ICJacobo
They say that the way the heavens pair lovers as carefully and thoughtfully as how they arrange the stars in the sky. Some burn for eternity, some shine fast and intense, while some are never given a chance to align.
Born under a devoured moon, Tayaw is a child spared by the heavens themselves. Raised as a binukot, hidden from the world by a father haunted by loss and fear, she grows up knowing only ritual, song, and longing. Her life is bounded by woven curtains and a fate already chosen for her.
When she finally decides to escape her seclusion, disguised as a young man, she journeys toward a land she has only heard of in whispers. Along the way, she meets Francisco Sicat, a Christianized native and scholar traveling with a Jesuit priest, curious, gentle, and caught between old worlds and new faiths. Through him, Tayaw glimpses a different way of seeing the world: one shaped by books and prayers, doubt and devotion, and the uneasy promise of change.
Drawn together by chance and by longing, their paths begin to mirror the heavens above them. Like the sun and the moon, some souls are destined to follow the same course without ever fully meeting, pulled together by light, yet divided by belief, history, and fate.
Sikat ng Araw, Sinag ng Buwan is a Filipino myth of destiny and resistance, love and loss, set against the collision of ancient spirits and foreign gods. It is a story of two lives bound to a cycle older than time, and the question of whether, even for a fleeting moment, that cycle can be broken.