The air tasted of mud and fear, a gritty film coating his tongue. Rain, thick as a wet shroud woven from the very earth, plastered Victor's hair to his scalp, each drop a tiny, stinging hammer blow against his forehead. The roar wasn't a mythical beast conjured from folklore; it was the brutal, undeniable sound of the swollen river – the usually placid Tullahan, now a ravenous serpent – tearing its concrete banks apart, swallowing not just possessions, but the very foundations of homes and lives with an indifferent, churning hunger. He'd felt the deep, guttural vibrations through the worn soles of his boots even before he saw the coffee-colored water surging down their narrow street in a familiar section of Malabon, a solid, unstoppable wall carrying the flotsam and jetsam of shattered lives.
He'd been a part of the frantic human chain, his neighbors and him, their faces etched with grim determination as they struggled to hoist precious belongings onto rooftops, stacking sandbags against the inexorable rise, a tragically familiar drill in this perpetually low-lying corner of the city. Then, a sound that sliced through the storm's relentless din – a scream, high-pitched and raw with pure terror. A small boy, no older than seven, his bright red shirt a fleeting splash of color against the muddy deluge, had been wrenched from his mother's desperate grasp by a sudden, vicious eddy, swept away towards the swirling vortex near the Libertad Public Market, its stalls already half-submerged.
Without a second thought, the ingrained reflex of a lifetime of service kicking in, Victor had plunged into the churning, icy water. The immediate shock stole his breath, the force of the current slamming against him like a physical blow. He fought against the relentless, unseen hand pulling him under, the sharp edges of splintered wood and jagged pieces of corrugated iron scraping against his skin, drawing thin lines of blood that immediately dissolved into the murky water. The flood was a suffocating concoction of rainwater, overflowing drains, and the very earth itself, a thick, blinding slurry that filled his mouth and nose, the taste acrid and metallic.
He'd reached the boy, a small, flailing figure swallowed by the brown immensity, his face a mask of pure, unadulterated terror. The child's frantic grip on Victor's arm was a tangible weight of desperation. Hauling him back towards the precarious safety of a partially submerged bangka, its outrigger precariously tilted, was a brutal, agonizing struggle. His lungs screamed for air, each stroke a herculean effort against the unforgiving current. His left leg, he registered with a jolt of pain, was bleeding freely – a hidden shard of something sharp had ripped through the denim of his jeans, the cold water doing little to staunch the flow.
They'd clung to the slippery side of the boat, the wood groaning under the immense strain of the water's relentless force, threatening to give way at any moment. The boy was wracked with violent sobs, his small body trembling uncontrollably with cold and fear. Victor held him tight, a primal protectiveness overriding his own mounting pain and exhaustion, his strength ebbing away with the crimson trail blooming in the surrounding water. He could feel the bangka beginning to disintegrate, the fibers of the wood protesting with sharp cracks and groans.
Then, the sickening, inevitable lurch. The fragile vessel capsized with a violent roll, throwing them both back into the chaotic embrace of the flood. Victor's head struck the overturned hull with a sickening thud, a blinding flash of white-hot pain exploding behind his eyes, momentarily stealing his senses, plunging him into a dizzying darkness within the greater darkness of the water. He went under, the foul-tasting water filling his mouth and nose, the coppery tang of his own blood mingling with the grime.
He clawed his way back to the surface, gasping for a ragged breath of the rain-soaked air, the heavy drops pelting his face like tiny stones. He saw the boy a few feet away, his small hands reaching blindly above the surface, his eyes wide with a terror that mirrored his own, before he was swallowed once more by a swirling vortex of debris.
Desperation, a primal, animalistic urge, lent Victor a final, agonizing surge of adrenaline. He lunged forward, reaching blindly through the murky water, his outstretched fingers brushing against the slick, small hand. But another crushing wave, laden with splintered bamboo and floating refuse, crashed over them, tearing their fragile connection apart once more. He flailed wildly, trying to locate the boy in the disorienting brown labyrinth, but the flood was a relentless, uncaring force.
His vision began to blur at the edges, the world dissolving into hazy shapes. The throbbing pain in his leg intensified, a dull, insistent ache now overshadowed by the searing burn in his lungs. He was swallowing more water than air, choking, his limbs growing heavy and unresponsive, as if weighted down by unseen stones. The deafening roar of the flood began to recede, replaced by a high-pitched, insistent ringing in his ears, a prelude to a deeper silence. The last sensation was the icy, suffocating embrace of the water, a crushing pressure that pulled him down, down, down into an absolute, lightless void.
Then… a cessation of all sensation. Not a peaceful drifting into oblivion, but an abrupt, jarring halt, like a worn-out machine grinding to a sudden stop.
The first sensation was the profound, unsettling absence of the roar. A heavy, almost physical silence pressed against what felt like newly cleared ears, a stark contrast to the cacophony that had consumed his final moments. Then, a different kind of wetness – not the violent, churning onslaught of the flood, but a soft, almost clammy dampness clinging to his skin, like a humid shroud.
He tried to cough, a deep, racking expulsion of the water he knew, with a chilling certainty, must be filling his lungs. But his chest felt… alien. Smaller, constricted, yet strangely heavy in a way that defied his last memories of drowning.
Opening his eyes was an immense effort, the lids feeling strangely light, as if they belonged to someone else. The world swam into a blurry, low-angled perspective, resolving slowly into the rough, uneven weave of a nipa roof directly above him. Nipa, he recognized with a disorienting flicker of familiarity, though the context of that recognition felt distant, like a half-remembered dream. The air was still, thick with the unfamiliar, cloying scent of brine mixed with the earthy aroma of sun-baked clay and something else, something vaguely floral and sweet.
He lay on a hard, unyielding surface covered by a thin, scratchy mat. He tried to push himself up, but his arms responded with a shocking lack of strength, disproportionately thin and weak. Panic, a cold, sharp tendril, began to weave its way through the lingering fog of his confusion. He looked down at his limbs. Slender. Browned by the sun. Covered in fine, almost downy hair in places. Definitely not his calloused, muscled arms, the arms that had strained to hold a child against a raging river.
A small hand, the fingers delicate and unformed, lay palm-up beside him on the mat. He tried to clench his fist, and the tiny fingers curled inward with a surprising lack of coordination. A strangled sound, a high-pitched whimper utterly unlike the deep timbre of his own voice, escaped his lips, a sound of pure, unadulterated fear and bewilderment.
He was smaller. Infinitesimally smaller.
A shadow, long and lean, moved above him, blocking the weak sunlight filtering through the gaps in the woven walls. He instinctively flinched, a primal surge of vulnerability coursing through him. An old man with a face that seemed to be a roadmap of deep wrinkles etched by countless seasons under a tropical sun peered down at him, his dark eyes holding a quiet, unsettling mixture of concern and something Victor couldn't quite decipher. His lips moved, forming soft, unfamiliar syllables in a language that was alien yet held a faint, almost ancestral echo, a rhythm that resonated deep within some forgotten part of Victor's being.
The old man reached out a weathered hand, the skin like tanned leather, his touch surprisingly gentle as he carefully adjusted a cool, damp cloth resting on Victor's… no, on his forehead. Victor tried to speak, to voice the torrent of questions and terror that threatened to drown him anew, but only a weak, confused murmur, a mere breath of sound, escaped his dry lips.
The old man smiled softly, a network of fine lines crinkling at the corners of his eyes, a gesture that held a deep, unspoken kindness. He pointed a gnarled finger to himself and spoke a name, a soft, guttural cadence that Victor's ears struggled to fully grasp. Then, he gestured towards Victor, tapping his small, fragile chest with a gentle touch and repeating another word, a name that resonated with a strange, unsettling familiarity: "Iñigo."
Iñigo. The sound hung in the still air, alien yet somehow… present. The visceral memory of the raging flood, the crushing darkness, felt like a fading nightmare, a terror that belonged to another life. He was alive, impossibly so. But the body he now inhabited was not his own. The world around him, the scent in the air, the texture of the mat beneath him, the sound of the unfamiliar language, felt both vaguely familiar, like a half-remembered history lesson, and utterly, terrifyingly foreign. The transition was not a clean break, not a swift passage, but a disorienting, unsettling slide from the brutal reality of drowning to the bewildering, impossible reality of a new, fragile existence under a sky he no longer recognized. The silence of this new world was a deafening contrast to the river's furious roar, a silence pregnant with a thousand unspoken questions and a deep, chilling mystery that settled in the very marrow of his bones.