The Unsplit: Prologue
The sky hung thick with smoke and moonlight, and beneath the branches of the balete tree, something ancient stirred—not from hunger, but from fear.
Maya hadn’t split in months.
Her wings itched beneath her skin, her ribs tight with the pressure of transformation, but she couldn’t. Not anymore. The thing growing inside her—hers—rooted her to the ground like a curse. Or a promise.
The others called it blasphemy.
A manananggal does not carry life. She steals it.
A manananggal does not birth. She feeds.
But Maya had felt its pulse. Not prey. Not food. Something else.
They whispered she was changing.
That her blood had thickened with humanity.
That the child in her womb would be the undoing of their kind.
They would come for her—not just to punish her, but to consume what she carried.
Because manananggals crave unborn hearts… and hers was rumored to beat with prophecy.
And if they found her before the ninth moon?
They wouldn’t just kill her.
They’d feast.
The Unsplit: Part I: Blood in the Belly
The forest was quiet—but not empty.
Maya crouched beside the roots of a twisted balete tree, sweat clinging to her skin, her breath trembling like the leaves above her. Her belly, full and taut beneath a threadbare daster, shifted.
The baby kicked.
She bit down a scream.
“Stay quiet,” she whispered, cradling her stomach. “Please… not yet.”
Her wings pulsed beneath her back like coiled muscle memory—aching to split, to fly. But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. The moment she detached, the child would be left behind… and they were waiting.
She heard them.
First, the flapping. Low. Like giant leather sheets slapping the air.
Then, the laughter.
“Maaayaaa…”
“Sister of flesh…”
“You forgot who we are…”
Three of them.
Aling Rosa, oldest of the coven, her tongue forked like a snake’s and long enough to whisper to the womb.
Lira, once Maya’s closest friend, now a creature of hunger with hollowed eyes and a voice that could lull a fetus to sleep… forever.
And Ina, the Matriarch—the first manananggal, her ribs sharpened like blades and her wings the color of midnight sins.
They landed around the balete, bare feet brushing earth that refused to hold their weight.
“You’ve gone soft,” Lira cooed, circling her. “You stink of milk. Of love.”
“Of betrayal,” hissed Aling Rosa.
“Of hope,” said Ina, her mouth curling. “That’s the worst scent of all.”
Maya stood slowly, hand on her belly, defiant in her weakness.
“It’s not betrayal. It’s evolution.”
Rosa spat bark from her mouth. Lira flinched like she’d been slapped.
But Ina… Ina laughed.
“You think this child will save you? Save us?”
“She already has,” Maya said. “She’s made me remember what it’s like to feel. To choose something other than survival.”
“Then let us feel her too,” Rosa hissed, baring her fangs. “From the inside out.”
The three lunged.
Maya screamed—not in fear, but in fury.
And in that moment… the twist began.
The Unsplit: Part II: The Secret of Lira
Lira was the first to speak when Maya’s pregnancy showed.
The first to smile, the first to say,
“Keep it, if you must. But you’ll regret it.”
What she didn’t say?
She knew what it felt like.
Because Lira, too, had once been pregnant.
Years ago, before the forest swallowed her soul, before she drank moonlight and fed on wombs, Lira had loved a mortal.
A quiet carver named Elias, who sang to the wood and taught her how to hum without fangs. They met under blood moons, shared rice wrapped in banana leaves. For a moment, she thought she could change.
But when the others found out, they made her choose:
Her kind. Or her child.
She chose survival.
And they tore the child from her womb themselves.
Ina said it was for her own good.
Aling Rosa said mercy doesn’t belong to monsters.
And Maya… Maya held her hand afterward, said nothing, and never looked at her the same again.
Back to the Present…
When Lira lunged at Maya under the balete tree, something inside her faltered.
“You should have flown away,” she hissed, but her hands trembled.
“You’re not here to kill me,” Maya said coldly, eyes blazing. “You’re here to watch it happen again.”
Lira’s jaw clenched.
Rosa snarled beside her.
Ina said nothing, as if she already knew.
“You let them take yours,” Maya whispered. “So now you take from others.”
Lira’s lips curled—not into a smile, but a confession.
“I didn’t come for the child.”
“Then what?”
“…I came for revenge.”
The Unsplit: Part III: The Child Isn’t Hers
As they neared, Maya collapsed to her knees—hands clutching her belly—then stopped.
Smiling.
“You came for the child. You never asked… whose it was.”
Lira froze mid-lunge.
Rosa sniffed the air.
Ina narrowed her eyes.
“You carry death…” Ina whispered.
And Maya laughed. A laugh that shattered the quiet.
“I was never pregnant. I was infested.”
The Heart-Twist:…
Lira was the one who helped plant the spawn inside Maya.
She guided the dying aswang to her. Whispered where Maya would be. Told her to give the curse—not just to end Maya, but to punish all of them.
But the creature didn’t attach to Maya’s womb…
…it fused with her soul.
And now, with horror dawning in her eyes, Lira realizes:
“You didn’t die,” she murmurs.
“No,” Maya answers. “I changed.”
“Then what is it?”
“Something stronger than pain. Stronger than hunger. Something that remembers.”
And as the spawn inside Maya awakens and tears the night apart, Lira doesn’t run.
She kneels.
She whispers the name she’d once picked for her own lost child.
And she lets the darkness take her—not out of fear, but out of penance.
From her stomach, something moved—something wrong.
It wasn’t a baby.
It was a spawn of vengeance, planted inside her by a dying aswang she had once tried to save. A parasitic curse. A ticking time bomb of flesh and spirit—designed to lure manananggals to their doom.
The child was bait.
And now it was awake.
Her belly split—not clean like a transformation, but jagged, ruptured.
Dark tendrils lashed out like wet roots.
Lira screamed as one coiled around her throat.
Rosa tried to fly, but the forest had closed in—branches holding her like arms that remembered.
Ina watched, paralyzed. Eyes not of a predator—but of a mother who’d lost too much.
“She’s not mine,” Maya whispered as blood filled her mouth. “She’s yours.”
The forest howled as the thing inside her was born—not a savior, not a monster… but a reckoning
The Unsplit: Epilogue – Years Later
In a distant village, children whisper a new tale.
Of a creature that doesn’t fly.
Doesn’t split.
Doesn’t feed on babies.
But walks among monsters, and punishes the ones who forget what it means to love.
Some say she’s still out there.
With a hollow in her belly and rage in her eyes.
Looking for more mothers who forgot their children…
and more children who never had a chance to be born.