London & The High Seas, 1913-1914
The psychic vision of the merged Ikannuna faded, leaving a residue of cosmic ice in Enki's veins. The Prosecution was ready. The storm was engineered. But a Witness does not merely watch the prosecution; he seeks out the evidence for the defense.
In the reading room of the British Museum, a different kind of signal, faint but persistent, pulled at him. It was in the margins of colonial reports from the Philippines. Not politics or trade, but whispers of a religious ferment that defied categorization. A "colorum" movement. A preacher named "Manalo." The language used by the baffled Spanish friars and American officials was telling: "stubborn," "unapproved," "drawing huge crowds with a simplified doctrine." They were describing a phenomenon their institutional minds could not process.
To the Ikannuna, it would be noise. To Enki, it was a frequency.
He booked passage on a steamer bound for Manila. The journey was a liminal space between two worlds. In the ship's salon, officers spoke of the inevitable "Great War" in Europe, of armies and alliances—the final, bloody flowering of Kur's ancient logic. But Enki stood at the prow, facing east, chasing a whisper.
He arrived in Manila in the sweltering summer of 1914. The air was thick with the smells of salt, dung, and frangipani. The news from Europe was a distant thunderhead on the horizon. But here, in the dusty streets of Punta, Santa Ana, the storm was already breaking—a storm of a different kind.
He asked for directions, not to a church, but to a street corner. And there he saw him. A man of the people, not in a pulpit, but on the earth. Fides Manalo. His voice was not the trained cadence of a priest, but the raw, compelling rhythm of a man who had found a well in the desert and could not help but shout for others to come and drink.
Enki moved to the edge of the crowd. He did not need his immortal senses to feel it. This was not another schism, another argument over the gilding on the cage.
This was the sound of the cage door being kicked off its hinges.
The Old World was in Europe, sharpening its bayonets and reciting its dogmas of death. But here, in the East, a new world was being born, speaking the old, forgotten language of life.
Scrapbook Entry: "I have followed the scent of a wildflower growing through a crack in the world's foundation. I came east fleeing a storm of steel, and I have found a different tempest—one of spirit. The Prosecution assembles its final argument in the West. I will bear witness to the Defense's opening statement here."