EL PASADO

<p>In the quiet forgotten corners of Angono the air was thick with history. Ancient stones whispered secrets of long-lost tales and the shadows seemed to move with a life of their own carrying the weight of time. Among the town's narrow streets and hidden alleys there existed a place few dared to speak of let alone enter.</p><p>The gallery was buried in the heart of this silence a sanctuary of art left undisturbed for centuries. Its walls were adorned with relics of a bygone era-portraits landscapes and sculptures from the early Spanish colonial period. The eyes of the figures in the paintings seemed to follow those who entered their gaze unrelenting as if guarding their secrets from the prying eyes of the present.</p><p>But the gallery's true treasure lay deeper in a room that no one knew existed save for one. It was a portrait unlike any other-hauntingly beautiful almost alive its subject a woman whose eyes held the weight of centuries. And beneath her gaze a curse lingered-El Pasado the past that should remain undisturbed.</p><p>It was said that the portrait was a window not just to the past but to another time another world-one where time folded in on itself and the boundaries between the present and what had already been were no longer clear. Those who looked too closely would find themselves pulled into the depths of El Pasado never to return the same.</p><p>In the shadows of the gallery stood the Keeper an old woman whose eyes had seen too much of the world. She was the guardian of the balance a protector of the thin veil between past and present. She had watched over the gallery for years waiting always waiting.</p><p>One evening as the sun dipped below the horizon the Keeper felt it-the stirring of time. Someone had entered the gallery. Someone had found the portrait.</p><p>And now time itself was shifting.</p>