WHAT THEY STOLE SET THE SEA ON FIRE
In the turquoise waters of Palawan, where limestone karsts rise like ancient teeth and sirens guard their treasures in the deep, Jack and Baby Boy are best friends, partners, and thieves—diving for fragments of fallen stars to keep their starving village alive.
They’ve been inseparable since the night the sirens killed their fathers and left them to survive alone. They’ve never said I love you, but everyone can see it in the way they’d die for each other without hesitation.
Then the sirens strike again, and Baby Boy is dragged into the depths before Jack’s eyes. When he escapes, he’s no longer the same—he’s stolen the heart of a siren, and it burns inside his chest, corrupting him from within. Jack has weeks to save him. Maybe less.
​
The only cure lies in the hands of a ghost captain defined by his deadly Hook—a hunter who walks on water and commands the dead. He’ll trade the pearl of immortality for one thing: every shard of stardust Jack has ever stolen.
​
Some loves are worth becoming a monster for.
And some boys who grew up too soon might lose the only person who ever made them believe they could fly.
​What if the child in Peter Pan's shadow was forced to grow up?
What if the monster you fear most is the one you are becoming?
“To die will be an awfully big adventure.”
- J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan​
This story was imagined in the islands of Palawan, a stretch of sea and limestone cliffs often called the last frontier of the Philippines. The world here feels untouched—emerald karsts rising from turquoise bays, jungles spilling into coral shallows, and stilt villages balanced between tides. For centuries, these waters have carried fishermen, dreamers, and explorers chasing both survival and myth.
During a five-day catamaran journey through Bacuit Bay and beyond, I met the heart of Palawan—the kindness of the Filipino crews, the laughter echoing over water, the quiet moments between islands when time itself seemed to stop. The story that follows is fiction, but it’s born from the real magic of this place, from the rhythm of waves against bamboo hulls and the glimmer of stars mirrored on the sea.
Paradise exists. You just have to sail far enough to find it.
