Hawaiian Shirt points to one of Key’s entries:

My eyes cannot see my ears cannot hear yet I see and I hear and the voices in my [inconclusive] help is the three of the eye and the eye of the three and the heart is here the heart they take they will come because of me and it is here it is a void that contains both nothing and everything at once I am [inconclusive] nothing and everything the eight are ready they are coming first to feed second to seed third to wear fourth to birth fifth to serve sixth to lure seventh to consume eight to wake [inconclusive] I am fifth I serve my ears I cannot see my eyes I cannot hear

“Absolutely batty, right?” Hawaiian Shirt says. “Notice the similarities? Like the writers already told you, the journal pages reference the same riddle, despite the Key journal being written before we discovered Cortes’s. Not even the museum curator thought it would be so significant—she only thought Lindsay Watson’s obsession with the journal was odd. The locals knew about the eight deaths, but nothing more specific as Key wrote about it. The Cortes journal has some pages torn out, more’s the pity. But look at this.”

Hawaiian Shirt jabs at one passage. “See this entry by Cortes? Read it.”

This is what the people here believe. Typically a priest or chieftain performs such rituals, but anyone with the strength can do so (for the god prizes strength rather than its own people) to achieve power beyond their wildest imaginings. For every sacrifice, they gain abilities beyond imagining. Control of the demons in the woods. Invulnerability. But most importantly—rulership of all. The command of an eternity within a dream, as these people say.

Yet they describe little of this god they worship. An eye, they say. It sees you. Perhaps it is a demon that wears nothing but an eye, though that paints a disturbing image. A Godseye. It incites the imagination.

If there is a strange power here, then it is our duty to find out more lest it be used against us.

I sought out Magellan for what information he could provide, for it was Rajah Humabon himself who explained the phenomenon to him. That is why the chieftain wishes for us to wage war against Cilapulapu, for the latter knows its secrets and worships this strange god. It is believed that Cilapulapu has already done two of these rituals; Humabon believes that he wields the god’s power and is impervious to their bolos, and it is why he remains invincible. His people claim they saw Cilapulapu control certain creatures within the forests soon after the criminal’s sacrifice—strange monsters fashioned from the god’s own sacred tree.

Our muskets shall soon put that boast to the test.

But Magellan had only shaken his head mournfully, told me that such power is not for humans to enjoy, only for God to administer—

His finger moves toward the ragged tears in the next section of the journal, the pages missing. Hawaiian Shirt grunts. “And just when we were getting to the good part, too. Like Cortes, Hemslock thinks this Lapulapu fella may have learned how to manipulate the Godseye, and that’s why he was able to kill the Spanish conquerors. Jessie from the team in Leyte says they’ve got some promising news—they might’ve found people who’d talked to some of the Watson cult members. Hopefully we get answers out of them.”