The sun was already low in the sky by the time Lucban’s boots touched Philippine soil again.
He and his men had returned in silence, spirits lifted by the agreement they had made in Japan. From their perspective, they had coerced the Japanese into a signing a deal that was favorable towards them.
The vague language used granted them an excuse to renege on the deal after the Americans had been driven from their shores.
If the Japanese wanted to use this agreement as a way to incorporate the Philippines into their domain, they had another thing coming.
The ferry they had used to land was unmarked; one of many ghost ships making their quiet runs in and out of the archipelago under cover of night.
Japanese cargo sat buried beneath crates of dried rice, bundled fish, and rotting fruit; tools of war smuggled in under the guise of peasant commerce.
Lucban had thought his mind would be occupied with the consequences of that handshake; of how the Japanese would react when they realized they had been hoodwinked.
But his thoughts were interrupted prematurely by A young courier who was waiting for them in the jungle clearing where their trucks were hidden.
Barefoot, shaking, his trousers stained with sweat and blood, the boy could barely form words as he thrust a crumpled telegram into Lucban’s hand.
The others gathered around as their commander opened it beneath the orange haze of a kerosene lamp.
The message was brief. The village is gone. Everyone.
No coordinates. No signature. No need for either.
Lucban’s lips moved silently, mouthing the names of the women and old men who had stayed behind.
The children. The wives of fighters. The old widow who had once hid his rifle beneath her floorboards and offered him a bowl of sinigang with trembling hands.
His silence told the others all they needed to know. One of his lieutenants, Tomas, cursed and kicked over a jerrycan.
Another, quieter soul named Silvestre, simply sat down and lit a cigarette, his hands trembling so badly the flame nearly caught his shirt.
"They shelled it?" Tomas finally asked.
Lucban nodded once. "Artillery. Followed by a sweep."
Silvestre took a long drag of his cigarette. "So. We’re not insurgents anymore."
Lucban didn’t answer. Instead, he folded the telegram and tucked it into his breast pocket. Then he turned and walked toward the nearest truck.
"Where are we going?" one of the others called after him.
Lucban didn’t look back. "To see what’s left."
The ride took six hours. It should’ve taken less, but the mountain roads had flooded during the last storm, and they had to navigate the wreckage of a broken bridge.
By the time they reached the outskirts of the village, dawn was beginning to break across the rice paddies.
They stopped a kilometer out. No one spoke.
The smoke was still rising.
Lucban dismounted first, his boots crunching on cinders and scorched gravel. The others followed slowly, stepping over splinters of bamboo and half-buried pieces of clay pots.
Here and there, the smell of burnt meat still clung to the earth, mingling with the iron tang of dried blood.
The village was silent.
Not a single dog barked. Not a single rooster crowed.
At the edge of the wreckage, Lucban knelt beside what had once been a home.
He reached out and picked up a half-melted pair of glasses from the dirt, then looked away as Tomas cursed behind him and kicked at the blackened skeleton of a hut.
They found no survivors. Only corpses buried shallowly where the blast waves had flung them; some in pieces, others simply burned where they stood.
No weapons. No soldiers. No fighters.
"Nothing here but ghosts," Silvestre said.
Lucban stood slowly. His face was calm, but his hands were shaking.
"No," he said. "There is something here."
He pointed to the remnants of the well; cracked open by a shell, still steaming slightly in the dawn light. "This place was a symbol. They wanted to erase it."
Tomas spat on the ground. "Then we give them a new one."
Lucban nodded. But it wasn’t a yearning for justice that burned behind his eyes. It was something deeper. Older.
The cold, calculating hatred of a man who no longer fought for victory, but for retribution written in blood and carved into memory.
"They want the world to forget us," he said. "To reduce us to shadows, whispers, numbers in a report. They want to bomb away our names."
The men around him said nothing. They waited.
Lucban slowly stepped onto the blackened foundation of the old church at the center of the village. His voice rose; not in anger, but in solemn finality.
"Then let them hear us. Let them know our names. Let them hear the truth in gunfire and feel it in every knife between their ribs. We are Anak ng Silangan! Not ghosts! Sons of the east! And we will make this land bleed with the memory of its people!"
"Burn their rail lines. Strike their garrisons. Poison their wells. Do not die clean deaths in empty fields; kill them in the cities, in the roads, in the silence of their guarded halls. Make their children weep the way ours have."
It was Tomas who raised his rifle first.
"To the dead," the others echoed.
Lucban looked east, toward the rising sun. "And to the living who will never forget them."
That night, a U.S. convoy was ambushed on the road to San Pablo.
A fuel truck went up first, engulfing three armored cars in a wall of fire. The screams of the dying echoed off the jungle for miles.
The survivors tried to regroup; but before they could rally, they were cut down by accurate, disciplined rifle fire from an unseen ridge.
One soldier, crawling for cover, tripped a wire. The resulting explosion threw half his squad into the tree line.
Only two Americans escaped; and not for long. One died of his wounds on the trail. The other was found two days later, strung up from a tree by his ankles, with a note carved into his chest.
For every village you burn, we will raise ten of yours in flame.
The message was signed with three words scorched into the bark beneath him, in a script both unmistakable and terrifying in its resurgence: