Chapter 1

Night hung heavy over the remote jungle village, the air dense and suffocating with smoke, carrying the acrid stench of burning wood and flesh. Flames licked hungrily at the thatched huts, their skeletal frames collapsing into glowing heaps of ash as the fire clawed its way skyward. Black coils of smoke writhed above the treetops, curling like dark serpents into the starless void. The crackling roar of the inferno was punctuated by jagged, frantic screams—voices breaking with terror, grief, and disbelief. In the shifting glow, shadows danced wildly across the fire lit ground, distorting faces and figures into grotesque silhouettes. Blood shimmered in the light, catching the gleam of flame as it pooled and spread across the earth, soaking the soil until the air itself seemed to breathe a grim, metallic scent of loss.

Amid this devastation, Talabasao moved like a storm given human form. The shaman, once a man of solemn wisdom, now bore the face of something unmoored from reason. Blood streaked across his skin, both his own and that of others, and his eyes were wide with a wild unsteadiness that was not merely grief but the trembling edge of madness. In his arms he clutched a small bundle wrapped in singed cloth—the fragile, lifeless body of his baby. His every step through the burning ruins seemed powered not by strength but by sheer refusal to collapse. Around him, villagers scattered like ghosts, some choking on smoke, others frozen, unable to move, transfixed by the terror of what their world had become.

He stumbled beside a hut that collapsed in a shower of sparks, the heat blistering against his skin. There, at last, his knees gave way, and he sank to the scorched earth. The tiny body pressed against his chest felt impossibly light, a weightless reminder of all that had been torn from him. His sobs ripped out of his throat in jagged bursts, raw and ragged, too broken to be contained by breath alone.

“They let you die… they let you BOTH die!” Talabasao roared, his grief twisted into accusation, his words flung upward into the choking night. The sound seemed to shake the canopy itself, an anguish so profound it bent into something monstrous.

He lifted his face toward the blackened trees, his features contorted, and howled. The cry was more beast than man, rage and sorrow so entwined it was impossible to know where one ended and the other began. Even the forest seemed to recoil, branches trembling as if the night itself had grown afraid. Gently, with hands that trembled from the storm inside him, he laid the tiny bundle upon the scorched soil. The cloth caught a flicker of firelight, briefly illuminating the baby’s still features before shadow swallowed them again.

Then, with a sudden violence that broke the stillness, Talabasao seized a gleaming blade. He slashed his palm, the steel biting deep, and dark blood welled swiftly, dripping in heavy drops onto the earth where the infant lay. His voice rose in a chant, an ancient tongue carrying the rhythm of ages. The words thrummed with power, harsh and resonant, vibrating in the very marrow of the night. A pulse of dark energy shuddered outward from him, rippling through the air, bending the flames and stirring the smoke. His eyes flared with an unearthly glow, their light both mesmerising and terrifying, as if some other presence had come to dwell behind them.

All around, the chaos of the village pressed on. Villagers stumbled through the haze, fleeing with what little strength remained, some collapsing into the dirt, some dragging others with them, their cries barely distinguishable from the crackling roar of the flames. Yet even amid this bedlam, Talabasao’s ritual made the night hold its breath.

The scene shifted toward the edge of the village, where the land broke open to the ocean shore. There, against the restless black of the sea stood a lone gnarled tree, its twisted branches clawing toward the sky as though in defiance of the elements. Beneath its roots, Talabasao dug with frantic desperation, his bloodied hands raking through soil and rock, scattering clumps of earth into the wind. His breath came in hoarse bursts, each motion of his body driven by a grief that had burned itself into fury.

At last, he laid the child’s body in the shallow hollow he had torn from the ground. His movements, though trembling, were both solemn and furious, each handful of soil he pushed back over the tiny form became more a curse than a burial. He pressed the earth down firmly, sealing the body into the roots of the ancient tree, binding it there with his grief, with his blood, with his hate.

“You will stay here now… Poison and destroy their worthless lives…” He hissed, the words dripping with venom. His vow was low and searing, carried off by the salt wind, sinking into the roots, into the soil, into the night itself. The curse was spoken, and the land would never again be free of it.

Elsewhere, along a narrow jungle path that wound away from the carnage, villagers staggered through smoke and shadow, their faces etched with terror and loss. Their cries carried faintly through the foliage, the sound of a people driven to the brink of extinction. Among them moved another shaman—young, weary, his body bent with exhaustion. In his trembling hands he clutched sacred cords, their strands woven with symbols of protection and binding. His face bore the stark marks of fear, his eyes shadowed by everything he had seen. Yet within them still glimmered the stubborn light of determination.

“I must bind the evil… before it damns us all…” he whispered, his voice ragged, as if he spoke not only to himself but to the spirits he prayed still walked beside him. He shoved through the undergrowth, forcing his body to obey, his every step a battle against weakness and despair. His path wound toward the gnarled tree, toward the heart of the darkness Talabasao had birthed, and though he knew he might not survive the attempt, his will drove him forward.

And then the night itself seemed to fold inward, swallowing fire, smoke and screams into silence. Darkness closed over everything, smothering light, drowning sound, leaving only the echo of what had been loosed.