Bantayan had always been a town of slow mornings and quiet nights, where the salty sea breeze wove through the narrow streets, carrying the laughter of children and the rhythmic calls of fishermen unloading their catch. It was a place untouched by the chaos of the outside world.
Until now.
Three teenage girls were dead.
Each one abducted, bound, and left on display like a grotesque message carved into their lifeless bodies. The horror wasn't just in their deaths, it was in the precision. The deliberate staging.
The eerie silence that followed.
Bantayan wasn't just mourning.
It was afraid.
And somewhere in its shadows, a predator was still hunting.
Inside the cramped evidence room of Bantayan Police Station, the air was stifling, thick with the weight of frustration. Sgt. Alvaro Morales stood motionless, his fingers tightening around a plastic evidence bag.
Inside it lay a blood smeared school ID card.
The killer had left it behind.
His first mistake.
Cpl. Marco Ramos stood across the room, his arms crossed, his expression dark.
"The guy's a ghost." His voice was tight with frustration.
"No DNA.
No witnesses.
No tire tracks.
And now we get an ID card? Just… entangled with the victim's hair?"
Sgt. Morales exhaled slowly, rubbing his temples.
"It wasn't supposed to be there."
He lifted the plastic evidence bag, angling it toward the flickering light. The ID was smudged with dirt, its edges frayed from time and moisture. But something else just barely visible in the right hand corner caught his eye.
A partial fingerprint.
Faint. Almost invisible.
But there.
"Get this to the lab," Sgt. Morales ordered, his voice calm but sharp.
Cpl. Ramos hesitated.
"A print?
On plastic?
If it's smudged, it's probably useless."
"Maybe," Sgt. Morales said, his voice steady. "But we don't need a full print. We just need enough."
The clock ticked slowly.
The forensic lab was silent except for the hum of machinery and the occasional scrape of gloves against paper. Sgt. Morales stood by the door, arms tense, eyes fixed on the technician bent over the microscope.
Minutes stretched into hours.
Finally, the door creaked open. The forensic tech emerged, her expression unreadable.
"It's faint," she admitted, sliding a printed image onto the table.
"Smudged. Incomplete. But we ran it against the national database anyway."
Sgt. Morales leaned in, his heartbeat like a drum against his ribs.
The image showed a fragmented fingerprint, its ridges and loops fractured, like a puzzle missing pieces.
But there was one match.
Not perfect.
But enough.
A name appeared on the screen.
Sgt.Morales' throat went dry.
"My God!" His voice was barely above a whisper.
The forensic tech swallowed, her fingers pressing into the table.
Sgt.Morales' blood ran cold.
The killer wasn't an outsider.
And he knew who he was.
And if this was truly his first mistake…
Then it was only a matter of time before he made a bigger one.