Prologue
La Riojo, 3:27 A.M.
He hadn’t meant to stop the car.
Jayson Dizon sat in the driver’s seat, engine humming, headlights casting long shadows across the narrow provincial road. Fog kissed the windshield like breath on glass, and the night air carried something colder than the mountain breeze.
He didn’t know why his hands trembled.
He didn’t know why his chest ached.
He didn’t even know why he was here.
Except he did.
Somewhere past the bend was Oliva—the land of his birth, the place his family never spoke of except in warnings and half-curses. He had been told, more than once, “Wag ka nang bumalik doon, anak. Walang matitira sa’tin kundi sakit.” But something older than reason had taken the wheel, and now here he was, staring down the road like it might devour him.
He reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a crumpled photo. Black and white. Faded at the edges. A wedding. The man in the middle had his face—same jawline, same defiant tilt of the head. Jeffrey Dizon, the uncle he never met. The one who bled out on the church steps.
And then there was the other name—Jerry Dizon. His grandfather. The man who vanished. They said he was kidnapped by men in plain clothes and buried somewhere no light could reach. Some called it a rumor. Some, punishment. But Jayson? He didn’t know anymore.
All he knew was this:
Since childhood, he had dreams of suffocating in the dark.
Of digging upward through soil that never gave.
Of screaming without sound.
He killed the engine. Silence bloomed.
The air grew heavier as he stepped out. Gravel crunched beneath his boots. And far in the distance, beyond the kapok trees, beyond the moonlit slope—he swore he saw a house. The silhouette was crooked, like it had been waiting too long. Waiting for someone who promised to return.
Jayson’s pulse beat in his ears.
Something in him whispered:
“You were buried once. This time, you dig.”
And with that, he walked toward the ghost of a home—and the past that refused to stay dead.
