Two days after Maria’s funeral, the atmosphere in the small house in a coastal village in Batangas province was still as heavy as lead. Maria’s husband, Roberto, had barely slept, his eyes dark with grief over the loss of his wife.

Maria died suddenly in a motorbike accident on her way home from the market. The doctor concluded that she died of a traumatic brain injury, but Roberto was still tormented, feeling that there was something fishy about her death.

In the middle of the night, unable to bear the longing, Roberto took a bundle of incense and quietly walked to the cemetery a few hundred meters from his house. The cold sea breeze blew through the rows of stone tombstones, and the pale moonlight shone on Maria’s newly dug grave. Roberto knelt down, trembling as he lit the incense, when he suddenly heard a strange noise — like the sound of the earth being lightly turned.

Looking up, he was horrified to see a figure standing right next to his wife’s grave, a hoe in hand, digging the ground. His heart pounded. Roberto quickly hid behind a nearby grave to observe more closely. The figure was wearing a hooded cloak, but under the moonlight, he recognized a familiar gait — it was Victor, Maria’s brother.

Roberto was stunned. Why would Victor, who appeared to be the most sorrowful at the funeral, dig up his sister’s grave in the middle of the night?

Not daring to face it, Roberto immediately returned and called Carlo, a policeman friend in town.

The next morning, Carlo and Roberto returned to the cemetery. Maria’s grave had been neatly covered as if it had never been disturbed. But Carlo noticed traces of newly disturbed soil. They asked the family for permission to open the coffin to check, and a horrifying thing was revealed: Maria’s body was still there, but the gold wedding ring on her hand was gone, replaced by a cheap fake ring.

Carlo began to investigate Victor. Under pressure from the interrogation, Victor confessed: he owed a large sum of money from gambling, and knew that his sister had a very valuable wedding ring. Thinking that no one would notice, he dug up the grave to get the ring, intending to sell it to pay off the debt. Roberto was in pain, not expecting that the person his wife had always trusted would do such a despicable thing.

But the twist was even more terrible when Carlo checked the traffic camera near the scene of the accident. It turned out that the truck that hit Maria was not an accident. The driver was a henchman of the creditor Victor, hired to cause the collision, in order to force Victor to pay his debt at all costs. Victor, although not directly causing the accident, knew about this plan in advance but chose to remain silent, hoping that after Maria’s death, the creditor would forgive him.

Roberto collapsed when he learned the truth. The wedding ring – which he thought was a sacred keepsake of the couple – turned out to be the indirect cause of Maria’s death.

That night, he returned to the grave, lit the last incense stick, and whispered:

“I’m sorry, Maria… I couldn’t protect you.”

Under the Batangas moonlight, Roberto seemed to see Maria’s silhouette smiling gently, then disappearing into the night.