Oro, Plata, Mata

The family gathers to celebrate Maggie's debut, a festive milestone in the Ojeda household. In the garden, Trining shares a tender first kiss with her childhood sweetheart Miguel Lorenzo, hinting at the quiet future romance behind the celebrations. The moment is tempered by the looming shadow of war.

Don Claudio and the landowners discuss the impending war, revealing the fragile stability of life on their estate. Some of the younger men enlist, signaling the community's forthcoming involvement in the broader conflict. The scene establishes the growing sense that war will soon touch them all.

News arrives that the SS Corregidor has been sunk by a mine, shattering the celebration and the family's sense of safety. The announcement underscores the encroaching war and changes the mood in an instant.

With the Japanese approach, the Ojedas accept an invitation to stay with their old family friends, the Lorenzos, at their provincial hacienda. The move marks a transition from domestic comfort to wartime precaution.

Two more family friends, Jo Russell and Viring, join the refuge at the Lorenzo family's forest lodge. Their arrival expands the makeshift wartime household and foreshadows the hardships to come.

A weary guerrilla group arrives, and Jo tends to their injuries. The visit marks a new, dangerous frame of life in the forest refuge.

Miguel endures taunts after failing to confront a Japanese soldier who comes upon the girls bathing in the river; Hermes steps in and kills the soldier. The moment tests Miguel's resolve in the harsh realities of war.

Maggie comforts Miguel, who then decides to learn how to shoot from Hermes. This decision marks a shift from hesitation to determined self-reliance.

Viring's jewelry is stolen by Melchor, Inday's foreman; Inday fires Melchor. The act highlights the strain and shifting loyalties within the wartime household.

While Miguel and Hermes are away, Melchor and his band return to raid the food supplies, slaughter the servants, and rape Inday, even chipping off Viring's fingers when she refuses to remove her ring. Trining unexpectedly goes with the bandits, illustrating the crisis's pull and the depth of fear.

These experiences deepen Maggie and Miguel's bond as they seek ways to cope with trauma. Miguel urges the survivors to resume their mahjong games to maintain a sense of normalcy, and resolves to hunt the bandits to rescue Trining.

Miguel and Hermes chase the bandits to an abandoned hospital and corner them. In a brutal turn, Miguel's courage becomes bloodlust as he and Hermes kill Melchor and his men and rescue Trining.

In 1945, Liberation is celebrated with a party at the Ojeda household to announce Maggie and Miguel's betrothal. The survivors attempt to reclaim a sense of pre-war life, even as the war's scars persist.

Even as they try to reclaim some normalcy, the survivors recognize that the war has forever changed their lives and the world around them. They begin to adapt to a new reality rather than return to the old pre-war life.