MANILA, 2035.
A yawn in the shape of a city.
The air tastes like burnt plastic and broken promises. A cracked karaoke machine wails in the distance, it's singing the national anthem backwards. Somewhere, a three-star general sells sovereignty for cigarettes. The masses chant election jingles like hymns, dancing to the rhythm of their own decay.
A girl is found dead in a slum, somewhere she should never have been, and nowhere anyone was supposed to look.
The case does not unfold so much as it seeps: into the hands of a weary agent, into the obsessions of the dead girl's best friend, into the guilt-choked silence of a laborer who saw too much. And far from it all, in a decaying ancestral home that refuses to fall, a desperate heir seeks grace in whispered miracles.
Answers are not found at the end of this story. It is a story of what is buried, and who keeps digging.
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Book 1: Ghosts of the Living
Book 2: The Feast of Knives
Book 2 chapters releasing every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
Content Warning: Death, suicide, sexual content, substance abuse.
Language: Primarily in English, with occasional dialogue in Tagalog and Chinese. Context is always provided, no need to be multilingual to follow what's happening.
Setting: Near-future Manila.
Genre: Political Thriller/Literary Fiction