking like I'm supposed to carry something," he murmured. "Like I'm supposed to take up some legacy I never even asked for."
Julius leaned back in his chair. "Maybe you don't have to carry it all. Maybe just the parts that matter."
Gray gave him a side glance. "When did you become a great sage?"
"Somewhere between being thrown into shelves and being haunted by demons," Julius replied.
Gray let the silence settle again, the plastic spoon in his hand hovering just above the dinuguan, unmoving. The scent rose, familiar and earthy, but it didn't stir his hunger—only his thoughts. "You know what's funny?" he said, voice low but not bitter. "People talk about parents like they're the foundation of who you are. Like, blood automatically makes you something. Like I'm supposed to feel some grand connection to two people I've never seen a single photo of."
Julius stayed quiet, letting him speak.
"I mean, I get it. Tragic origin. Lost parents. It's the classic setup, right? You grow up imagining them as these perfect people. Martyrs. Warriors. Saints. But at some point, you start wondering if that's all just decoration for a void that never really gets filled." He leaned back against the pillows, watching the slow drip from the IV line. "Lola says my mom was strong, principled, kind, all that. And my dad? Nothing. Not a word. Even my Lola says she doesn't know anything about the great man. Like he was a placeholder in some story she half-finished. But both of them still managed to vanish before I even had a memory worth keeping."
He scoffed under his breath. "So now I'm stuck with their silence and everyone else's expectations. Like I'm some vessel they forgot to leave instructions for."
Julius rubbed his chin, absorbing the words. "You ever think maybe she doesn't tell you about your dad 'cause it's not a good story?"
"Probably," Gray said. "Maybe he wasn't worth the ink. Or maybe he just left and never looked back. That'd be classic, wouldn't it? Great warrior bloodline, protector of secrets, some ancestral what-have-you, and boom—dad dipped the second things got too real." He didn't sound angry. Just... tired. Like someone who had gone looking for a face in a crowd for years and finally stopped expecting to find it.
"Truth is," Gray continued, eyes still fixed on the uneaten food, "I've lived my whole life like they were more myth than memory. Everyone's always trying to remind me of who they were. What they did. How I should be grateful. But no one ever asks what it's like to grow up with a history you didn't write, being haunted by the idea of people you never knew."
He set the spoon down and leaned his head back, eyes on the whitewashed ceiling. "You ever notice how people talk about legacy like it's a gift, but no one asks if you wanted it in the first place?"
Julius gave a soft grunt. "Maybe they didn't get the choice either."
Gray smirked slightly at that, a crooked, tired kind of grin. "Then maybe we're all just walking around carrying dead people's burdens, hoping they don't crush us before we figure out what to do with them."