All Chapters of TIME TO FALL IN LOVE: Chapter 131 - Chapter 140

[The Solomon Standoff]The wind howling through the Carpathian pass felt like the screaming of the dead. High above the valley floor, on a limestone shelf that felt like the edge of the world, time had frozen into a jagged, lethal tableau. The headlights of the black SUVs carved tunnels of harsh, artificial light through the swirling mountain mist, illuminating a scene of fractured loyalty and ancient blood.Jinyan stood at the center of the crossfire. In his right hand, he felt the heavy, cold weight of the Lu-Sheng signet ring—the key to a global empire. Ten feet away stood Lady Eleanor Vincent, the London matriarch, her face a mask of regal impatience, her "Disciples" poised with hands on their holsters. And thirty yards up the rocky slope, partially obscured by the skeletal remains of a pine grove, was the nightmare they thought they had buried in the Romanian fire.Jian.His twin brother was a specter of soot and rage. The burns across his face had healed into a map of jagged, re

[The Salt and the Saffron]The Gulf of Thailand did not surrender its secrets easily. It churned them, broke them against the coral reefs, and finally spat them onto the jagged shores of the Koh Kong archipelago.Panni woke to the taste of salt and the rhythmic, hollow thud of waves hitting hollowed-out limestone. Her body felt like a collection of shattered porcelain, each nerve ending screaming with the memory of the black water and the roar of the interceptor’s engine. She was face-down in a coarse, grey sand that felt like ground glass."Grace..." The name was a ragged rasp in her throat.She forced her eyes open. The light was blinding—a raw, tropical gold that seemed to vibrate against the emerald canopy of the jungle beyond the beach. She dragged herself upward, her fingers clawing at the wet sand until she found a small, cold hand.Grace lay a few feet away, her yellow raincoat now a tattered, muddy grey. She was breathing, her chest rising and falling in shallow, exhausted hi

[The Ossuary of the Saints]The heat of the Cambodian interior was a physical entity, a thick, humid weight that smelled of rot, wet stone, and the iron tang of ancient dust. As Panni, Grace, and the elder Vira pushed through the dense undergrowth of the Angkor Archaeological Park, the modern world seemed to dissolve. Here, the borders between history and nightmare were porous. They were no longer in the territory of corporations or global protocols; they were in the Dominion of the Architect.The path they followed was not a trail, but a sequence of half-buried stone markers—serpent heads carved from laterite, their eyes pointed toward a destination that didn't appear on any tourist map."The Vault is not beneath the great temple of Angkor Wat," Vira whispered, his breath coming in shallow hitches. He leaned heavily on his iron st

[The Amnesia of the Monsoon]The world began not with a bang, but with the sound of a wooden paddle cutting through stagnant water.Panni opened her eyes to a ceiling of woven palm fronds. The air was thick enough to chew, a humid soup of dried fish, river mud, and the sharp, medicinal sting of eucalyptus. She tried to sit up, but her body felt like it was made of lead and broken glass. A jagged, white-hot pain bloomed behind her eyes, and with it came the terrifying realization: the world was a blank canvas.She knew how to breathe. She knew the taste of copper in her mouth was blood. But her name, her history, and the reason her hands were covered in silver-grey scars were gone—dissolved in a green mist she could almost still smell."Don't move, Sr

[The Altar of the Iron Cliff]The ascent to Prasat Preah Vihear was not a journey; it was a penance. The ancient Khmer temple sat like a jagged stone crown atop a five-hundred-meter cliff in the Dangrek Mountains, straddling the border between Cambodia and Thailand. To reach it, Panni and the fractured shell of Jinyan had to navigate the "Ancient Stair," a crumbling stone artery that spiraled upward through a canopy so thick it felt like a subterranean tunnel.The monsoon had passed, leaving behind a heat that was nearly liquid. Panni wiped the sweat from her brow, her indigo shawl now a rag used to bind the scaling knife to her thigh. Beside her, Jinyan moved with the unsettling precision of a clockwork soldier. He didn't pant. He didn't stumble. He merely climbed, his obsidian eyes scanning the treeline for the "Corrected" mo