Time-Bound

Faces Borrowed, Wounds Remembered

Chapter 5

The night along Queen Tuna Park was thick with sea breeze and neon glare. Amara’s chest tightened as the man’s smile cut through the dark.

Judge Rivas.

He was supposed to be six feet under since 2022. She had even seen the obituary herself. But here he stood, not older, not younger—exactly as he’d looked the day he had ruled against her.

“You look tired, Atty. Cruz,” he said, voice like polished wood. “Still fighting unwinnable cases?”

Kael’s arm tensed in front of her. The air around Rivas shimmered faintly, the way heat bends asphalt. Kael muttered, “Seconds don’t sit right. He’s not alive.”

Amara’s throat was dry. “He shouldn’t even be here.”

Rivas tilted his head. “Strange, isn’t it, how defeat lingers? You remember every word of that judgment. The way I called your motion unfounded. How your client wept while you stood frozen. Useless.”

Amara’s fists clenched. Her father’s voice echoed faintly in memory: The bay gives you strength if you ask.

She steadied herself. “You were wrong that day. And you’re wrong now.”

“Am I?” His smile sharpened. “I exist because you keep me alive. Because you never forgave yourself. The Patron thanks you.”

Kael’s jaw locked. He stepped forward, hand twitching toward a slip—but the air pushed back like a wall. “He’s anchored to you,” he hissed at Amara. “Your grief. Your memory.”

Her pulse thundered. This was her fight. She squared her shoulders and met the apparition’s eyes. “You can twist my loss, but you can’t rewrite it. I’ve lost before. I’ve stood up again. That’s the part you’ll never own.”

For a heartbeat, the figure faltered. The shimmer broke at his outline.

Kael seized the moment. His hand closed around hers, heat rushing like wildfire, and he pulled the slip taut. The seconds around Rivas fractured—splintered glass reflecting wrong faces.

The apparition hissed, features dissolving like ash on the wind. Just before vanishing, it whispered, “Lake Sebu remembers you.”

Then it was gone.

The park’s noise rushed back: tricycles buzzing, vendors hawking squid balls, children shrieking with balloons. But Amara stood trembling, her breath uneven.

Kael steadied her elbow. “Are you—”

“No,” she cut in, voice ragged. “I’m not okay. That was… that was my failure wearing a face.” She turned to him, eyes burning. “They’re inside me now. They know what hurts.”

Kael’s gaze was heavy. “He was a puppet. Borrowed seconds stitched together. The Patron’s favorite trick. He feeds on old wounds.”

“Then he’ll choke on mine,” Amara said through clenched teeth.

By morning, they were on the road to Koronadal.

The van ride was cramped, shoulders brushing strangers, air thick with diesel fumes and chatter. Outside, Mt. Matutum loomed hazy, a sentinel stabbing the horizon. Kael stared at it, eyes narrowed.

“That mountain feels wrong,” he murmured.

“Wrong how?” Amara asked, trying to steady her voice.

“Like a clock hand stuck in the earth,” he said. “Marking hours no one else can read.”

Amara shivered, though sweat beaded her neck. “You sound like a poet.”

“I sound like someone who hears what seconds whisper.”

They arrived mid-afternoon, the sun hammering the streets of Marbel. Koronadal bustled less than GenSan, but its rhythm was no less alive: vendors selling T’nalak cloth, motorcycles weaving, the faint aroma of roasted corn drifting through air.

Amara led Kael into a small café tucked near the plaza. Inside, a young man waited nervously at a corner table, a folder hugged tight to his chest. His hands twitched as he adjusted his glasses.

“Rafael Domingo,” he introduced himself, voice thin. “Accountant. I—I shouldn’t be here.”

Amara slid into the seat. “You reached out. What do you have?”

He opened the folder with shaking hands. Inside: ledgers, receipts, stamped permits. At first glance, ordinary. But the figures didn’t match.

“They show food shipments,” he whispered. “But the amounts are wrong. Too high. Too frequent. Some go to ‘eco-tourism projects.’ Lake cleanups. Tree planting.” He swallowed. “Except… the money doesn’t go there. It goes to Lake Sebu. To compounds built near the falls.”

Amara’s blood chilled. Kael leaned in, scanning. “Falls amplify sound. Sound is rhythm. Rhythm is time. He’s building a breach there.”

Rafael’s eyes darted to the window. “I shouldn’t be talking to you.”

“Why?” Amara pressed.

“Because they already—” He broke off, staring at the glass.

Amara followed his gaze. Across the street, a woman stood draped in a T’nalak shawl, diamonds woven in red and black. Her eyes were too still, too unblinking.

Rafael snapped the folder shut, shoved it across the table. “Take it. Please. Don’t look for me again.” He bolted through the back door, vanishing into alleys.

Amara clutched the folder. Kael’s hand pressed against hers, steady. “He’s gone.”

She swallowed hard. “We have enough. Lake Sebu.”

That night, in a modest inn off the highway, Amara spread the documents on the bed. Numbers, foundations, bank routes—all pointing to eco-tourism projects that didn’t exist. But her eyes kept circling the same phrase: Seven Falls Development Fund.

Her throat tightened. She remembered standing there as a teenager, mist in her face, her father’s hand warm on her shoulder. This place will outlast us, he’d said. Remember that when the world feels too fast.

Now the Cult wanted it.

Kael leaned against the wall, pale but alert. “The waterfalls distort time. Noise. Flow. The Patron wants a permanent breach. A door no one can close.”

Amara traced a photo clipped in the folder—a stock image of Lake Sebu’s misty water, serene, unaware of the danger whispered into its name.

“My father took me there,” she said softly. “When I lost cases, when I doubted myself. It was my reset. My reminder that defeat wasn’t the end. If they corrupt that place…” She broke off, voice cracking. “I can’t let them.”

Kael’s gaze held hers, steady and raw. “Then we go.”

The decision landed heavy between them. No more Manila. No more hiding in basements. They would meet the Cult on ground Amara knew, but the Patron wanted.

Outside, the night deepened. Crickets thrummed, the steady heartbeat of South Cotabato.

Amara packed the folder, her hands tight. “Tomorrow, Lake Sebu.”

Kael nodded. “And tomorrow, we make him bleed seconds he can’t get back.”

The bus rumbled up winding roads at dawn. Mist curled around the trees, softening the light. Amara sat by the window, watching banana plantations unfurl, pine trees appearing as the road climbed. The sound of distant water carried faintly, constant, like the earth whispering through stone.

Kael dozed beside her, but even asleep, his hand twitched as if arguing with unseen rhythms.

Amara pressed her forehead to the glass. Lake Sebu had always been a place of healing. Now it would be a battleground. She clenched her fists.

Whatever the Patron wanted there, he would not have it.

As the bus rounded a curve, the Seven Falls appeared briefly through the mist—roaring, powerful, eternal. Amara’s breath caught.

The sound was like a heartbeat. A countdown. A promise.