08 - The Missing Population
I. A Flash of Fire in the Midday Fog
The silence inside Chief Wana’s shack shattered instantly as the bamboo wall panels groaned under intense pressure. The sudden, violent plunge in temperature bit into their skin, turning Arya’s breath into white puffs in the air. Outside the window, the thick fog that usually crawled lazily was now swirling furiously, slamming against the walls like cold, hungry phantom fingers.
Clack... clunk... clack...
The rhythmic knocking from outside drew steadily closer, shadowed by a colossal silhouette with dimly glowing green eyes moving slowly behind the curtain of white mist.
"Sakka! Guard Arya!" Bayu Bajra shouted, his easygoing smile evaporating entirely. He sprang to his feet, snapping his green paper fan back and forth. Nimble currents of Wind Prana swirled around his body, creating a thin barrier of air to ward off the encroaching chill.
Sakka Geni wasted no time. With a low growl, his right hand drew his sword from its weathered military hide sheath.
SCHWING!
The black blade flashed, instantly engulfed in a roaring, white-hot reddish-orange flame. Sakka bolted through the swinging door of the shack, followed closely by Krisna Tara, who hoisted his stone bundle with unshakeable resolve.
"Back off, Slime Beast!" Sakka roared, swinging his flaming sword to cleave through the fog. The horizontal arc of Fire Prana ignited a blazing crimson light that illuminated the pitch-black village square, which looked as dark as a total eclipse.
SLASH-BURST!
Sakka’s fiery blade struck something rubbery yet dense behind the fog. An ear-splitting, raspy screech pierced the air—the howl of the Swamp Ogre as its wet, muddy hide was scorched by the pure fire of the academy. The three-meter-tall behemoth reeled back. Foul, rotting black slime dripped from its wounded shoulder, evaporating into noxious fumes the moment it hit the embers on the ground.
Yet the Swamp Ogre didn’t counterattack. With sharp, glowing green eyes, it locked its gaze onto Arya, who was peeking from behind the shack door, staring at it with a look of ravenous hunger.
"The... vessel..." a woman’s faint, melodic whisper echoed from the direction of the river, accompanying the monster’s retreat.
The Swamp Ogre slowly backed away, dissolving into the dense fog that suddenly rolled back in to envelop the entire village. Within seconds, the mist thinned out to its normal state, and the warm midday sunlight illuminated the wet mud of Misty River Village once more.
Sakka Geni sheathed his blade, his breathing heavy, his eyes still fixed on the river. "That thing... it had no intention of fighting this afternoon. It only came to scout."
"It came to scout Arya," Bayu Bajra whispered, folding his fan with a grim expression. "The scent of Mahaprana inside this kid is getting harder to conceal under that ratty cotton cloth every single day, Sakka. If a Swamp Ogre can sense it, then the dark shaman controlling it definitely knows too."
Arya slowly stepped out of the shack, his eyes fixed on the trail of black slime left behind on the wet clay. Curiosity flared inside him, tangled with the fear he was slowly learning to understand. "Sakka... why did that woman’s voice at the river call me a ‘vessel’? And why did its eyes look at me like I was the sweetest piece of boiled cassava in the whole world?"
Sakka turned, eyeing Arya with a cold, fiercely protective gaze. "Because you are the most valuable prize to them, Arya. If you don’t want to end up inside that monster’s belly, you follow every single order I give you from here on out."
II. Jaka, the Wooden Warrior
"You guys are amazing!"
A high-pitched voice filled with awe echoed from beneath a fishnet storage shack nearby. A boy around twelve years old crawled out from a messy pile of dirty hemp nets.
He wore torn brown shorts patched at the knees. Though skinny, his frame was sturdy from years of hard labor under the blistering river sun. His hair was tied back with a piece of red raffia string, and tucked into his sash was a toy sword carved from a dried banana-leaf stem.
This was Jaka.
"I saw everything!" Jaka exclaimed, his eyes sparkling with pure delight as he ran straight toward Sakka Geni, completely fearless of the lingering heat radiating from the fire warrior. "You made fire come out of your sword! Whoosh! And then that monster ran away scared! Are you the Grand Warrior from Mount Lawu from the market tall tales?!"
Sakka Geni wrinkled his brow, annoyed and bewildered by the village boy’s enthusiasm. "I’m not your uncle, kid. And I’m not from Lawu. Go back to your mother before the fog rolls back in."
"My mother is crying inside because my father hasn’t come home for two days," Jaka replied, his eyes dimming for a brief second before he puffed out his chest and patted his banana-stem sword proudly. "But I can’t cry! I’m going to be the strongest warrior in Misty River Village! My name is Jaka! I’m going to help you defeat that marsh monster and bring my father home!"
Bayu Bajra let out a soft chuckle, stepping closer to Jaka and leaning down to meet his gaze. "Well, aren’t you a brave little warrior? But Jaka, real warriors don’t fight with wilted banana stems like that. The ladies in the city won’t be very impressed by a weapon like that."
"This is just my training weapon, Mister!" Jaka huffed, his face flushing red, refusing to be looked down upon. "When I grow up, I’m going to Kediri to find the best kris smith to forge me a dragon sword that can slice through river water!"
Seeing Jaka, Arya instantly felt as though he had found a kindred spirit. The fifteen-year-old bounded over to Jaka with a playful hop, ignoring Sakka’s stern glare warning him to stay put.
"Jaka!" Arya called out, pointing to the banana-stem sword with bursting curiosity. "How did you carve the notch on the hilt of your sword? Did you use buffalo teeth to cut it? And if that sword gets wet in the river, will it grow into a new banana tree that bears wooden swords?"
Jaka stared at Arya with wide, baffled eyes, suddenly finding the shabby village boy’s questions far stranger than the Swamp Ogre from the night before. "Of course not! I cut it with my mother’s kitchen knife while she was taking a nap! And it won’t grow into a banana tree, dummy! It’ll just rot and smell sour!"
"Ah, what a shame," Arya sighed with dramatic disappointment. "If there were trees that grew swords, we could give them to everyone so they could drive away monsters themselves."
Sakka Geni slapped his forehead for what felt like the hundredth time that day. "Enough about your banana sword tree. Krisna, Bayu, we need to track that Swamp Ogre’s trail toward the edge of the marsh. Jaka, show us where the villagers were last seen before they disappeared."
Jaka saluted by placing his fist against his chest, mimicking a knight from an adventure tale. "Understood, Warrior! Follow me! The marsh behind the village is my domain!"
III. Tracking Footprints in the Black Marsh
The small party picked its way through the dense thickets of wild bamboo behind the village, led by Jaka, who moved nimbly despite his bare feet stepping through sulfurous black mud.
The fog here in the marshlands was significantly thicker than by the main river. Sunlight only managed to filter through as dull, silvery beams, casting an eerie ambiance—like a gateway to the Spirit Realm that hadn’t fully opened.
"Here." Jaka stopped abruptly, pointing toward a massive water banyan tree whose roots sprawled wildly into the still, mirror-like black marsh. "My father went fishing near these roots two days ago. My mother found his net snagged on a lower branch, shredded like it had been clawed by a beast."
Krisna Tara stepped forward smoothly. His muscular frame moved silently over the squelching mud—an Earth Step technique that ensured he would never sink into the deepest bogs. He knelt beside the banyan roots, touching the wet, mossy bark.
"The earth here is grieving deeply," Krisna whispered, his voice resonating like the whisper of the ground itself. He closed his eyes, allowing Earth Prana to flow from his palm into the roots to read the lingering environmental memories. "There is a stifled scream trapped within this wood... the scream of a man dragged into the freezing water without warning."
Arya stepped up beside Krisna, his eyes filled with profound empathy. He touched the same bark, trying to feel what the earth warrior felt. Thanks to the pure Mahaprana Soul within him, Arya possessed a heightened spiritual sensitivity—a gift known as the Grace of Nature’s Tongue.
Suddenly, a faint, delicate whisper echoed inside Arya’s mind, distinct from the voice from the night before. It sounded like the weeping of a child trapped in a dark, airless room.
“Cold... so cold... please help us...”
Arya recoiled, gasping for air as his hand instinctively flew to his thumping chest. "Krisna... they’re still alive. The missing children... they aren’t dead. Their voices... they’re crying somewhere beneath this marsh."
Sakka Geni fixed a sharp look on Arya. "Are you certain about what you heard, Arya?"
"I’m positive, Sakka!" Arya urged, his eyes glistening as he looked at the fire warrior. "They weren’t eaten by the Swamp Ogre! They’re being kept somewhere cold... very close to here!"
"A Swamp Ogre doesn’t devour human flesh when controlled by a dark shaman," Bayu Bajra noted, studying the surface of the marsh intently. "They harvest humans as living sacrifices to empower Dark Prana rituals. The shaman needs negative emotions—fear, despair, and agonizing screams—to fuel dark offerings."
Hearing their conversation, Jaka gripped his banana-stem sword tightly, his young eyes brimming with unshed tears. "My father... is my father being kept there too? Warriors, please save my father! I promise I’ll give you all my toys... I’ll bring you the biggest cassava from my mother’s garden!"
Krisna Tara knelt down, placing a warm hand on Jaka’s thin shoulder like a true older brother. "We will bring him back, Jaka. The earth will not allow evil to hide its victims forever."
IV. The First Bitter Truth
Their tracking was abruptly halted when Bayu Bajra, walking near a deeper section of the marsh, suddenly stopped. His usually playful eyes locked onto a rotting pile of wild water hyacinths tangled among the banyan roots.
There, floating gently on the black water, was a shredded piece of faded blue lurik cloth, coated in thick, foul-smelling black slime.
Jaka saw the cloth. Instantly, the twelve-year-old boy froze. The color drained completely from his face, and the banana-stem sword slipped from his fingers, sinking into the black mud with a soft plop.
"That’s... that’s my father’s sash..." Jaka whispered in a tiny, trembling voice, overwhelmed by grief.
Krisna Tara reacted instantly, using Earth Prana to form temporary stone footholds over the muddy water to retrieve the faded blue cloth. Beneath the floating hyacinths lay the pale, lifeless body of a middle-aged man, his skin blue and his chest and neck marred by deep claw wounds.
It was Jaka’s father. He hadn’t been taken as a living sacrifice; he had fought the Swamp Ogre to protect his fellow fishermen two days ago, paying for his bravery with his life.
"Father!"
Jaka’s cries shattered the silence of the misty marsh. The boy scrambled through the mud, reckless of the deep water, desperate to reach his father’s body. Krisna Tara caught Jaka gently yet firmly, holding him back from the toxic marsh water and pulling the sobbing boy tight against his chest as Jaka wept uncontrollably.
On the bank, Arya stood frozen.
His wide eyes stared at the stiff body of the middle-aged fisherman as Krisna gently laid him on dry ground. This was the first corpse Arya had ever seen in his life. Back in Arcapura Palace, death was an abstract concept—something read aloud in ministerial reports or observed in grand state funerals showered with jasmine petals and scented candles.
Death outside the palace walls was ice-cold, reeked of swamp mud, and left behind an agony heavy enough to shatter a heart.
Arya felt something strange boil inside his chest. The warmth that usually flowed calmly through his veins began to churn wildly, like the boiling waters of Kelud’s crater ignited by magma. The cotton cloth wrapped around his head grew scorching hot, and the golden sun-swirl birthmark beneath it throbbed violently, radiating a surge of pure prana that sent the banyan leaves fluttering down around them.
"Arya, control your emotions!" Sakka Geni snapped, leaping forward to grab Arya’s shoulders. Sakka could feel the dormant Mahaprana energy stirring awake within the boy—a colossal power that Arya’s fragile spirit was not yet equipped to contain. "Remember the Grand Sage’s warning! Do not let rage or despair consume your soul!"
Arya looked at Sakka, his eyes gleaming with a faint, mystical golden light. Tears tracked down his mud-stained cheeks.
"Why, Sakka?" Arya whispered, his voice echoing with a faint dual resonance—his own voice layered with the ancient slumbering consciousness within him. "Why do good people like Jaka’s father have to die like this? Why didn’t the kingdom send soldiers to protect them? Why... why must we just stand by?!"
Sakka Geni fell silent, his grip on Arya’s shoulders loosening. The usually abrasive, self-centered fire warrior looked at Arya with newfound understanding. He realized he was no longer looking at a spoiled, annoying prince, but a future leader of Nusantara taking his very first steps upon the harsh realities of his people’s lives.
"Because this world is cruel, Arya," Sakka answered, his voice uncharacteristically gentle as his calloused thumb wiped a tear from Arya’s cheek. "And that is precisely why you must reach Mount Kelud. To grow strong... so that one day, no child like Jaka will ever have to weep over their father’s death on a silent marsh bank again."
Arya slowly closed his eyes, allowing Sakka’s warm hold to steady the surging Mahaprana energy within him until the golden gleam faded back into simple black pupils.
Beneath the thick mist of Misty River Village, beside the heartbreaking sobs of a boy who had lost his father, Arya learned his first great lesson as a future king: that a true leader’s crown is not fashioned from shiny gold upon a throne, but forged from every tear and trial of the common people he vows to protect with his life.