Hemslock points his gun toward the ground, at roughly the spot where his bodyguards had gunned down the monster. Nothing of it remains—not even a root. “It’s baiting us,” he says.

They walk farther into the tunnel and reach the end without incident. “Holy shit,” I hear another of the men say, and the camera spins abruptly.

On the beach, the crew gasps in unison at the feed.

It is the largest balete tree that I have ever seen, horrific in its majesty. It grows upside down from the ceiling and stands nearly a hundred feet high, its roots twined thickly together to form a massive tree trunk. The ground around the men is elevated and broken in many places—the branches strong enough to have fractured the island’s bedrock, digging deep. The branches are full of living, breathing makahiya, unfurling and shutting at will. The finger-like tips of the balete’s branches graze the ceiling, spiderwebs of brown ivy growing sideways despite the limits imposed on its height, gathering at the darker corners of the cave and expanding across the walls. They rustle, swaying in some unknown breeze that seems impossible so deep within the cave.

And at the center of the tree—

At the center of the tree is something that passes for a face, braided into reality by the thick quilt work of bark. Its eyes are closed. Its mouth is relaxed. More roots snake around it and pulse, breathing like a heartbeat.

“Almost like it’s asleep,” a soldier mutters.

This is not the only horror here. Scattered around the great balete lie human shapes, sculptures of smaller roots crisscrossed and braided to mimic two arms, a torso, a head. There are no faces on these grotesque creations, but their forms are frozen in mid-air, caught twisting in agony, trapped in some ongoing punishment that only they and the god within know.

“This is sick,” one of the people in the cave grunts. “You telling me these used to be people? The ones it killed?”

“Spread out, but stay within sight,” Hemslock instructs. They comply, each soldier picking an adjacent spot to the others as they continue their cursory investigation.

“Look at this.” The camera shifts again. A soldier gingerly toes the base of one of the people-shaped briars. There is a crunching, brittle sound, and part of it falls away, crumbling at his feet.

“You gotta see this, sir.” More scraping sounds as the man sweeps up some bits with his foot.

A few other soldiers edge closer for a look. “My god,” one of them breathes. “That ain’t dirt. That’s bone.”

“Bone?” Hawaiian Shirt asks frantically. “What does that mean?”

“Shut up,” Leo Gries hisses at him.

One of the men in the cave takes out his hunting knife, testing the edges of the briar. “These ain’t trees, Boss,” he says amazed. “Kyle’s right. There are bodies inside them. Just like that damn corpse tree outside.”

“The victims who didn’t make the cut,” Hemslock says. “The ones that don’t conform to the prophecy but died anyway because the god deemed them unworthy.”