Elior Reyes woke to the sound of the sea again.
Not the gentle kind people wrote about in poems — but the restless, uneven crashing that always seemed to echo inside him. As if the waves were trying to remind him of something he had forgotten.
He sat up on the thin mattress, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Dawn had barely touched the sky, but the small room he shared with Aling Mara already felt warm and cramped. The walls were peeling. The window was cracked. The air smelled faintly of salt and old wood.
Nothing about it felt like home.
Eli swung his legs over the side of the bed and pressed his feet to the cold floor. For a moment, he stayed still, waiting. Sometimes, if he was quiet enough, the dreams would come back in fragments.
A woman crying.
A man shouting his name.
A cold room with marble floors.
A silver bracelet he could never reach.
But this morning, like most mornings, the memories dissolved before he could grasp them.
He exhaled slowly. "Another night wasted."
From the kitchen, he heard Aling Mara's voice — sharp, impatient, already awake.
"Eli! If you're up, fetch water before the line gets long!"
He didn't answer. He didn't need to. She would assume he heard her, and he always did what she asked. That was the rule. Her house, her roof, her conditions.
He grabbed the empty containers and stepped outside.
The early light washed over the coastal town in soft gold. Fishermen were already pulling their boats ashore. Vendors were setting up their stalls. Children ran barefoot along the sand, laughing as if the world had never hurt them.
Eli watched them for a moment, a strange heaviness settling in his chest.
He didn't remember being that carefree.
He didn't remember being three years old at all.
As he walked toward the communal pump, people greeted him with nods and smiles. Eli was known here — the quiet boy who helped everyone, the one who fixed broken nets, carried heavy crates, and never complained.
But familiarity wasn't the same as belonging.
He filled the containers, wiped his hands on his shirt, and started back. Halfway home, he paused. The sea breeze brushed against his face, cool and sharp, and something inside him stirred.
A whisper.
A name.
Lior…
He blinked hard.
It wasn't the first time he'd heard it — not with his ears, but somewhere deeper. A name that felt like it belonged to him, yet didn't. A name that made his heart ache without reason.
He shook it off and kept walking.
When he reached the house, Aling Mara was waiting by the door, arms crossed.
"Took you long enough," she muttered. "You daydream too much. One day, that'll get you in trouble."
Eli didn't argue. He never did.
But as he set the containers down, he caught his reflection in the window — dark eyes, sharp features, a face that didn't match the life he lived.
A face that felt borrowed.
He looked away quickly.
He didn't know that in a few hours, everything would change.
He didn't know that a fire would break out in the alley behind the market.
That he would run into the flames without thinking.
That someone would record it.
That the video would spread across the country.
He didn't know that somewhere far away, in a mansion he had never seen, a woman would freeze as she watched the clip — her hands trembling, her breath breaking.
He didn't know that she would whisper a name she had not spoken aloud in twelve years.
"Lior…"
And he didn't.