"In every tide borne by gunmetal and resolve, there arrives a moment when steel meets salt—and nations remember how to reclaim what was once lost."
The Storm That Carries Steel
The sea transformed into a battlefield of thunder.
Waves crashed like artillery shells against the armored hulls of the advancing fleet, where each vessel, every rune-etched deck, bore the weight of a nation's final strike. At the forefront cut the Mandirigma—flagship of the Sandata Unit—its prow cleaving through storm-black waters, symbolizing the line between defeat and reclamation.
Along its flanks thrummed violet and gold sigils, pulsing like the heartbeat of divine machinery. Cannon arrays awoke with crackling energy, their targeting systems glowing amidst the strobe of lightning. Behind and alongside the Mandirigma surged the full might of the Philippine Naval Command and MID-Zeta support vessels, forming an impenetrable wall of myth-tech force rolling toward the shores of Bulakan, Bulacan, where the seat of power had been usurped by traitors in godlike form.
President Esperanza Sinukuan maintained her position at the command tier, her voice steady in the tempest:
"Maintain wedge formation. All guns ready—prepare breach vector three. The capital will rise again."
Joaquin Santillan stood at her side, his visor reflecting distant firestorms dancing on the horizon. Screens before him displayed incoming hostiles in stark red glyph-light.
"Enemy fleet incoming. Full myth-tech loadouts confirmed. They're already prepared for sea engagement."
The Anino ng mga Anito fleet approached—sleek warforms bristling with crimson glyph-tech, their cannons crackling with serpentine energy. The dark waves folded around them as if the ocean itself recoiled from their passage.
Behind Sinukuan, the international relic wielders formed a silent bastion of resolve—Tsubame Hayashi-Hime, Yoo Min-Jun, Sutera Kencana, Ari Sujatmiko, Prasert Rattanachai, Dr. Han Wei. Their relics—dormant and unsummoned—pulsed faintly at their sides, poised yet not yet unleashed.
The storm surged.
The sea roared.
The war commenced.
A wave of crimson fire lashed from the horizon as the Anino flagship unleashed the first volley—glyph missiles slicing through rain like burning spears.
"Shields up!" Santillan commanded.
A shimmering bulwark enveloped the Mandirigma—interlocking violet and gold sigils absorbing the shock as the first barrage erupted against them in blinding fire. Behind her, the remainder of the Philippine fleet mirrored the maneuver, rune-barriers flaring as explosive light illuminated the storm.
Sinukuan's hand rose.
"Mandirigma—return fire."
The flagship responded with thunder.
Multiple cannons roared in unison—broadside arc-launchers unleashing a storm of radiant shells that shredded through Anino engines, detonating upon impact. The waters churned white with heat. Steel shrieked and crumbled under the deluge of destruction.
Further out, an Anino dreadnought retaliated with pulse-lances—high-frequency projectiles that vaporized the sea on contact.
Two MID-Zeta ships were struck amidships, their decks erupting in flames and wreckage before the sea swallowed them whole.
The storm bore witness in silent lightning.
"Flank shelling intensifying!" Santillan called out. "Redirect all auxiliary shields to quadrant two!"
Even from this distance, the Mandirigma and its escort could sense the second war raging on land—where Bathala Incarnate, Magwayen Ascendant, and Kan-Laon Imperium clashed like storms of divine light. The atmosphere throbbed with their power. The seas surged inward with each divine strike.
Myth met myth.
Steel met salt.
History groaned beneath the weight of it all.
The Mandirigma broke through the collapsing front line and surged toward Bulakan's coast.
Then the cannons of New Malacañang awoke. From within the rising fog, the coastal defense network activated—massive anti-sea insertion turrets rotating to face the approaching fleet. Their barrels glowed with crimson glyph-runes, each the size of cathedral spires.
"Contact at 11 o'clock—shore batteries engaging!" Santillan warned.
A barrage of myth-tech fire lanced across the sea, turning water to steam and tearing vessels apart in a series of thunderous detonations. Ships burned. Others sank, hulls ruptured by beams of war made divine.
"Zeta command, suppress the shore guns!" Sinukuan commanded.
The fleet responded with fury—dozens of rune-missile volleys streaked toward the defense lines, their trails forming brief constellations of violet before slamming into stone and steel, erupting into alchemical flames. Yet still, more turrets emerged—hardened, precise, unyielding.
The Mandirigma pressed on.
A flanking Anino ship broke formation, ghosting through the storm at impossible speed. Its prow split open like a fanged maw, releasing a serpent-like beam of red energy that lunged for the command deck.
"Brace!"
The Mandirigma rolled on its axis, wind glyphs surged and rune-thrusters firing at full burn to avoid a critical strike. The serpent-beam sheared across deck two, obliterating portside turrets in a scorching rain of molten metal and screaming air.
Explosion.
Shockwave.
Fire.
Sinukuan staggered, caught by Santillan before she fell. Their eyes met.
"This is no siege, Joaquin."
He steadied her, jaw set. "This is reclamation."
Lightning tore open the clouds above.
A roar followed—one not born of the sea, but of gods still warring in the plaza of New Malacañang. Even from this distance, they could feel the pulse of Bathala's Heart awakening, hungering, rising.
"Status of the main gun?" Sinukuan inquired.
"Fully charged."
"Then aim for the breach line. Fire on my mark."
Below them—deep within the Mandirigma's armored keel—divine machinery groaned to life. A thrumming vibration spread across the deck, culminating in a rising hum that set the sea itself trembling in response. The prow cracked apart, revealing its true core.
The Myth-Tech Rail Gun lifted from the armory bay—long and divine, energy spiraling across the runes of its spine like a heartbeat made of thunder.
Sinukuan raised her hand—fingers steady, drenched in purpose.
"On my command."
The very storm paused.
The final breach of sea and steel was mere moments away.
The Sky That Bleeds Light and Iron
The railgun spoke, and the sea answered.
From the prow of the Mandirigma, the Myth-Tech Rail Cannon exhaled a line of annihilation—pure white, interwoven with violet filaments, the kind of light that makes shadows recall their origin. It tore through the rain, carving a corridor across the obsidian water, and forged a direct, merciless path toward the Anino flagship.
Yet the shore had its teeth.
A tear opened before the Anino fleet—clean and deliberate, as if inscribed into existence. Baybayin characters stitched themselves into reality like a poem hammered onto steel. The beam vanished into the aperture, its exit consuming only the sound it devoured.
On the breakwater, Ambassador Tala Martinez stood, rain dappling her coat, the Panulat ng mga Makata poised above a wet stone slab like a lectern. She neither screamed nor postured. Instead, she wrote. Each stroke was a blade laid upon existence; each curve birthed geometry. Her final mark flared, sealing the dimensional rift with a soft click, as though a book had closed on a violent chapter.
"Rail battery, cycle again," President Esperanza Sinukuan ordered, her voice steady in the command tier. "We fire when ready."
"Charging," Guido replied from gunnery control, his voice taut as his hands swept over rune-switches, the capacitor trees absorbing power. "Coils at twenty-seven… thirty-three… forty."
"Maintain clarity," Commander Joaquin Santillan instructed, calm even as the deck vibrated with the cannon's spin-up. "Shield harmonics to bow and port. We'll absorb the next salvo at an angle."
Outside, the night erupted.
The Anino fleet surged forward—sleek hulls with cathedral-high turrets, their lattice cannons intertwining into crimson grids. Missile ladders erupted from submerged racks, climbing the storm in staggered intervals, then curving as if guided by red handwriting.
"Intercept patterns three through five," Santillan commanded.
The Mandirigma complied.
Broadside rune-auto-cannons along both flanks and the forward sponsons ignited simultaneously, their muzzles blooming with violet thunder. Counter-missiles spiraled upward in intersecting arcs. Mid-ocean, arcs crossed, and the sky transformed into a shattered rosary of burning beads.
Shockwaves slammed against the hull; rain turned to needles and then to steam.
"Admiral net receiving cross-traffic," a communications technician reported. "Coastal batteries at New Malacañang are identifying new solutions—vectoring to our wedge."
"Zeta—suppress!" Sinukuan ordered.
The Philippine Naval Command and MID-Zeta responded with disciplined fury—frigates and rune-cruisers blanketing the shore with precise saturations. The sea boiled white, then black as debris fell.
On the seawall, Congresswoman Aura Medina's Bolang Kristal hovered between her palms, refracting the storm into prisms of data. She focused not on the surface but on the intent beneath. "Tala," she communicated through the local net, her voice taut, "rotate your glyph to sixty-three degrees. They'll stagger the next salvo through the lower corridor, five-count delay."
"Copy," Tala replied, her gaze unwavering. She did not write quickly; she wrote with precision.
New glyphs unfurled in the rain's breath—a second mouth of the world prepared to bite.
"Coils at sixty," Guido reported. "Seventy-five. Ninety-two. Final lock in twelve."
"Hold the shot," Sinukuan instructed. "Wait for the heartbeat."
The ocean provided one.
A salvo of Anino pulse-lances hammered the Mandirigma's forward shields, flattening the barrier into a pane of screaming light. The flagship's nose dipped, then rose again as the feed lines caught up. Behind her, a Zeta destroyer sustained a direct hit and folded in half, vanishing beneath a dome of steam.
"Fire support left," Santillan interjected, already repositioning the chessboard. "Frigate Alimaya: rake that battery at grid Kilo-Three. Rune frigate Tandag, adjust barrage—walk it up the promenade and pin those shore guns for five seconds."
Then the storm split again—not from fire, but from engines.
Out of the rain marched a titan of steel and will: a battleship that bore history like armor.
The Yamato, commanded by Shinken Amakiri, broke the horizon with its running lights cold as judgment, its superstructure bristling with myth-tech refits and hard angles that prioritized inevitability over elegance.
Off its starboard bow, low and fast, a wedge of Naga attack craft glided over the waves in a serrated formation—sleek hulls with scaled plating and menacing silhouettes. The flotilla was led by Phaya Khamdee, who arrived not as an ally but as a convergence of necessity.
On the Mandirigma's command tier, a dozen eyebrows lifted.
"Identify," Santillan commanded, though he already knew.
"Yamato, captain acknowledged," the communications officer replied. "Naga flotilla leader confirms temporary coordination.Both declare the Anino as the hostile entity."
Sinukuan did not smile. "Coalition net open. Assign fire lanes. We all point in the same direction."
"You will have our guns," Shinken replied coolly across the channel.
"Then our hulls will follow your line," Khamdee added.
"Guido—prime the rail," Santillan ordered. "Fire on my mark. Yamato, stand by to follow through the same corridor. Naga, screen their feed."
"Copy." "Copy." "Copy," came the layered responses.
The sea heaved. The storm breathed.
"Mark."
The Mandirigma's main gun detonated forward in a silent scream—the round tearing reality open as it traveled. Half a heartbeat later, Tala's second tear yawned wide on the shore side, hungry and perfect.
But the coalition had learned.
The rail slug sliced through the ocean like a sword, then—that hair's breadth before the tear—kicked. Guiding fins and steering glyphs twisted, the projectile angling down into a shallower arc. The tear's edge kissed the backwash, consuming spray and fury.
The slug, already beyond it, struck the Anino flagship's starboard turrets directly.
White daylight erupted within the storm night.
Turrets tore free. Armor peeled backward. The flagship listed; systems flared and failed. A wall of water surged away from the impact, only to return with greater fury.
"Yamato, now," Santillan ordered.
The battleship responded like a church bell rung by a giant. A forward myth-tech cannon unfurled from its armored sleeve and unleashed a line of catastrophic intent through the corridor the Mandirigma had just carved.
The beam did not explode; it erased. The Anino second line split asunder.
"Naga—screen!" Sinukuan commanded.
The shoal of Naga cutters wove into incoming torpedoes, severing guidance nets with close-range disruptors, then retaliating with their own knives—short-burn rockets that transformed red targeting monograms into black water and shattered antennae. The Naga led their enemies' shots into one another, then ghosted away.
On the shore, Aura's crystal flared. "Counter-pattern, north turret cluster—three degrees low. Tala—now!"
Tala's pen flashed. A bite in space closed on a salvo mid-flight, folding them straight into the harbor basin. The resulting explosions rose like boiling suns, then fell back into the rain.
"Coils at forty for the next round," Guido warned. "We'll need twenty seconds."
"You have ten," Santillan replied. "Make them."
"Making them."
Intercut — High Above Bulakan
A horizon away, the sky over the capital writhed. Each collision of divine constructs rattled the sea like chains across the ribs of the world. Bathala Incarnate, Magwayen Ascendant, Kan-Laon Imperium—three colossal spirit forms engaged in violent geometry—smashed will against will in a cathedral of shattered rain. The thunder below was merely their shadow. With each strike, whitecaps on the bay flattened as if the ocean had bowed.
Back to Sea
The Anino left wing shifted formation—three cruisers in echelon, lattice curtains unfurling as their cannons braided into a single red plane poised to scythe the Mandirigma's port side. Below the surface, a staggered ladder of smart torpedoes ascended to meet the same solution.
"Port barrier, overcrank by two!" Santillan shouted. "Helm—present the angle, not the face!"
The flagship rolled, taking the cut at an angle. The scythe skimmed the shields, carving fire from the rain. Two torpedoes kissed the wake and detonated into empty fury; three more were blinded by the Mandirigma's forward chaff glyphs and chased phantoms into the dark.
"Coalition air inbound," communications announced. "Signature confirmed—Adarna."
They heard it before they saw it.
A note like a needle through silk stitched the storm together. The Adarna Airship appeared first as a silhouette, then as a chorus—sleek arcship escorted by a wing of Philippine myth-tech gunships. The moment its keel crossed the battle line, coils along its spine began to resonate.
The song wasn't music; it was alignment. Weapon grids across the Anino's line stuttered, then jittered off-frequency. Shoreside batteries coughed fire out of rhythm.
For a heartbeat, the war faltered.
"Now," Sinukuan commanded.
"Coils hot," Guido confirmed. "Firing."
The Mandirigma's second rail shot traversed the corridor the Adarna's voice had opened. It hammered an Anino cruiser dead center, penetrating decks and doctrine, and blew out the aft like a lung. The ship folded, then sank into a whirlpool of its own making.
Above, the Adarna's escorts clashed with the Anino air wing mid-sky. Gunships exchanged glyph-laser volleys, slashing contrails through the rain. Drone swarms collided like schools of knives and fell in glittering spray.
A Philippine striker rolled beneath an Anino kite and punctured it from nose to tail; its wreck lit the clouds from within like a lantern before it extinguished.
The Anino dispatched fresh wings at the Adarna.
The Adarna sang louder.
On the shore, Tala and Aura both flinched as the harmonics intensified. The glyphs of the Panulat and the Kristal trembled, exhaling a breath out of time. It was the opening the coalition's guns needed.
"Yamato—main battery," Santillan said, not looking away as he monitored the spool. "All ships—watch for the backwash."
The Yamato unleashed a sun through a keyhole. Simultaneously, the Mandirigma's rail fired once again. The two lines intersected the Anino center like scissors closing on thread.
Ships did not explode. They melted from existence.
The coalition line roared—not in triumph, but in relief that breath remained possible.
The Naga pursued the rout, slashing through shattered formations, harrying and turning, driving their prey into the consuming fire.
"Status on coastal batteries?" Sinukuan inquired.
"Three intact, two operational, one—" Santillan began, then paused as the horizon shifted.
The earth moved.
From the capital's edge, the silhouette of New Malacañang ascended. Not like a building, but like a verdict. Stone and steel and relic spine, lifting free of foundations that did not even crack as it departed. An impenetrable field blossomed around it—devoid of color, only the absence of rain where it touched.
On the seawall, Aura and Tala acted in unison.
Aura's crystal turned, fractal facets discovering pathways that had yet to exist, reading movements that had not yet occurred. "Window—there," she murmured.
Tala's pen inscribed escape into the air. Glyphs unfurled—a door at the precipice of ascent. The field attempted to deny it; their will forced a syntax the field could not comprehend. They stepped through, their figures swallowed by light, and were gone—upward, inward, toward the ascending fortress.
"New Malacañang is rising," communications whispered, as if volume could alter the truth. "Energy signature… unreadable."
On the Mandirigma, the storm suddenly felt smaller.
"Coalition—hold the line," Sinukuan commanded, her voice soft yet resolute. "This sea is ours. That sky—" she gestured toward the ascending palace, at the impossible geometry unfurling above the capital "—is next."
Across the water, the Adarna drew a deeper breath. The Yamato's turbines thundered a reply. The Naga's wakes braided like serpents poised to strike. The Philippine line reformed, battered yet unbowed, a wall of ships at the threshold of a world that had chosen to lift itself into the air.
The storm remembered silence. Then the sea, the air, and the hearts aboard those ships learned a new sound—the sound of a nation leveling every gun at heaven and refusing to blink.