Overlord of the Four Powers

Chapter 1: San Roque, a place of mystery

When Alkan Buena showed up in San Roque, people couldn’t help but talk. He was a stranger, dressed too well for the small, dusty town, and the way he carried himself made everyone curious.

Although curious, they had no guts to ask the newcomer especially when he brought the old mansion in the middle of the woods which was the home of the fallen Buena clan.

It was said that whoever brought the house will bear the wrath of the gods.

But Alkan thought that even before arriving to this old and remote town, he had already been a hardbringer of bad luck.

It's because two months ago, his parents died in an accident, his elder sister died in her sleep, and his older brother died of an illness. Due to consecutive deaths of his family members, the debt they left behind all fell on his shoulders.

He had no choice but to sell his properties and bring his wife, Valeria, into his old hometown. In order to bring food to the table, Alkan decided to become Manual Jimenez's business partner.

So he got up early this morning and prepared to visit the Jimenez clan. Cold air seeped onto his old jacket as Alkan stood in front of a huge mansion.

The sun had not yet risen, and several roosters had been crowing in the distance.

Looking at the mansion, he wasn’t surprised by Jimenez's wealth; after all, he had once lived in San Roque and knew exactly who ran the town.

“Good day, sir.” A guard approached him with a smile. “How can I help you?”

“I'm Alkan Buena. Is Mr. Manuel inside?”

The man paused for a moment before nodding. “You must be Mr. Buena. Sir Manuel has been expecting you.”

Not long after, Alkan found himself inside Manuel’s car. He was seated in the passenger seat while Manuel was driving the car around San Roque.

“That’s the old cemetery. Do you know the story of this place?” Manuel suddenly asked.

Alkan glanced out the window, his eyes landing first on the archway at the cemetery entrance. The inscription on the arch was unreadable, except for one word that caught his attention: Batumbakal.

According to the elders, all the graves here contained only banana trunks, as the balbal had devoured the freshly buried bodies.

“There are no bones inside that cemetery,” Alkan said, his eyes narrowing as he stared at the entrance. He thought he saw someone standing inside, but in the blink of an eye, the figure vanished. He frowned. An illusion?

“That’s what some say,” Manuel replied. “But they never considered that perhaps the people buried in the old cemetery might still be alive.”

Alkan quickly turned to Manuel, his heart racing. He remembered that his deceased friend was buried in that cemetery.

“What do you mean?” he asked, his voice serious.

Manuel glanced at him, chuckling when he saw the intensity in Alkan’s expression. “Just a theory. Pure imagination. It’s not real.” He restarted the car and drove away from the cemetery.

Looking into the rearview mirror, Alkan held his breath when he saw a man standing at the cemetery entrance. The man was dressed in a barong tagalog, staring directly at him!

Suddenly, the mysterious figure grinned and vanished from the mirror. Even so, Alkan’s heart pounded, and his face turned pale with fear.

What was that?!

“What’s wrong?” Manuel asked, though his tone suggested he wasn’t particularly worried about Alkan’s sudden pallor.

Alkan shook his head and exhaled deeply. He decided to act as if nothing happened.

They spent hours touring the entire town of San Roque. Their last stop was the San Roque River.

The river was located in a secluded sitio, rarely visited by people. According to Manuel, people avoided the river because of the belief that malevolent spirits lived beneath its waters.

“Once, a fisherman came to this river,” Manuel began. “He wanted to fish here, but before he could catch anything, he screamed in terror. He claimed to have seen a sirena eating someone’s entrails in this river. Since then, the Mayor has banned people from coming here because the townsfolk wanted to gather and capture the sirena in order to kill it.”

In folklore, a sirena or a mermaid is an aquatic creature with the head and upper body of a young female and a lower body that consists of a tail of a fish. Many people believe that a sirena is a deceptive maiden and men were her primary prey.

Alkan raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t anyone guarding the entrance?”

Since the Mayor banned this place, there should be someone guarding the entrance, right?

Manuel laughed. “No. People are too scared to come here alone so no one stood to guard this river. But don’t worry—I got permission from the Mayor.”

Alkan fell silent, unable to confirm if a sirena really haunted the peaceful river. He leaned on the railing of a small waiting shed, noticing a large, round rock beneath it.

Knowing that he had been haunted by strange shadows since young, Alkan was not that skeptical.

So he's not surprised when he saw a mermaid's tail hiding below the waters.

"Green tails," he muttered.

"What did you see?" Manuel asked and also leaned to look at the area he was looking at. "Did you find something special in this river?"

Manual was still looking below and Alkan could still see the green tails of the mermaid. Now, he was certain that only he could see those creatures.

Alkan shook his head.

By the time Manuel dropped Alkan, it was already dusk. The lights were turned on, and he saw Valeria standing at the doorway, waiting for him.

He smiled at her, but the expression vanished when he saw her frowning. “What’s wrong?” he asked, stopping in front of her.

She leaned closer to him and whispered, “There’s someone in my room.”

Alkan's sharp gaze snapped toward the house. "Is it human or...?"

"No, not human. I saw black feathers on my bed."

Alkan's gaze was complicated. He knew that his wife could sometimes see those strange creatures, but unlike him whom the third eye was wide open, Valeria only see glimpses.

It was the reason why he married her.

But black feathers? A black sawikin?

Sawikin is a tribe of winged men divided into two races: black winged tribe and white winged tribe. When Valeria saw black feathers, it means that the Sawikin who entered her room belonged to black winged tribe.

He quickly lead her towards the kitchen and hid her inside the secret room.

Alkan walked to the living room where he saw Gio, casually leaning against the door frame.

“Looks like someone broke into your house,” he said. His white wings were spread wide behind him.

Gio is part of the white winged tribe that followed him around when he first arrived in this old town. This creature is sent to ensure his safety.

“Black sawikin,” Alkan said, disdain's evident on his face.

Gio scoffed. “What did you do this time? Why is one of them here?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Alkan defended himself. “They just suddenly showed up in the house and even revealed themselves to Valeria. It’s a good thing they didn’t do anything to my wife, or I’d make them regret it.”

Gio’s eyes narrowed as his gaze traveled from the top of the staircase to the closed door where Valeria was hiding.

“They’re gone,” Gio suddenly said.

Alkan fell silent, frowning as he looked up at the staircase. He couldn’t hear any movement from upstairs. Could the black sawikin really left?

“A sawikin only leaves after they’ve accomplished what they came for. Didn’t your wife tell you anything?” Gio suddenly asked.

Alkan’s gaze shifted back to Gio. “What do you mean?"

“What else? If the sawikin didn’t come here for you, then they must have come for your wife. Didn’t she say anything else?”

Alkan thought for a moment, his eyes narrowing as he recalled something. “She found black feathers on her bed.”

“Black feathers?” Gio’s eyebrows shot up, and he looked thoughtful. “If she found black feathers on her bed, it only means someone bedded your wife." Gio hid his sly grin. “Looks like your wife cheated on you.”