Chapter 1: Daughters of the Moon
Isle of Immortals Book One · Filipino Mythology Romantasy
by Ayin Quijano
Seven women. A dark witch with a secret.
And a hunt that will change everything.
⟪ Prologue |📚 Table of Contents | Next Chapter ⟫
The forest knew they were coming.
Liya felt it the moment she slipped beneath the canopy—the silence snapping shut too fast, too clean, as if the night itself had decided to hold its breath. Cicadas cut off mid-song. Even the moonlight seemed reluctant to follow, breaking unevenly through the leaves in pale, fractured strips.
They had hunted worse things in the Kagubatan than an old immortal witch, but that did not comfort Liya.
They were not welcome here.
Six shadows moved with her—silent, disciplined, deadly.
The air smelled of damp earth and rot, undercut by something coppery. Anticipation, Liya thought. Or fear.
This was where villagers didn’t dare to walk. Where children went missing and elders pretended not to know why. Somewhere deeper within, something skittered—and then went quiet again.
“Tell me again why we’re walking into this cursed forest that smells like the dead and bad decisions just to see an old hag,” Luningning muttered from behind.
Liya didn’t turn around. “Because she knows where the Bakunawa is.”
Three nights.
They had three nights before the full moon and the Halad.
Three nights to fulfill their mission.
“Just saying,” Amaya murmured from Liya’s left, adjusting the leather straps across her chest, “if this bruha turns out to be another wild river rumor, I’m feeding your informant to the Bakunawa.” She paused. “That is, if we ever capture that bleeding dragon in this lifetime.”
Liya didn’t slow. Her bare feet made no sound against the loam. “Don’t lose hope. Magindara doesn’t lie.”
“Magindara hoards,” Amaya corrected. “There’s a difference.”
A faint smile tugged at Liya’s mouth. Magindara, a siren who frequented the southeast river bends, loved gems, shells, and anything that caught moonlight. She traded secrets the way others traded food. And in all the years Liya had known her, Magindara had never once fed her false information.
Overtaking them, Hana whispered, “If this bruha doesn’t have what we need, I swear to the Moon I’m setting something on fire.”
The others glanced at her.
“What?” Hana blinked innocently. “I’m just saying. Like Maya.”
“You say that every hunt,” Yumi murmured. “You have the patience of a rabid civet.”
“It’s called passion.”
Luningning snorted softly. “You called it passion the last time you nearly burned down our kitchen.”
“That pot deserved it.”
Soft laughter rippled through the line, quickly swallowed by the forest.
Liya let them banter. Hearing them steadied her the way prayer once had. These women—her sisters—were the reason her breathing stayed even, the reason the pulse in her throat did not betray her unease.
Seven orphans. Sisters by heart.
Chosen and raised by Inang Tala, High Babaylan of Tribu Mayari, and trained to hunt immortals since childhood.
They wore the same attire they always did when blood was expected: dark woven wraps reinforced with leather, light enough to move, strong enough to turn claws. Lunar sigils were stitched into hems and collars, invisible unless moonlight struck them just right. Each wore an anting-anting at the throat, warm now and humming softly.
Ahead, the balete tree loomed.
It rose like a cathedral of bone and bark, its roots arching above the soil, thick and knotted, veined with age and old blood. The air grew heavier here, magic clinging like damp cloth. Fireflies hovered low, pulsing faintly, uncertain whether to flee or bear witness.
“This is it,” Elena whispered, kneeling to touch the soil. “She’s close.”
Yumi flexed her grip on her shield. “Good. We’re running out of time.”
Three days. Three nights.
Inang Tala wanted a Bakunawa’s scale laid before the altar at the Halad—a keystone, god-marked and dangerous, without which Puksa, the weapon meant to kill a Bakunawa, could not be forged.
“How close?” Sora asked.
“Close enough to hear us if we’re stupid.”
Hana grinned. “Good thing we’re charming.”
“Focus,” Liya said quietly. “Let’s follow the fireflies.”
They obeyed at once.
She felt it then—old magic, heavy and sour, pressing against her senses. Some immortals hid behind beauty or blessing. This one did not.
Bruha was the word whispered for immortal witches who had crossed too many lines.
Liya raised her fist. They halted.
“Duwende,” Elena murmured, feeling the earth again. “More than a dozen. Guarding her.”
“Why is it always duwende?” Luningning groaned.
“They’re loyal,” Hana said. “And they bite.”
Liya’s fingers closed around her yantok—matched fighting sticks carved from dark wood and etched with faint lunar runes. Blessed beneath a full moon. Bound to the same quiet force as their anting-anting.
She stepped forward, lifting her voice.
“Come out,” Liya called. “We’re not here to burn the forest or spill unnecessary blood.”
The ground shifted.
Duwendes poured from the shadows, crawling from roots and stone. Small beings with skin like coal, mouths stretched wide in grins that promised pain. One cocked its head, studying Liya with unsettling intelligence.
“This land is protected,” it hissed. “Leave.”
“We come in peace,” Liya said, her stick held low. “We only want to speak to the bruha.”
The duwendes charged.
“So much for diplomacy,” Amaya muttered—then leapt.
The clearing erupted.
Liya moved without thinking, her body answering years of training. She ducked under a snapping jaw and drove her yantok into a duwende’s throat. Bone cracked. Magic unraveled, and the creature fell hard and dissolved into black dust before it hit the ground.
Good.
Around her, the Daughters fought like a storm breaking apart.
“Moon take them,” Amaya said cheerfully as she vaulted off a root, landing squarely on a duwende’s shoulders and snapping its neck with a twist.
To her left, Yumi spun twin blades in smooth arcs, laughing breathlessly as she danced away from grasping hands. “You’re slow!” she called, slashing low.
“Ning, your braid’s coming loose,” Hana called out as she cocked and released arrows from behind them, each shaft glowing faintly as it struck true.
“During a fight?” Luningning laughed, spinning her spear and skewering two duwendes at once. “How rude.”
Sora slammed her shield into the ground, sending a ripple through the earth. Three duwendes stumbled, howling as the ground turned against them. “After this, I want rice cakes. The honeyed kind.”
“Seriously? Dreaming of food in the middle of combat?” Elena paused, one knee pressed into a duwende’s back. “You’re unbelievable.”
“Deadly and hungry,” Sora nodded solemnly. “A tragedy.”
Elena just shook her head, then continued humming an old lullaby as she crushed a spine.
The Daughters were terrifying.
Still, the duwendes kept coming.
“They’re stalling us!” Liya snapped, catching a duwende mid-air as it leapt for her throat, claws flashing. She pivoted and slammed it into a root hard enough to crack bone.
A scream rose from the balete.
The roots parted.
The bruha emerged.
She was tall, draped in tattered white like burial shrouds. Ancient symbols were carved into her skin, glowing faintly. Her eyes burned gold.
“Daughters of the Moon,” she crooned. “You’ve finally come to visit.”
Liya advanced, her anting-anting growing warmer against her skin. “Where is the Bakunawa hiding?” she demanded.
The bruha laughed softly. “Straight to business. No greetings? No respect for elders?”
Another duwende lunged. Liya decapitated it without looking. “I don’t respect immortals who hide behind children of the earth.”
The bruha’s eyes flicked to the fallen duwende, something like irritation flashing across her face. “They offered themselves.”
“They were coerced,” Liya corrected angrily. “Where is the Bakunawa?”
The bruha studied her. “Are you never tired of hunting us, child?”
The question struck deeper than Liya expected.
Tired.
She had been killing dark immortals since she was seven.
“Yes,” Liya said before she could stop herself. “But that doesn’t matter. Not until the Bakunawa is dead.”
“You think killing the Bakunawa would save the world, free you,” the bruha clucked her tongue. “The dragon is not your enemy.”
“You’re wasting time.” Liya reached for Tagam, the blade singing as it cleared its sheath. “Talk.”
The bruha’s eyes widened in recognition. “That blade…Tagam…it can…”
“Kill immortals,” Liya finished for her.
“You hunt the wrong monsters,” the bruha said hoarsely.
“Where.Is.The.Dragon’s.Lair?” Liya bit out.
The bruha began to glow, then screamed.
Liya struck.
Tagam pierced the bruha’s heart.
She did not bleed.
She unraveled.
Gold dust poured from her body—thick, luminous, sacred. The fighting stopped. The forest went utterly still.
God-touched.
As the bruha came apart, she whispered, “Do you know who you are, Liya?”
Liya hesitated.
The bruha knew her name.
“What do you know about me?” Liya demanded.
“I knew your mother.”
The world narrowed.
“You were never meant to be just a killer,” the bruha whispered. “You were meant for something greater.”
Liya’s grip tightened.
She did not let herself ask.
“A mountain by the sea,” the bruha finally said. “Cliffside. Where the Moon hangs close enough to touch. Find the Bakunawa and meet your destiny.”
With her last breath, the gold dust scattered into roots and soil, vanishing as if the bruha had never existed.
Silence fell.
The duwendes fled.
Behind her, the Daughters regrouped—bloodied, breathing hard, alive.
Not for the first time, Liya wondered what it would be like if the killing ever ended.
When the Bakunawa was dead.
When there were no more monsters left to hunt.
Liya looked up at the Moon.
It watched her.
Unblinking. It did not answer.
AUTHOR’S NOTE🌙
Hello, I’m Ayin — your storyteller.
Today, we met Liya. What do you think of her so far?
She’s fierce, clearly. Disciplined. Uncompromising.
But did you catch that moment when the bruha asked her: “Are you never tired of hunting us, child?” And Liya said yes — before she could stop herself?
That small, unguarded word—it’s everything.
Because beneath all that training and purpose and blade-sharp certainty… there’s a woman who is exhausted.
She’s been doing this since she was seven years old.
And somewhere deep inside, she’s starting to wonder what comes after.
I’ve always been drawn to women like that. Women with strength and purpose — but also wounds they’ve learned to carry so well that no one thinks to ask about them.
That’s who I wanted to write. A warrior who bleeds — and not just in battle. A woman who is fierce and tired.
Both things, at once, entirely true.
Now, let me share with you how Liya came to be.
Our female main character was inspired by one of the most notable figures in Philippine mythology: Haliya, the masked goddess of the moon.
Not soft. Not gentle.
Fierce.
In the old stories, there were once seven moons in the sky.
And one by one, a great sea serpent — the Bakunawa — devoured them.
Until only one remained.
Haliya.
She knew she would be hunted next.
So she forged a mask — some say of gold, others say of moonlight itself — and wore it always, to hide her beauty from the creature that had swallowed her siblings.
She wore the mask — not to hide in fear, but to protect herself… so she could keep fighting.
And she did.
She became the Bakunawa’s rival.
Watching. Opposing. Never yielding.
Because that is what Haliya does: she endures.
So when I sat down to write Liya — this fierce, exhausted, relentless hunter who has been killing dark immortals since she was a child — Haliya was already in her bones.
The mask. That was what stayed with me.
Haliya doesn’t hide her beauty because she’s ashamed of it. She masks herself as strategy. As protection. As the price of survival in a world that would devour her if it could.
And isn’t that what so many of us do?
We put on our armor. We project strength. We become so good at being the capable one, the reliable one, the one who holds everything together — that people forget to ask what’s underneath.
Liya is a woman who has been wearing that mask since she was seven.
This story, in part, is about what happens when someone finally asks her to take it off.
I hope, as you follow her journey, you think about the masks you wear. And whether you’re ready to let someone see what’s underneath.
You don’t have to be ruthless to be strong. You don’t have to be fearless to be brave. You just have to keep going.
One more night.
One more hunt.
One more step.
Like Haliya.
Like Liya.
Like you.
Liya’s story is only beginning.
And in the next chapter… we finally meet the Bakunawa.
If you like to listen to the audio, Bakunawa’s Curse is also streaming now at Ayinisms Story Podcast on Spotify. If you enjoy visuals, you can also watch it at the Ayinisms Story Channel on YouTube.
Subscribe to this website so you don’t miss what comes next.
Till the next story!
❤️Ayin
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🤔 Fierce and tired. Both things, at once, entirely true. Which one are you carrying more of today?
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🌙 Thank you for reading. The moon is watching.
© Ayin Quijano. All rights reserved.
Ayin Quijano 
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