Aden blinked at the little ray of the sun that had been lingering inside his room. He was quite surprised at the revealing possibility that a light could still actually enter his ‘totally-decent’ room. He was up in the attic, and he had learned to just call it that. The light of the sun came from the small round window pane fixed just above his head, raised just a few inches from his bed. He blinked and stared at the specks of dust flying around. This was worse than Nanay Wang’s place, he thought to himself. At least Nanay Wang’s claustrophobic space was kawayan and had air inside it. In here, Aden was barely breathing.He lied on his small bed with the first sign of sunrise. In his view, the sun had only risen just a few inches rom the horizon. He couldn’t tell the time, but he figured it must already be time for him to get up and go downstairs. He could smell the food in the kitchen. Breakfast.Aden walked towards the small spac

“Her name’s Aurora,” Alice said. Aden had already taken off from the small town, riding in one of the cars the Kadlum had prepared in the place. He had his phone up to his ear, listening to Alice speak while he drove to the main road. “I’ll send you the location. She lives in a girl’s dormitory right beside her college in Manila,” Alice said.“What should I say?” asked Aden. He hated being the harbinger of grave news, and it creeped up on him quite distastefully. No one should just knock on someone’s door and tell them their father is dead. He knew the police had not identified most of the man caught up in the fire. And Mark had decided not to contact Alice, yet. He knew they were in hiding.He figured that maybe Alice knew how to do it. But they couldn’t risk bringing Alice out in the open. Not yet. It was better if Aden did the job for them.“What do you mean ‘What should I say&rsquo

“Woah.” Her words bounced off the walls of the cave in an echo across the dark abyss. Accompanying her sudden sound was the rushing streams of the spirited waterfalls dropping down into the deep unknown chasm below them. Briefly, Aurora tried to make sense of the place as she took it all in and distinguished which was magic and which was pure nature. The torches continued to flare gracefully while they gave the newcomer some time to overwhelm herself at the newfound discovery. The cave wasn’t black, albeit dark. It was green. Moss and nature had overgrown from it. Although the torches had an orange sense of the cavity, Aurora examined the plants and the moss climbing across the walls as if a coat of protection from anything else. Through it all, the air was fresh and welcoming. She took another deep breath. And she closed her eyes. She exhaled, and it was as if the fires joined her in this meditation. There was an odd chime across the venue. Like ringing, ambient a

…a wound… Cut black and deep right in the middle of the dark desert. Starless skies had hovered above him, but the white glow had caused the sands to glint and reflect quite enough. Atop a hill of sand, Aden gazed beyond the black dunes and caught himself staring at the infinite sinkhole fixed at the center of the hollow dream. No, not a sinkhole, corrected Aden. He stepped closer, but made sure he wouldn’t slide away from the sands. It was a vacuum. A fall. A pit. A fissure that dug deeper than what Aden could possibly see. The trench was as big as a town. You could throw in a whole village in there, he said to himself. There were signs of the sand, some sparkling against the lowly-gleaming white, being sucked in. But ultimately, they stopped. No movement. A frozen picture of the terrain going down into the black hole. Aden gripped his handgun and blinked wildly. He did not expect the sinking rift to go away, but he expected to calm down. Regaining his breat

Aden stared for a long moment at him, like digging and scavenging what he could through the man’s eyes. He wasn’t sure why he was doing what he was doing—looking for an odd glint in the old soul’s eyes. Maybe, he was searching earnestly for Ailan’s past… and now his present intentions. Maybe, he was looking for weakness, something that could prepare him for… whatever will happen next.He felt himself regain bodily strength. There was a calm resurgence in his mind, his arms, and his feet. Unconsciously, he felt himself turn completely towards him and reach slowly for his holstered handgun, but he eventually just hovered his fingers beside the weapon and just dropped his arm to the