The year 1327 CE.
There was a great kingdom called the Kingdom of Jayaraksa.
The name Nagara Jayaraksa, with its noble resonance, held a meaningful prayer or wish: Land That Guards Glory.
It lay in a vast valley flanked by hills and a great river.
Its capital city was not a single palace surrounded by ordinary homes, but a tiered urban district.
At its center stood the palace complex, the assembly hall, the manuscript archive, and the religious buildings.
Surrounding them were officials' homes, merchant settlements, metal workshops, warehouses for agricultural produce, and the market.
On the outskirts were rice paddies, gardens, water reservoir ponds, and farmers' villages.
The main road was paved with stone or packed earth.
During the rainy season, the road became slick and difficult to cross.
The river served as a transportation route, a source of water, and the city's natural boundary.
By day, Jayaraksa looked like a kingdom that would never lose its vitality.
Merchants carried cloth, salt, agricultural produce, and metal from various territories.
Artisans worked in their workshops.
From the palace district, envoys came and went bearing royal decrees.
Farmers filled the roads with baskets of freshly harvested crops.
In the courtyards of the religious buildings, incense drifted slowly upward, mingling with the scent of wet earth and offering flowers.
Jayaraksa was bustling, filled with activity.
But that very evening, Jayaraksa's life changed.
The sky suddenly split open.
Rain fell so heavily that the boundary between the road and the river seemed to vanish.
Water streamed between the stones of the road, drowning footprints and carrying soil down toward the valley.
The wind battered the trees, making their branches scrape together like whispers that never ended.
The sun had set behind the hills when the guards began lighting torches along the main road.
The market closed early.
House doors began to shut tight.
Merchants who usually remained chatting until late at night chose to go home before the guards tightened security.
From far away came the sound of an alarm drum.
Once.
Then twice.
Then in rapid succession.
The soldiers moved from one post to another.
There was no announcement to the people.
Nor was any royal decree read aloud in the middle of the market.
But everyone could feel that something was happening.
Inside the royal compound, several officials gathered in an assembly hall.
Their voices were low. No one spoke any louder than necessary.
The matter under discussion seemed extremely important.
Yet word of troop movements in the borderlands had arrived before sunset.
But that was not the only thing making the officials uneasy.
Someone had disappeared.
Someone carrying important information about Jayaraksa's defenses.
And even more troubling...
There was a chamber that no one outside a certain circle was ever supposed to know about.
A chamber far belowground.
Far beneath the kingdom's buildings.
Far beneath the places where ordinary people lived their lives.
Few knew it existed.
Even among Jayaraksa's high officials, only a handful had ever heard its name.
It was called the Inner Gate.
It was called the Inner Gate because it was not a place where gold was stored.
Nor was it a place for storing objects imbued with supernatural power.
It was part of an old complex built long before many of Jayaraksa's buildings had been erected.
Inside were records, metal plates, royal artifacts, and something whose value far exceeded that of treasure.
Something that could change the way a person understood Jayaraksa's history.
That was why the place was guarded.
And the man entrusted with protecting it was around thirty years old. He ran while clutching an intricately carved wooden chest.
His appearance was simple.
He wore a long cloth wrapped down to his ankles, with a light cloth covering his upper body and a cloth belt strong enough to hold small objects.
His hair was arranged and tied back so it would not interfere with his work.
A short weapon hung at his waist for protection.
Most important of all was a metal seal he always carried.
A seal that could be used only by someone with certain authority.
The rain fell without end.
That night, he was in the main archive chamber when he heard a commotion outside.
The door was forced open.
The noise was loud and filled with emotion.
People who had no business being there began rushing inside, furious and frantic.
He knew they were searching for something stored in the deepest part of the archive.
He took the object and ran toward the special storage chamber.
He fled through the increasingly chaotic archive.
The wooden shelves shifted.
Several manuscript scrolls fell to the floor.
The lamplight swayed as the people behind him continued their pursuit.
He gripped a small chest tightly.
Its contents were certainly neither gold nor jewels.
But they were something that, by royal decree, could not be allowed to fall into anyone's hands.
The brave man finally reached the rearmost chamber.
He shut the door and immediately shoved a large wooden shelf aside.
Behind it stood a stone door that ordinary guards had never known about for decades.
He pulled the seal from his belt.
"May the ancestors forgive what I do tonight," he said.
Next, he pressed the seal against a crack in the stone.
Crack.
The door opened slowly.
Then he entered, carrying the chest.
Behind him came the sound of people beginning to break down the archive door.
"Find him!"
"Don't let him get out!"
Thud, bang, boom...
The sound of breathing and the pounding of his heart seemed to race against time.
He then closed the secret door.
Then he ran down the stairs.
His footsteps echoed.
The deeper he descended, the fainter the voices of his pursuers became.
Until finally, he heard nothing at all.
He reached a stone corridor.
The Inner Gate stood before him.
He paused for a moment.
For several seconds, he simply stared at it.
A gate stood solid and unmoving.
A Stone Gate that had been locked for decades.
He stopped before it.
He gazed at the ancient carvings covering the stone's surface.
There was a symbol at its center.
A symbol he had seen for years only in the kingdom's most secret records.
He looked again at the massive stone before him.
For the first time in his life, he realized that the secret he had guarded all this time might not be merely a secret belonging to Jayaraksa.
Perhaps...
There was a reason the gate had never been allowed to open.
And that night, someone had come to open it.
Then he opened the gate and carried the chest into the innermost chamber.
He placed it in the spot that had been prepared.
After making sure nothing had been damaged, he went back outside.
Then he pulled the Stone Gate shut.
Crash.
The gate closed.
He inserted the seal into the lockhole.
His hands trembled.
Not from fear.
But because he knew what he had just done.
He had locked away Jayaraksa's secret.
Not for a day, nor for a year.
Perhaps forever.
The man stared at the gate again for a long time.
Then he whispered to himself, "Starting tonight, no one will know this place exists."
He drew a resigned breath, because everyone knew that death was coming to claim lives by force.
"Let this secret be buried with me," he said again.
He then turned to leave.
But after only a few steps...
BOOOOM!
A thunderous collapse erupted from the direction of the stairs.
Dust rained from the ceiling.
He turned, shock written across his face.
The way out he had just passed through was beginning to close off beneath falling stones.
He ran, but it was too late.
A section of the ceiling collapsed directly in front of him.
The man fell.
The oil lamp went out as well.
In the darkness, he could still see the shadow of the gate he had locked.
Then he smiled faintly.
"At least... They won't find it."
And slowly, faintly, his eyes began to close.
Lightning ceaselessly split the sky above a magnificent kingdom standing on a mountain slope.
Flames raged everywhere.
The soldiers' screams mingled with the sound of warning bells.
The people ran for their lives.
But in the end, Jayaraksa Palace collapsed.
Then darkness swallowed it.
And for centuries upon centuries,
the secret vanished from history.
No one ever learned what had truly happened there.
All that remained were the ruins.
A locked gate.
And the name of a man buried with the last secret of the Kingdom of Jayaraksa.
His name was Kiran Aksara.