"Courage is not the absence of fear, but the will to move while everything breaks."
The Call From Above
Rain began like a rumor and ended like a verdict. Bulakan burned beneath a sky of ash and relic light; the city's silhouette was a jagged tooth against a horizon that smelled of hot metal and old prayers.
From the Adarna's belly the capital looked smaller and meaner—smoke braided around toppled columns, streets split open like raw palms, the New Malacañang a black wound.
In the command bay Captain Gregorio Aguilar stood over the holo-map, every fading ping a life unanswered.
"Priority one: President and Chief of Staff," he said. "Priority two: civilian egress assisted by MID-Zeta.
Relic light answered him like muscle answering a bell. Marian Dela Fuente drew the Sundang ni Makiling; silver mist peeled from its edge and folded into veils that softened the Adarna's descent. Agosto Santos planted the Kampilan ni Lam-Ang, Crimson Vortex glyphs spinning low—controlled storms that bent debris away from the ramps. Renato Ramirez raised the Kalasag ni Bernardo Carpio; Prismatic Glyph Shields unfurled, concentric and humming like a heart pressed to bone. Gregorio clenched the Kamay ni Bathala; Purple Spiral glyphs threaded along his gauntlet, knitting every relic frequency into one harmonic field. The ship descended as a single instrument of will.
The City In Ruin
On the ground, Joaquin Santillan moved like rumor turned to intention. Equipped with just his army .45 etched with runes, an old knife, and a new glove whose baybayin sigils burned electric-black specially customized by MID Zeta Glyph Engineers for him. When his pulse matched the pitch of a relic's song, the sigils flared, nullifying its resonance. Close was his dominion: contact → silence → echo → shatter.
He found General Emilio Valdez pinned under a twisted carrier. Metal groaned; Joaquin tore it free and pulled him out. The beacon of President Esperanza Sinukuan blinked weakly somewhere deeper in the ruin. He moved toward it through smoke that tasted of iron and salt.
The Courtyard Of Silence
The first wave met him at the courtyard—Anino constructs, armored husks driven by engineered relics. He didn't retreat; he advanced. His gloved palm met the nearest plate; sigils flashed, resonance died, and the body imploded. The next he took at the knees, pivoting, letting its momentum carry past before driving a strike that folded the spine. Every motion was economy: a shoulder check into a throat, a heel driving through armor, a twist that threw another into a wall. The silence before each echo was longer now—like the city itself pausing to breathe.
When the echoes struck, they tore the air apart; chunks of masonry and glass rained around him. Joaquin kept moving through the debris, turning collapse into cover. The glove's pulse built behind each hit until it felt as though the bridge of his hand were breaking light itself.
The Retreat
He reached the shattered fountain where the President waited, pistol steady.
"Identify," she demanded.
"Commander Santillan, MID-Zeta Elite. Extraction team."
"Then get us out.", barked the President.
They moved through collapsing halls, Valdez leaning but unbroken, the President's jaw set against exhaustion. Above, the Adarna's harmonics shaped protective corridors—mist, vortex, prism, and spiral humming in balance. The ship and soldier moved in rhythm though sky and ground never met.
Bulakan's air shimmered from relic strain; every heartbeat of the Adarna sent a low bass through the rain, every footstep of Joaquin answered it.
Cupang Bridge
Bullets and debris followed them to the river. Half the bridge was gone; the rest swayed above a dark current thick with ruin.
"Adarna ETA seventy seconds," Gregorio reported. Cables dropped through fog like lifelines from heaven.
Behind them the Anino Horde advanced—dozens at first, then scores, armor breathing with red pulse. Joaquin pushed the President and Valdez toward the cables.
"Go. Now."
He turned. The glove on his right hand pulsed black; lightning crawled beneath the skin of his forearm. The bridge floor trembled as if recognizing the weight of what was coming.
The First Wave
They came in a crescent, armored and loud. Joaquin stepped into them. He met the first with a rising strike that snapped its helm backward, spun, and drove his elbow through the second's visor. A third swung high; he caught the arm, turned with it, and used its body to break the next one's stance. The motion was continuous, brutal, efficient.
Each contact killed a song. Each echo rolled out like a drum inside the bones of the bridge. He slammed a palm into a chest plate; the relic core went silent, the echo burst outward and took two more with it. When he breathed, his breath came out black with ash.
The deck began to tremble, fissures spider-webbing underfoot. Steel cables screamed above the rain. Still he moved—close, tight, always inside their guard. A blade grazed his shoulder; he caught the arm, crushed the wrist, and sent the weapon clattering into the dark water below.
The bridge groaned as if the city were keeping count. The CQNT hum deepened, a rhythm between heartbeat and thunder.
The Second Wave
Smoke and rain blurred the line between living and engineered. Fifteen more Anino crossed the threshold; the air thickened with their heat. Joaquin ran low, slipped under a swing, drove a punch into a chest so hard the plating folded. He pivoted, used the falling body for cover, and kicked backward into another's knee joint.
A spearhead hissed past his ear; he caught the shaft mid-spin and reversed it in a single motion, slamming the butt into a visor. The impact sent a sharp white spark through the rain; the construct fell, resonance gone.
Another charged—he stepped aside, let it overextend, and crushed its throat with the ridge of his forearm.
The CQNT's echo struck in rhythm with his breath: hit — silence — boom. Armor flaked. Stone cracked. Silence again. His body moved on instinct: step, twist, release. The glove screamed light.
Above, the Adarna flared; Marian's mist folded down to shroud the bridge while Agosto's vortexes funneled falling debris away from the extraction zone. The ship and the man fought as halves of a single will.
The Third Wave / The Head Of The Pack
The bridge filled with movement—more than twenty Anino charging in formation, their relic cores glowing like coals dragged through oil. The deck plates vibrated under the rhythm of their march. Among them strode the officer, a tower of iron and crimson light, every step sending a tremor through the bridge span. Joaquin's lungs burned; his glove seethed black. The rain carried the metallic smell of ozone and blood.
He ran forward before fear could argue. The first construct swung low; he vaulted over the blade, drove his knee into its helm, and twisted to plant both feet on the next one's shoulders. It collapsed. He dropped with it, caught another's arm in passing, and used the fall to rip the limb clean from its socket. He pivoted again, using the detached arm as a club; the motion broke another visor and sent sparks skittering into the rain.
Five fell in the first breath. Ten more surged in. Joaquin didn't think; he moved. A forearm slammed into his ribs; he rolled with it, trapped the arm, and snapped it across his hip. Another grabbed from behind; he stamped down hard, twisted, elbowed backward, and felt armor shatter. Every time his palm touched an enemy, silence followed; the echo came as a quake through his bones, each shatter wave spreading through the line like falling dominoes.
The air burned white from successive detonations. A cable overhead snapped, whipping past him with a scream. He used it—caught it on reflex, spun, and flung it back across the oncoming ranks. The cable's momentum tore through three Anino, severing limbs, scattering relic shards into the river.
Then the officer reached him.
It struck like a machine god, blade wide as a man's chest, core pulsing red-black. Joaquin's knees nearly buckled from the shockwave. He ducked under the first swing and slammed a palm into its torso. Nothing. The relic core didn't silence—it resisted. The feedback threw him backward into a support beam hard enough to rattle his teeth. He spat blood, shook his head, and charged again.
The officer's blade met his dagger; sparks and runes collided. The impact drove a vibration through the bridge that split concrete. Joaquin forced inside the blade's reach, shoulder to chest, and let the glove burn full. Black light erupted between them. The Anino officer convulsed. The world went soundless for one awful second, then the echo detonated. The officer exploded from within, its chest cavity opening like a furnace. Shards, light, and steam swallowed the span.
The surviving Anino hesitated. Joaquin didn't. He tore through the remainder with sheer momentum, every motion an improvisation—spinning elbows, heel strikes, headbutts, and palm smashes that broke what was left of their ranks. The bridge shook with every echo. The water below boiled with falling wreckage.
By the time the last construct fell, the deck was a graveyard of shattered armor and scorched runes. Joaquin stood in the center, rain hissing off his glove, breathing hard enough to taste blood. The bridge sagged under him; steel screamed as if begging for release.
He looked toward the Adarna. The ship hovered through smoke, its relic harmonics pulsing in perfect alignment with his glove's fading light. For a heartbeat he thought the battle was done—then he heard it.
A new tremor. Not footsteps this time, but the bridge itself beginning to fail.
The Extraction
"Commander, now!" Gregorio's voice roared through the static.
Joaquin turned. The Adarna hovered low, mist swirling around its bay doors. The last civilians and MID-Zeta soldiers clung to the cables. The President and Valdez were already inside. The air was thick with ozone and falling sparks.
He sprinted. Behind him the bridge began to crumble. Steel cords snapped like whips; concrete slabs dropped into the river. The rain turned black with soot.
A final echo rippled from his glove, silencing the last straggling Anino that had crawled from the wreckage. The blast tore the center span apart and hurled him forward. He leapt. Fingers brushed the Adarna's rail, missed, caught again on instinct. The glove's sigils flared white-black, lightning crawling up his arm.
"Got you!" Agosto's voice cut through the noise. Strong hands caught his wrist and hauled. Joaquin felt his shoulder wrench but held tight. They dragged him over the rail as the remaining deck gave way and collapsed into the river.
The explosion of falling debris sent a shockwave up through the mist. Water surged, swallowing the remnants of the Anino horde. Below, relic cores fizzled out, their stolen light dying beneath the current. The bridge was gone.
Joaquin lay on the deck, chest heaving, glove smoking. Agosto crouched beside him, blood on his temple. "You all right?"
He coughed out a half-laugh. "Define 'all right.'"
"Alive counts," Agosto said. "That's good enough."
The Monument
The Adarna climbed through the storm, engines keening as they pierced the cloud ceiling. Rain became vapor against the heat wash of the thrusters. Through the break in the clouds, the Marcelo H. del Pilar Monument appeared below—tall, defiant, untouched amid ruin.
Joaquin leaned against the hatch, blood running down his fingers, watching the monument drift by. "Still standing," he murmured.
Gregorio's voice came over the comm from the command pit: "So are we."
The words hung in the air like a benediction.
Aftermath
The Adarna's hum softened as the engines leveled. In the command bay the air smelled of metal, blood, and ozone.
Marian dismissed the mist veil; silver vapors curled back into her blade and dimmed. Agosto collapsed against the bulkhead, Kampilan still humming in faint crimson vortexes before its light finally guttered. Renato set the Kalasag beside him; the shield's prismatic shimmer dulled to grey stone.
Above them Gregorio stood unmoving, Kamay's purple spirals receding into silence.
The relics had quieted, their resonance reduced to low, steady heartbeats inside the ship's bones. The battle below had taken the last of their strength, but they had held. For now, the capital lived.
In the med-bay, Joaquin sat on a bench with his back against cold steel. His glove lay beside him, scorched and smoking at the seams. The black sigils still flickered across his palm—dim now, but alive. Every muscle in his body ached; his knuckles bled where armor had split. He stared at his hand and flexed his fingers, each motion sending a pulse of pain up to his shoulder.
"Commander," a medic said, voice quiet. "President Sinukuan requests your status report."
He nodded, winced, and pushed himself up. "Tell her the line held."
He looked across the med-bay. The President sat beside General Valdez, both pale but alive. Around them the survivors of MID-Zeta rested—bandaged, exhausted, eyes hollow with the memory of what they'd seen. None spoke. The silence carried the weight of victory and loss in equal measure.
Gregorio entered, soaked to the bone, his coat still steaming from the rain. "Bridge reports clear skies ahead," he said. "We're bound north."
Joaquin managed a faint smile. "How long until they regroup?"
"Not soon," Gregorio said. "You bought us time."
"Didn't feel like time," Joaquin answered, voice rough. "Felt like the end."
Gregorio looked out through the viewing port where the storm still flickered far below. "The end's a rumor," he said. "You keep proving that."
The Promise
Hours later, night settled into quiet. The Adarna drifted through a corridor of moonlight and cloud. The wreckage of Bulakan glimmered faintly below—lines of fire cutting through darkness, the river reflecting red embers where the bridge once stood.
In the command bay the relics glowed again, faint and rhythmic, their pulses aligning with the ship's hum. Gregorio, Marian, Agosto, and Renato stood at their stations, silent but steady. The Sandata Unit had lived through the fall of Bulakan. They would live through what came next.
Joaquin joined them, bandaged hand wrapped around the rail. His palm still ached, every heartbeat reminding him of the glove's weight, of the echoes it had birthed. He watched the horizon where storm met sky and said quietly, "One bridge, one city, still breathing."
Marian looked at him. "You think it's enough?"
"For tonight," he said. "Enough to believe we can win."
Outside, the moon broke free of the clouds, spilling light over the monument's distant silhouette. From the Adarna's altitude, it looked like a candle flame in a sea of ruin—small, stubborn, unextinguished.
Joaquin closed his eyes. In the silence that followed, the hum of the four relics deepened, their tones interlocking until the sound became one voice—a single, low promise resonating through the ship's hull.
He let it fill him. The echo of battle receded, replaced by the simple rhythm of endurance. Four relic hearts and one human one, beating together against the dark.
Below, Bulakan smoldered. Above, the Adarna carried the Republic's last hope northward into dawn.