Coming as e-books

All six books, 1 December 2026

Five novels and a companion, out together on Kindle and Google Play.

Kindle Preorders soon Google Play Preorders soon

Chronicles of the Caramoan

Some stairs go down into the sea. This one keeps going.

A five-book fantasy made from the legends of the Philippines: a repair shop on a narrow street in Malate, a stair of fifteen old stones running down into Manila Bay, and a drowned realm at the bottom of it where something has been waiting seventeen years for one boy.

All five written
Crossover fantasy
Philippine folklore
Five novels and a companion

by Yong C.

Painting: old stone steps going down through a gap in a seawall into a moonlit bay, two grey cats on the wall, and a faint glowing city far beneath the water — The stair at the end of Calle Mabini · from the back cover of *The Drowned Stair*

The stair at the end of Calle Mabini · from the back cover of *The Drowned Stair*

01 · The story

Two worlds. One stair.

Isagani Cruz fixes things. Radios, electric fans, rice cookers, the barangay captain's karaoke machine: whatever Malate brings to the little repair shop a hundred steps from the sea, where his mother checks the water every morning for exactly the time it takes to pray one Our Father.

He keeps a list of mysteries about her. Why she keeps salt in her apron. Why the cats of Calle Mabini won't take their eyes off the stone steps in the seawall. Why those steps go down into Manila Bay, and just keep going.

Then a storm with no name comes up the flooded street, and the steps open.

Beneath the water lies the Caramoan: a realm older than memory, where every soul has a Kin, a creature-companion for life, where no twin princes had ever been born before, and where the law sentenced one of them to the water at three days old. Isagani is that prince. He was never meant to see his fourth day, let alone his seventeenth.

Calle MabiniThe Manila chapters are warm and funny, full of rice and rain and people talking over each other.

The CaramoanThe chapters in the realm below are slow and lyrical, as if something very old were remembering them aloud.

No one who is truly loved is ever forgotten. Not by the Sea. The First Promise · the heart of the series

Beneath the bay, magic is not energy. It is harmony. The realm believes the world was made by a song, the First Song. To work magic is to remember a piece of it and sing it back.

Engraved plate: a boy sitting on a seawall beside the steps down into the bay, a grey cat at his side, and below the water a drowned city where a boy with his face looks up at him — The opening plate of *The Drowned Stair*, Part One: “The Boy Who Dreamed of Water”

02 · The five books

Five books, one promise.

All five novels are written, with a companion volume: about 578,000 words in all. They come out together on 1 December 2026, as e-books, so readers can go from the first dream of water to the final tide without waiting.

Book One
The Drowned Stair

Remember who you are.
- ThemeIdentity
- AsksWho am I?
- MoodWonder
- Length84,000 words
A storm opens the stair at the end of his street, and Isagani Cruz walks down it into the sea.

At the bottom lies the drowned realm of the Caramoan: seven moons, a city of living coral, a creature-companion for every soul, and a twin brother with his own face, who looked back at him out of every dream he had as a child. It is also the realm whose law gave him to the sea when he was three days old.

He has a feast to survive, a Grand Court to face, and a family below the water he never knew he had.

Start here. The first crossing, the first look at the drowned city, the first feast and the first trial.
Book Two
The Serpent's Welcome

Two welcomes. One boy. Only one asks him to bring something.
- ThemeChoice
- AsksAm I who the prophecy says I am?
- MoodAdventure
- Length101,000 words
Something at the bottom of the sea has learned how to welcome a child.

Santi is seven, small for it, and last in every line at a mission beside Manila's canals. Then a voice comes up under the rain, kind, patient and endlessly interested in his day, and for the first time in his life someone listens all the way to the end of every sentence. Isagani knows that voice. So does his twin, who has heard it every night of his life at the bottom of the sea.

Now a repair shop, a street of formidable grandmothers and seventeen cats go to war for one boy's heart with the only weapons they have: Saturdays, chores and a seat at the table. And below the waves, a prophecy is read aloud, one saves, one destroys, and a whole realm begins choosing which twin is which.
Book Three
The Dimming

What are you willing to let go of, to keep the light?
- ThemeLoss
- AsksWhat do you do when nobody is coming?
- MoodBittersweet
- Length109,000 words
Forty children. Nine windows. One light that will not go out.

At Bahay Liwanag, a school with forty beds on a quiet coast south of Manila, the lamps are being turned down one reasonable memo at a time. Liwliwa, the eldest girl, keeps the ledgers of the house, and she has noticed.

Beneath the sea, an Inquiry opens into a century of rescue papers, all signed in one beautiful handwriting that never seems to age, and that has been quietly closing roads and striking out names. A twin who has been forbidden to sing to the deep starts bargaining with it anyway. And a storm is coming that keeps a schedule.
Book Four
The Last Moon

One shall be taken. One shall be kept.
- ThemeSacrifice
- AsksCan hope survive failure?
- MoodSuspense
- Length127,000 words
The moons are going out, and the realm thinks it knows what eats moons.

One by one, the seven moons over the drowned realm are failing, and with each one something forgets: the seals that swim with the fishers forget them, the infants forget their mothers, the stone forgets what it was built to hold. In Manila, a box of old mission records turns up a hundred and nine children marked with a tiny drawn lamp and never seen again, and the count keeps climbing.

A dark road begins to climb the stair at the end of Calle Mabini, one step at a time. Below, a prince breaks a promise and sings first. And the thing in the deep sings back.
Book Five
The Twin Kings

One note. Two voices. One door.
- ThemeLegacy
- AsksWhat do we leave behind?
- MoodHope
- Length129,000 words
The sky over the drowned realm has gone dark, and Calle Mabini will not take down its Christmas stars.

Fifty parol lanterns hang on the seawall facing the bay, toward a ring of faint lights around a shuttered window. Every morning at a quarter past five, Hiraya Cruz stands on the sixth step of the stair with the water at her knees and reads a list of names to the bay. One January morning, she goes further down the stair than anyone in her line has gone in nine generations.

To open that window, two worlds will have to sing a song that has never once been finished, and finally learn who the thing in the deep has been singing to for ten thousand years.
Book Six · A Companion
The World Beneath the Bay

Fifteen old stones go down into Manila Bay. This is what is at the bottom.
- A guide to the two worlds
- Read it at any point
- Length29,000 words
The map, the words and the secrets of both worlds, in one book.

The seven moons and the seven peoples. The Kin and the Rememberers. The old tongue with the salt washed off and the meaning of every name, a shelf of the realm's sacred texts, a register of everyone from the King of the Caramoan to the taho man, and questions for reading groups.

Safe to read at any point in the series: every spoiler is clearly marked.

Read them in order

One, Two, Three, Four, Five. The series is built as one long story, and later books depend on earlier ones in ways that aren't always obvious until the end. The companion can be read before, alongside or after.

Who they're for

Grown readers, and the young ones who read over their shoulders and won't be sent to bed. There are storms, drownings, grief, the deaths of animals and people, and children in danger, but no cruelty for its own sake, and no child is ever left alone in the dark without somebody, somewhere, saying their name.

03 · The world

Beneath Manila Bay, a realm that remembers.

Beneath and beside the human world lies a hidden one. Its heart is the Caramoan, a drowned realm under Manila Bay, with a city of living coral in a lagoon and seven moons in its sky.

Most peoples of the Philippines know the Bakunawa, the great sea-serpent that rises and swallows the moon, so that people bang pots to make it give the moon back. In the realm the story has a second half: ten thousand years ago the founders bound the moon-eater under seven seals, sung beneath seven moons, and the realm has lived on top of it ever since. Every child grows up knowing that something is down there, asleep, chained, singing to itself in the dark.

The Chronicles begin with that singing.

Painting: seven moons in a ring around a wave-and-eye emblem on dark teal parchment

Map of the drowned realm of the Caramoan beneath Manila Bay: the coral city in its lagoon, the towns and villages of its peoples, the great road running northeast to the gate, the old branch to the margin coast in the southwest, the deep in the south, and the seven moons across the top — The drowned realm, as it is drawn in the companion volume. Nothing on it gives the story away. Tap to open it full size; with a mouse, hover a place to look closer.

The seven moons

In order across the sky, from east to west

The Fisher's MoonGold. The moon of provision.
The Mother's MoonSilver-white, the softest light. The moon of the cradle.
The Mason's MoonStone-grey. The moon of foundations.
The Singer's MoonHigh gold, the brightest. The moon of the Song.
The Weaver's MoonPale, uneven gold. The moon of law and the courts.
The Watcher's MoonSteady grey. The moon of the night watch, and of anyone who stays up so someone else can sleep.
The Mourning MoonDark as long as anyone remembers, with a small lit window at its heart. Children are told a story about a greedy fish.

The seven peoples

Each with its own virtue. Every virtue is a Filipino one.

StewardshipThe CaramoanThe people of the drowned realm. Their duty is to hand on, whole, what was handed to them.

PerseveranceThe Mountain KingdomBuilders of terraces and walls on the realm's high ground. Their saying: you keep a wall every day, or it is not a wall.

HumilityThe Forest RealmA quiet, very old people who live high in the branches of the drowned pine forests.

HospitalityThe Sea KingdomThe open-water people. No traveler has ever left a Sea Kingdom house unfed.

FaithThe Moon KingdomOn the edge of the world, facing the Mourning Moon, they sing a vigil-song that stops in the middle of a line.

ResilienceThe River PeopleA rafting people of the north channels. The river moves, and you move with it.

RemembranceThe KaiwánAlso called the Concord of the Left-Behind: descendants of children carried up out of the realm long ago, now living along Manila's waterways.

Each virtue is something a people aims for, not something it always manages, and the books show every one of them falling short.

The Kin

Every child of the realm has a Kin: a bond-creature that is theirs for life, that chose them in their first days, and that is never farther away, the grandmothers say, than the length of a song.

A war-bull of the eastern herd. A seal of the reef. A fisher-owl of the north reaches. A lantern-fish of the deep trenches. A war-bull does not choose a child who will want an owl.

On a child's third day comes the Joining. The Seed of Karam, a small dark seed brought up from the sea in the hour of the child's birth, is put into the Joining pool. Something comes up out of it and looks at the child, and the child looks back.

The Rememberers

Children in both worlds call them cats. In the realm they are the Laála: the one creature that remembered the First Song whole. They are never owned, never summoned, never explained. They arrive, look at a person, and decide.

When one chooses you, its greeting is the oldest in the world:

“There you are.”

They watch thresholds.
They keep vigils, for years, on a sill or a step.
They escort the frightened home, at a distance.
They are never sold.

Painting: a grey cat on the wet pilings of a Manila estero at night, with a long table under a lamplit tarpaulin waiting behind it

04 · The old tongue

With the salt washed off.

In the Chronicles, the realm's old tongue is the ancestor of the languages of the Philippines: Filipino words are old-tongue words “with the salt washed off”. The Filipino alaala, “memory”, for example, comes from Laála, the Rememberers.

“Marapat sa gunitá.”May the Sea remember you. · May we be worthy of remembrance.

The realm's greeting is a pair, said at every meeting and every parting, over cradles and over graves. It is the theme of the series made into manners. Tap the first line to hear the answer.

Laúdthe SeaThe Sea in its sacred sense: the living deep that keeps all memory.

gunitáremembranceThe holiest word in the old tongue.

Laálathe RememberersThe one kind of creature that remembered the First Song whole. They are never chosen; they choose.

kadwa“the other of two”A twin-soul, a second self. The deepest word for twin, from the same root as Ilocano kadua, “companion”.

Kinone's other selfThe creature-half of a soul of the realm, born of the Joining of a Seed with a creature of the wild Sea.

Umaga“morning”A firebird of the dawn, an adarna like the healing bird of Philippine legend, hatched from a black stone. Not fire, which consumes, but the light that comes back.

dayawhonor and thanksThere is no “you're welcome” in the old tongue, because there is nothing to be welcome for. Dayaw expects nothing back.

apothe old honorificYou were here before me, and I know it. The Filipino po is apo worn down to its last syllable: “half a bow”.

05 · From the author

A wish, made at ten.

When I was ten I wrote down a wish, and I still have it:

“I wish a bridge that connects the ordinary world we see every day to the extraordinary one we haven't found yet is waiting for me.”

The Chronicles of the Caramoan are the closest I have come to building it.

I wanted to write a fantasy that was Filipino to the bone: not decorated with the Philippines, but made of it. A hero who says po. A mother who fixes electric fans. A street that feeds anyone who comes to the edge of its light. I wanted a Filipino reader to open these books and find their lola in them, and their tita, and the taho man, and the jeepney. And I wanted every other reader to find out that they had a lola like that too.

Most of all I wanted to write about remembering: about the people who keep names, and how much good a list read aloud every morning to an empty bay can do, whether or not anybody answers.

On Calle Mabini there is always a lamp burning at the top of the stair, and nobody is allowed to switch it off. The companion volume closes with one small request:

Leave a lamp at the top, would you? In case.Gunitá ng Laúd. · Yong C.

For Lourdes, my mother, to whom the first book is dedicated, because the Caramoan began with her believing in it first.