Magic here is bought with memory. His family has been paying for generations.
The novel is finished. Coming late 2026. Readers on the list hear the date first.
Cornell-trained engineer Andres Naval comes home to Palawan to carry out his grandmother's cryptic last wish. The house he inherits is a conscious labyrinth. Its caretaker cleans in ritual loops and speaks to rooms that answer back.
And his own childhood has been edited. He had a twin. Every memory of them was excised by the Council, the order that governs magic in these islands, and no one will tell him why.
His inheritance is the Taglarawan, a living grimoire written in the old Baybayin script. He cannot read it. His hand can; he wakes to drawings he does not remember making. Its magic obeys a single law, the Bayad: every truth learned and every spell cast is paid for in memory. A ward costs a face. A binding costs a wedding day. What it takes survives as cold fact, hollowed of feeling.
To finish what his grandmother began, Andres will have to spend the memories that made him. His guardian's trust. The pride in his work. The love that carried him home. The Council buries anyone who digs near the source of its power, and his grandmother dug.
“What we cannot fight, we must name.”
The most powerful person in a pre-colonial village was often not the chief. She was its healer, its calendar, its memory, and the one who argued with what could not be seen.
In the free Companion → ᜃIn 1905, the language of Palawan was not Tagalog. It was a sea language that outlasted two empires, and the novel speaks it on the page.
In the free Companion → ᜆSeventeen characters, three rules, and a trust in the reader no alphabet since has matched. Type your name and watch it return to the older sound.
Try the name-writer →A short, beautiful guide to the world the novel stands on: the history we were never taught, and a map of the made things. Sent straight to your inbox.
No spam. Just the lore, and word when the book is ready. If Gmail files it under Promotions, drag it to Primary so you never miss the launch.
A.B. Nostoria writes Filipino historical fantasy from Puerto Princesa, Palawan, the province where Taglarawan is set. The stories are built from the beliefs, languages, and scripts the islands were taught to forget.
The writing happens on Instagram in public: myth, process, and the long road to a finished book. Come say kumusta.