Long before the first church bells rang over Manila, when the Pasig River ran clear and the islands knew no name but the ones whispered in dreams, there was a village that learned to fear the dark.

The children were the first to notice. They would wake with their mouths tasting of wet earth, their small hands clutching fistfuls of black silt that hadn't been there when they slept. The fishermen spoke of nets that came up heavy with corpses that looked freshly drowned, though no one had gone missing. The shamans burned herbs and chanted, but the shadows between the bamboo huts grew teeth.

A young healer named Dumalaki walked alone to the oldest balete tree at the forest's edge. He pressed his ear to its gnarled roots and listened to what lived beneath. The earth itself whispered back in a language of creaking branches and sighing wind. It called itself the First Hunger, though this was not its true name - merely the closest human tongues could come to naming something that existed before names.

"You build your fires and tell your stories," it murmured through the roots. "But you are temporary. I am what remains when the last ember dies."

Dumalaki returned to his people with an offer. The First Hunger would spare the village if one soul bound itself to the darkness forever. The shamans carved twelve bone masks from the ribs of a whale that had beached itself at the new moon. Twelve villagers would witness the binding. Twelve would remember the cost.

On the night of the ritual, they led Dumalaki to the black sand shore where the waves whispered secrets. The bone-masked figures formed a circle as Dumalaki waded into the water. The First Hunger rose to meet him - not as a monster, but as a reflection of every drowned face the villagers had ever known.

"Speak the words," it said with a hundred mouths.

Dumalaki began the chant. The silver nails glinted in the moonlight, waiting to seal the pact. But as the first nail touched Dumalaki's palm, Spanish ships appeared on the horizon, their lanterns burning like unnatural stars.

The guardians panicked. They drove the nails too soon, in the wrong order. Dumalaki's scream tore the night in two as the half-finished ritual twisted inward. The First Hunger, cheated of its bargain, seeped into the cracks of their broken oath. And Dumalaki? His love for his people curdled into something darker, something that would one day be called the Hollow King.

The box they crafted afterward was never meant to be a prison. It was a bridge - a way for the twelve guardians to feed their suffering to the Hollow King, to keep him strong enough to hold the door shut. But the First Hunger is patient. It learned to whisper through the box in voices that sounded like loved ones. It turned memory into lies, and lies into scripture.

Generations passed. The Spanish built their churches over the old places. The guardians' descendants forgot everything except the fear. Only the lullabies remained, their words worn smooth as river stones, still carrying the shape of the truth.

Somewhere beneath Manila, the First Hunger waits. It counts the years by the weakening of the seal. It learns from every nightmare, every whispered fear. And when the last guardian falls, it will teach the world what hunger truly means.

The five bells begin to toll. Their sound shakes dust from forgotten carvings in the undercroft. The twelfth skeleton's jaw creaks open, its voice the rasp of waves on a black sand shore:

"Now you know why the Hollow King weeps in his prison. Now you know what price must be paid."

The time for stories is over.