Bakunawa Cove is a 26,000-word dark romantasy novella set in a 15^th century magic school in the Philippines, where water-mages and fire-forgers clash against a backdrop of pirates, Spanish colonizers, and ancient sea spirits. This dark rivals-to-lovers romance with a love triangle delivers forbidden attraction, elemental magic, and the suffocating heat of a Collegium where one wrong tide-calibration can cost a family everything. Set in the Sulu Archipelago, the story immerses readers in a world of pearl-diving Bajau traditions, smoking forges, and the salt-stained politics of a Sultanate under siege—where love is as dangerous as the storm.

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Sinta Tala, a Bajau water-mage at the Collegium of Eight Winds, fails a tide-calibration that threatens her family's survival—her mother's houseboat, her grandmother's pearl-diving rights, everything her people have built across generations. Two men watch her fall. Yasuo, the steady earth-mage who offers harbor and healing. But there’s also Lei—the fire-mage whose obsession burns hotter than any quiet courtship, whose golden eyes follow her every move, who would rather see her fail than succeed without him.

Sinta tries to choose Yasuo. She tells herself she can learn to love the harbor, to want safety over wildfire. But the divination pearl shows her the truth she cannot escape:  she still burns for him, and she cannot hide from it forever. Her heart keeps pulling her back to him—to his broken confession that he cannot survive without her.

When Spanish cannon fire shatters the Festival of the Sea Turtles, Sinta dives into the lagoon without thinking, dragging Lei's limp body to shore and breathing life back into his lungs. In doing so, she claims him in front of the whole collegium.

However, Lei's love has always been control dressed as devotion. He has burned her reputation, shattered her rituals, and isolated her from everyone who cared for her.

Can she trust him to change?

Can fire and water merge without destroying each other?

And when the Collegium's judgment falls, will Sinta lose everything she has worked for—her magic, her family, herself—to a love that may consume her?

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Bakunawa Cove plunges readers into a lush, dangerous world of sea spirits and forbidden desire, where every tide whispers secrets and every choice carries a price. This is a dark historical romantasy with a morally grey hero who will not give up the heroine—no matter what it costs her or him. For readers who crave forbidden romance drenched in cultural specificity—do not miss the novella that proves sometimes the most destructive love is also the most unforgettable.

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• Bakunawa's Cove. Part 1.

• Bakunawa's Cove. Part 2.