Prologue: The Fall of the Bakunawa
Isle of Immortals Book One · Filipino Mythology Romantasy
by Ayin Quijano
Once, there were seven moons in the sky.
Then something devoured them.
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Once upon a time, there were seven moons in the sky. Each moon was fated to a daughter of Bathala, king of the gods, and each took her turn illuminating the earth one night a week. Together, the seven moon goddesses governed the tides and the flow of magic. They kept the balance between night-bound immortals and powerless humans.
They were beloved.
They were radiant.
And they were beautiful.
So much so that they drew prayers from mortals and envy from gods.
Despite their gifts, the seven sister goddesses were more vulnerable than other celestial beings. Where the sun god wore molten fire like armor, and the star goddess could blink across realms at the first hint of danger, the moons remained slow, luminous, and exposed.
When Mayari—eldest and strongest of the seven—lost an eye in a battle with a jealous god, the vulnerability of the moons could no longer be ignored. If even she could be wounded, her sisters stood little chance against those who envied their beauty.
So Bathala called upon the Bakunawa.
They were the strongest immortal clan with the purest magic on earth. In their true forms, they were magnificent dragons, with wings stretching wide enough to eclipse stars.
Bathala anointed them as Guardians of the Moons.
They ascended to the heavens and coiled around the moons like living constellations. They chased away jealous spirits and devouring shadows. They stood between the moon goddesses and all who sought to claim or diminish them. For a thousand years, they were fiercely loyal and fulfilled their duty, bound not by fear of the gods but by honor and kinship.
Until one night, the sky burned.
One moon vanished from the heavens.
Five of the seven moons were dead.
There was no warning—no prophecy sung, no omen written in the stars. Heaven and earth just trembled as charred moons fell from the heavens and plunged into the sea, one after another, in blazing arcs of fire.
The impact sent waves crashing against distant shores, flooding villages and splitting coastlines. Islands formed. Smoke and ash darkened the skies. Below, people emerged from their homes, coughing from the acrid smell of fire and brimstone, and watched the heavens in terror.
At the heart of chaos was Laho, King of the Bakunawa.
The golden-scaled dragon had gone mad with grief.
And for the first time in his existence, Laho was spewing purple fire.
Purple fire—known only to dragon kings—could burn anything in the cosmos, even kill goddesses. Laho’s molten gaze lifted to the last moon, Mayari, brightest of the seven, her silver light wavering as smoke drifted past her.
“Laho!”
Bakos, second eldest of the clan, reached him first, his blue wings beating furiously as he placed himself between Laho and Mayari.
“Enough, brother. This madness must end!”
“You are right. Tonight, it ends,” Laho sneered. “All the moons will pay for their treachery.”
“There is no betrayal here,” Bakos pleaded. “Whatever you believe—this is not the truth.”
“Truth?” Laho’s laugh was sharp, broken. “Do you not see that she is lost, brother?”
The other Bakunawa arrived then, hearts pounding with dread as they took in the ruined heavens.
“They cast her down,” Laho reminded each of them with a glance, his voice shaking with fury. “My mate. My light. Condemned her to wander beyond our universe, torn from her place without trial, without mercy.”
Bakos faltered. “Laho… the goddesses would not—”
“I begged them for answers,” Laho snarled. “They were silent. Every one of them. Even when I pleaded. When I knelt.”
The word knelt tasted like blood.
“They watched as she was stripped of the sky she loved,” he said. “And you would have me believe the moons knew nothing? That they stood innocent while my beloved was cast from the heavens like a forgotten prayer? They knew and did nothing. They don’t deserve to grace the skies!”
Sarmiento, the steadfast guardian with scales of deep indigo, moved to Bakos’ side, his expression grave. “Brother, if the last moon falls, darker things will claim the night. Immortals that prey on humans will roam freely. Oceans will rise and swallow the earth. You know this.”
“They took my mate away from me!” Laho’s voice cracked, raw with pain.
Kidlat, the black-scaled seer, shifted closer. “Brother, I have looked into what was and what may yet be.” He continued carefully, “There are… uncertainties surrounding your lost mate’s fate. The heart scale you gave her… it’s the key to unraveling the truth you seek. Some things are not what they seem.”
For the briefest moment, doubt flickered in Laho’s eyes.
Then a voice—soft, familiar, beloved—curled through his mind.
They conspired against us, it whispered.
They envied us and feared what our bond could become.
Avenge me.
Laho’s doubt shattered.
“Make a choice,” he growled at his kin. “Stand with your king, or get out of my way.”
Bakos’ heart broke. He could see in Laho’s unhinged, hungry eyes that he was lost to them. “You leave us no choice, brother. We must protect Mayari, even if it means fighting you.”
Laho’s nose steamed. “Move.”
“Protect the last moon!” Bakos shouted.
The Bakunawa moved as one, forming a living arc around Mayari, their magic intertwining, their wings overlapping in defiance.
“Do not make us your enemies, Laho,” Lidagat, their youngest, begged. Turquoise tears, like her scales, glimmered with starlight as they fell to the ocean. “We are family. We are Guardians of the Moons. Not monsters. Don’t you hear them?”
Moon-eater! Goddess killer!
The night echoed with the cries of the tribes below. They banged pots and gongs in a desperate attempt to distract, or even scare, the Bakunawa away from eating the last moon. Others played trembling melodies, pleading for mercy, praying the moon-eating dragon would succumb to sleep until Bathala came to set things right.
Laho answered with fire. Red in warning.
Bakos countered with blue flames. The two forces clashed in a thunderous explosion that lit up the sky. Stars flickered, uncertain whether to remain.
The other Bakunawa joined the fray. Sarmiento attacked with a series of powerful strikes, his tail lashing out like a whip. Silver twins Habagat and Amihan, swift as the winds, summoned beams of moonlight to bind Laho’s movements, while Kidlat channeled bolts of lightning to sap Laho’s strength.
But Laho’s fury seemed unstoppable, his power fueled by grief too vast to contain. He broke free of the moonlight bindings and roared. “Traitors! All of you. You will die with the moons!”
“Give this up, brother!” Sarmiento shouted in desperation. “This is not the way!”
Mayari couldn’t bear to watch the dragons’ fallout any longer. She descended, her light dimmed by tears.
“Mayari, stay back!” Amihan and Habagat tried to shield her, but Mayari continued forward.
“Laho,” she called, her voice trembling. “We loved her too. You guarded us for a thousand years. How could you believe we would wish her gone?”
For a heartbeat, Laho hesitated.
Then the whisper returned.
She lies.
Only you loved me.
End her or they will do to you what they did to me.
With a roar that split the sky, Laho lunged toward the last moon. Eyes blazing. Talons raised. Golden scales reflecting red, then blue, as a torrent of purple fire streamed from his mouth.
“Lidagat, now!” ordered Bakos.
Lidagat summoned the ocean. A roaring vortex surged upward, wrapping around Laho with crushing force.
The Bakunawa formed a circle and channeled their combined power to the vortex. Not to strike Laho down, but to contain the fire he had become.
Laho may have been the strongest among them, but it was an ancient truth of their kind: no king, no matter how powerful, could stand against the will of the clan.
“Forgive us, brother,” they whispered. They could feel it. The inevitability.
When the last purple flames were spent, Laho was gone.
The Bakunawa King was dead.
Laho’s once majestic form was burned away by the very power he had unleashed, reduced to ash and embers drifting into the dark sea.
The Bakunawa hovered in stunned silence. Their victory was hollow, their spirits broken, their duty done at the greatest cost.
In the darkest hour, before dawn, Bathala descended. His gaze swept across the devastation—the fallen moons, the weeping Mayari, and the shattered dragons.
“You were entrusted with my daughters,” he said, his voice echoing through the cosmos. “And yet you let the night fall into ruin.”
“The night bears wounds that will not close,” Bathala continued. “The sky can no longer hold those who failed to keep its balance.”
Power thundered through the air. The stars shuddered. The sea below answered with a low, distant roar.
“Those who cannot remain in the heavens,” Bathala said, “must return to the depths.”
The Bakunawa kept their heads bowed. They did not argue that they were not part of Laho’s plan, nor did they lament that they saved the last moon at the cost of a brother and king. Grief had stolen their defense.
“You will be bound to the depths of the ocean, bearing a new form that reflects the darkness here tonight,” Bathala declared, and the Bakunawa felt the turn of fate.
Their dragon forms twisted, their brilliant scales dulled, and their wings shrank as they transformed into serpentine sea creatures, shadows of their former selves.
Bathala’s voice came once more—lower now, final.
“For saving Mayari, you will retain your immortality and magic. Each full moon, you may rise and revisit the skies. But for each ascent, you will relive the night you failed, when the sky broke under your watch and the moons died. What was broken will not be forgotten.”
The Bakunawa fell, one by one, into the ocean’s embrace. The stars retreated beyond their reach.
Without the guardians, Mayari also retreated higher to the heavens and hid among the stars. She wept long after her father and the dragons left. While she mourned the loss of her sisters, she also could not bear the fall of the Bakunawa.
They were heroes in her eyes. They saved her. They were valiant beings with loyal hearts. Even for the misguided Laho, she understood his rage and knew that the love he had for the lost moon was true.
But Mayari knew her father. Once spoken, her father’s word would not bend. So it was up to her now to help the Bakunawa. She considered Laho’s tragic fate and thought—
If love could make a monster out of the purest beings, then perhaps it was also powerful enough to undo a cursed fate.
So Mayari dreamed and plotted. And the lone moon glowed once more.
AUTHOR’S NOTE 🌙
Hello, I’m Ayin — your storyteller.
And if the fall of the Bakunawa is still echoing in your chest… good. That means it’s working.
I’m so glad you’re here.
Now let me tell you where this story began.
I grew up in Cebu, and like many Filipino kids (at least during my time), my earliest memories of the Bakunawa weren’t from books. They were from threats.
I was one of those kids who hated naps. I mean, why sleep when you could play?
But my Yaya had a very effective strategy when I would resist or escape. She’d whisper, “If you don’t sleep, the Bakunawa will come out and eat you, just like it did the moon.”
And then there were the nights we played too long in the streets. We were kids without smartphones — electricity wasn’t even that stable — so we’d play tubig-tubig and bulan-bulan by moonlight, drawing water lines on the ground, chasing each other until someone’s mother or Kuya would come get us. And if we didn’t go home that instant? We were told the Bakunawa would eat us too.
We’d look up at the full moon — see the shadows, the dark spots — and shriek all the way home.
Yep, I totally fell for it. And honestly? Looking back, that was a good thing. Because those nights were the beginning of my fascination with the dragon.
As I got older, I stopped being afraid of the Bakunawa — and started being curious about him.
Why would he eat the moon — really?
What if we had it wrong?
What is his side of the story?
And so what if he were a monster — did that mean he could never change?
I’ve always been drawn to the strange, the outcast, the misunderstood. Maybe you are too.
Bakunawa’s Curse is my answer to those questions.
And when you can’t quite accept that dragons eat moons just out of jealousy — and you want them to have a love life — well. You write it.
So, what exactly is a Bakunawa?
For those who didn’t grow up with this myth…
The Bakunawa is one of the most feared creatures in Philippine mythology — believed to cause eclipses and earthquakes.
And unlike Western dragons with limbs, claws, and bat-like wings, the Bakunawa is a serpentine sea dragon — limbless, with two sets of fin-like wings.
Imagine a massive, ancient snake that can fly toward the moon. That is the Bakunawa.
There are actually several versions of this myth. In one, the Bakunawa ate the moon to avenge the death of its sibling, a giant sea turtle. In another, it was a sea goddess who fell in love with a moon god, was ignored, and transformed into a dragon out of heartbreak and rage.
The version I grew up with — the Cebuano, Visayan version — is the one I used as my foundation: the Bakunawa devoured six of the seven moons, either captivated by their beauty or envious of Bathala’s creations, depending on who’s telling it.
But this book doesn’t just retell that story. It asks what came before it.
Bakunawa’s Curse is an origin story. And I’ve taken some creative liberties — the biggest one being that the Bakunawa in this world isn’t a single creature but an entire clan of dragons. You’ll discover what that means as the story unfolds.
Philippine myths are our stories. And they deserve to be told.
I hope you enjoy this retelling as much as I loved writing it. Leave me a comment below and let me know what you think — I read every single one.
Coming up next is Chapter 1: Daughters of the Moon. Seven women. One monster. And a hunt that will change everything.
Till the next story!
❤️Ayin
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🌙 Thank you for reading. The moon is watching.
© Ayin Quijano. All rights reserved.
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