The Ink of Pingkian

Bayani Series 2 | Emilio Jacinto's Fanfiction

Cathrina Allejo is an art restoration apprentice working in the dusty backrooms of a Manila museum, spent fixing the cracked canvas of long-dead artists. Her routine shatters when she is assigned an anonymous, unfinished oil painting dated 1898.

The painting depicts a hauntingly sparse scene: a sickly man lying pale on a wooden bed, while beside him, a faint, unfinished pencil sketch of a woman sits cradling his head - as if the artist ran out of time before she could ever paint herself into his life.

While delicately cleaning the canvas under a magnifying lens, Cathrina notices an anomaly - a single, wet-looking drop of crimson oil paint resting directly over the man's heart and hand. The moment her bare fingertips touch the wet red pigment, a violent tear in time rips open. The smell of turpentine turns into damp soil and ozone, dragging Cathrina backward into the brutal, blood-soaked spring of 1897.

Landed in the war-torn thickets of Laguna, Cathrina barely survives a deadly encounter with Spanish imperial patrols before being rescued by a band of secret revolutionaries. Among them is their frail yet formidable commander - Emilio Jacinto, the legendary Utak ng Katipunan.