I. A Heart-Wrenching Silence
Night fell over Rivermist Village with a bitter, unforgiving cold. The white mist, which usually crept lazily across the water’s surface, now rolled in thick and suffocating, swallowing the bamboo huts whole until only faint grey shadows remained. There were no sounds of fishermen’s laughter or the gentle strumming of the kecapi that normally brought the village taverns to life. All that could be heard was the howl of the night wind rushing through wild bamboo groves, echoing the stifled sobs echoing from Jaka’s home.
Inside Village Head Wana’s hut, a small coconut-oil lamp flickered against the wind seeping through the cracks in the walls. Its dim, golden light bathed the face of Arya, who sat leaning against a wooden support pillar.
The fifteen-year-old boy stared at his own knees, caked in dried dirt. Beside him, a plate of boiled cassava offered by the village head’s wife lay untouched and cold. The image of Jaka’s father—his stiff body floating among the water hyacinths, a gaping claw wound across his chest—seemed permanently burned into the back of Arya's eyelids every time he tried to close them.
“Why do good people have to die like this, Sakka?”
The question he had asked earlier that afternoon echoed inside his head, demanding answers he had never been able to find behind the luxurious walls of the palace.
“Arya, if you keep staring at the floor like that, the dirt isn't going to sprout into a golden tree that can bring that fisherman back to life,” a casual, low voice called out from the corner of the room.
Bayu Bajra sat cross-legged, using the tip of his green paper fan to lazily pick at the spaces between his toes. His handsome face was devoid of its usual playful smirk, replaced instead by visible exhaustion. Nearby, Krisna Tara snored softly, his head pillowed on his giant bundle of river stones—a sight that would normally make Arya laugh, but tonight only elicited a heavy sigh.
Sakka Geni stood near the tightly locked door, his eyes scanning the narrow gap leading outside with intense vigilance. His right hand remained glued to the hilt of his ancient sword, wrapped in its cowhide sheath.
“The world out there doesn’t care about your tears, Arya,” Sakka said without turning around. His voice was heavy and cold in the quiet room. “Death is the cheapest thing beyond the walls of Arcapura. If you want to stop it, you need to learn to control the storm raging inside you first. Your rage this afternoon nearly shattered the protective seal the Grand Sage placed on your head.”
Arya touched the frayed cotton cloth wrapped around his forehead. He could feel the residual warmth pulsing gently at his crown—the very spot where his golden sun-swirl birthmark lay hidden. “I didn’t mean to break it, Sakka. I just... my chest felt so tight seeing Jaka cry.”
Sakka went silent for a moment. His broad shoulders visibly dropped an inch. “Get some sleep. Tomorrow morning, we leave before the dark witch doctor controlling the Marsh Behemoth sends an even larger force.”
II. Whispers from the Night Sky
Nearing midnight, with Krisna Tara’s rhythmically steady snoring and Bayu Bajra’s soft breathing indicating he was deep in a dream about Kediri beauties, Arya remained wide awake. He stared up at the hut's ceiling, woven from old palm leaves.
His wild, insatiable curiosity—which usually got him into trouble—was now conspiring with his anxiety. Slipping out of his mat without a sound, he crept past the sleeping Krisna and eased open the small wooden window at the back of the hut, careful not to let it creak.
A blast of freezing night air hit his face immediately, carrying wet mist and the pungent reek of swamp mud. The fog outside was so thick he could barely see a few inches past his nose.
Yet, through the dense obscurity, Arya caught sight of a tiny, swaying speck of light.
It was a Prana Firefly—a small creature whose soft fur glowed with a shimmering blue-green light. The firefly perched on a bamboo branch jutting right outside Arya’s window.
Arya blinked. Thanks to the Gift of Nature’s Tongue he had possessed since birth—a byproduct of the pure Great Prana Soul within him—he could sense that the rapid fluttering of the creature’s wings wasn't just fanning the cold air; it was emitting a remarkably subtle form of communication.
“Child of the sun... vessel of light...” a tiny voice buzzed inside Arya’s head, sounding like a child whispering from miles away. “Why do you still linger? As the night deepens, the fog grows hungrier...”
Arya leaned further out the window, keeping his voice down to a whisper so as not to wake Sakka Geni, who was sleeping propped against the front door. “Hey, little one. Do you know where the Marsh Behemoth hid the stolen children?”
The Prana Firefly fluttered its wings faster, its glow brightening as if thrilled to find a human who could hear its voice. “Below... at the bottom of the blackest marsh... where the water never flows. The blue light calls to them... draining the last traces of their life force to feed the dark witch doctor’s offering...”
“A blue light?” Arya asked, puzzled.
“Look toward the river’s source in the east...” the firefly whispered before darting upward, dissolving into the impenetrable night mist. “Follow the light if you are brave enough... but beware, the black fog guards its gates...”
Arya turned his gaze eastward, peering through the dense bamboo thickets that separated the village from the wild, uncharted swamps. There, far behind the curtain of mist, he spotted a slow, pulsing flash of silvery-blue light. It didn't burn like a human torch; its radiance was cold, eerie, and seemed to throb in rhythm with a weak, fading heartbeat.
Arya’s heart hammered against his ribs. The children were still alive. The faint cries he had heard the night before near the giant water-banyan tree weren't an illusion. They were being held beneath the marsh, and that blue light was the dark witch doctor's spiritual lure—or trap.
Arya glanced back at his sleeping companions. He knew that if he woke Sakka Geni, the stern fire warrior would immediately forbid him from going, prioritizing their mission to Mount Kelud. But if he waited until morning, those children might lose their life force entirely to the dark ritual.
With newfound resolve and a innocence that easily outmatched his fear, Arya swung himself over the wooden window sill with effortless grace—an agility he had honed over years of scaling the roofs of the Arcapura Palace.
Swoosh.
Arya landed soundlessly on the wet clay behind the hut. Tightening his worn headband and hauling his travel pack firmly onto his shoulders, he began to march through the thick night fog, heading straight toward the pulsing blue light in the east.
III. A Stealthy Patrol Busted
Navigating the Forbidden Teak Forest by day was treacherous enough, but trekking through the marshlands of Rivermist Village in the dead of night was pure madness.
The clay beneath Arya’s bare feet was freezing and slick, occasionally swallowing his ankles whole and threatening to drag him down into the quickmud if he misplaced a single step. The heavy mist made his eyes sting, and his lungs burned from the sharp scent of damp sulfur in the air.
“It’s so cold... so cold... somebody help us...”
The faint wails of the children echoed in Arya’s head once more, growing clearer with every step he took toward the mysterious blue light. Arya picked up his pace, leaping over the roots of giant water-banyans that snaked through the dark like frozen sea serpents.
Suddenly, a swift breeze whistled right past his ear.
SWISH!
A youth clad in loose green robes landed with absolute grace on a bamboo branch directly above Arya's head. He casually fanned himself with his green paper fan as if he were taking a leisurely stroll on a sunny afternoon.
“What an intriguing midnight excursion, Arya,” Bayu Bajra whispered, his tone dripping with his trademark humor. “I’d bet a silver coin that Sakka is waking up right about now, setting the hut on fire after realizing his prince escaped through the window.”
Arya gasped and stumbled backward, nearly slipping into a pool of black mud, but a heavy hand caught his shoulder from behind, holding him steady.
“Careful, Arya,” Krisna Tara’s calm voice sounded from behind him. The earth warrior stepped forward silently, his massive bundle of stones still resting securely on his shoulder. “The ground near the river’s source is unstable. It could give way at any moment.”
Arya blinked, staring at Bayu and Krisna in utter shock. “How... how did you guys know I left?”
“You foolish brat!” a low, harsh curse barked from behind a nearby teak tree. Sakka Geni stepped into view with a fierce scowl, his bamboo hat tilted low. His sharp eyes flickered with a sudden heat that instantly dried the surrounding dew. “Did you really think we’re amateur warriors who wouldn't hear a creaking wooden window or footsteps as loud as a herd of water buffalo?”
Sakka marched over and grabbed Arya’s shoulder firmly. “I told you to stay put and sleep! Why must you be so stubborn about courting death in the middle of a swamp?!”
“But Sakka!” Arya pointed through a gap in the bamboo trees ahead. “Look at that blue light! A Prana Firefly told me that’s where the dark witch doctor hid the village children! They’re still alive, Sakka! They’re crying down there because they’re freezing!”
Sakka Geni frowned, looking over in the direction Arya pointed.
Through the gaps in the mist-shrouded bamboo, a silvery-blue light hovered slowly above a small patch of dry land in the middle of the marsh. Surrounding the islet were giant water-banyans whose hanging roots formed a natural cage. The light radiated a bone-chilling spiritual energy—an unnatural surge of prana.
“He’s right, Sakka,” Bayu Bajra chimed in, dropping down from the bamboo branch as light as a feather. His eyes narrowed at the blue light. “That’s the Ice Prana Shroud—a mid-tier dark magic technique used to preserve living sacrifices so their life force doesn't rot before the ritual begins. The witch doctor is definitely close.”
Krisna Tara knelt to touch the clay, closing his eyes to read the vibrations of the earth. “There are about eight... no, nine tiny, weak heartbeats beneath the marsh, Sakka. Their rhythms are slowing down. If we don't save them before dawn, they’ll never wake up again.”
Sakka Geni clenched his fists tightly, cursing the prince’s recklessness while knowing full well that the moral code of the Mahasakti Order would never allow him to turn his back on such suffering.
“Fine!” Sakka grumbled, exasperated. “We destroy the dark witch doctor’s ritual tonight! But hear my rules, Arya: You walk behind Krisna! Don’t touch a single thing, don't make any strange noises, and if I tell you to run... you run back to the village as fast as your legs can carry you!”
Arya grinned instantly, his bright, innocent smile breaking through the dirt smudged across his face. “You got it, Angry Brother! I swear I’ll only watch and ask questions in my head!”
Sakka could only let out a long sigh, turning a sharp gaze toward the gathering darkness ahead.
IV. Infiltrating the Lair of the Black Fog
The small group moved silently through the heart of the Eastern Marsh Forest. Guided by Krisna Tara, who used his Earth Walk technique to invisibly solidify the ground under Arya’s feet, they crossed deep mud pits without making a single splash.
The silvery-blue light drew closer, hovering over a small island of dry land surrounded by towering water-banyans.
And atop that small island, a horrifying scene unfolded before their eyes.
Nine village children—including Village Head Wana’s seven-year-old grandson and Mbok Sri’s young daughter—lay lined up on a black stone altar carved with ancient runes of Dark Prana. Their tiny bodies were encased in thin, transparent sheaths of ice radiating that same freezing blue light—the Ice Prana Shroud. Their faces were deathly pale, their breath escaping as faint, slow wisps of vapor.
Surrounding the altar, a middle-aged man in ragged black robes danced wildly, wielding a thirteen-curved kris dagger that gleamed with dark energy, shrouded in thick purple smoke. His lips moved rapidly, twisting sacred chants into a cursed language.
It was Ki Wono, the local dark witch doctor and a pawn of the sinister Eclipse Circle in the borderlands of Arcapura.
“Hyang Mahakala... lord of the endless night...” Ki Wono chanted madly, his eyes rolled back until only the whites showed as he stared up at the fog-covered sky. “Accept these nine pure souls as an offering... open Your secret gates... and let your servant taste the sweetness of the immortality You promised...”
Standing right behind the altar as a mystical guardian was the towering, ten-foot Marsh Behemoth that Sakka had scorched earlier that day. The burn mark on its shoulder was now patched with fresh, foul-smelling black mud.
“Sakka, what’s the plan?” Bayu Bajra whispered, pulling himself close against a leafy teak branch overlooking the islet. “That Behemoth has insane physical defense when it’s near swamp water. And if Ki Wono finishes his final incantation in the next ten seconds, the ice shroud will collapse inward and permanently freeze those kids' hearts as sacrifices.”
Sakka Geni slowly drew his ancient sword, allowing a hairline thread of Fire Prana to flow down the blade without igniting a noticeable glare. His eyes burned with fierce combat resolve.
“Krisna, get ready underground. The moment I trigger the first explosion to distract the Behemoth, use your Earth Prana to lift that stone altar and pull those kids out of the witch doctor’s reach,” Sakka ordered in a low, commanding voice. “Bayu, your job is to neutralize Ki Wono before he can use that dark dagger.”
“What about me, Sakka?” Arya asked, his wide eyes shining with excitement as his hand instinctively reached for the toy banana-leaf sword he had secretly swiped from Jaka’s hut earlier that day. “Am I playing the night dragon bait?”
Sakka Geni glared at Arya with a look that was equal parts stern and fiercely protective. “Your job, Arya... is to stay behind this tree, keep your loud mouth shut, and make sure that witch doctor doesn't catch a single glimpse of your birthmark!”
Before Arya could protest or ask another absurd question about night dragons, Sakka Geni launched himself high into the night fog.
“Back off, Dark Sorcerer!”
Sakka’s thunderous roar shattered the swamp’s silence, followed by a massive burst of crimson flame exploding from his blade, cleaving through the darkness of their first night in the treacherous fog of Rivermist Village.
Their first great rescue battle had officially begun under the shadow of the hidden moon.