Twenty years earlier, Leiden had always seemed to Sophia like a city built from fog, canals, and old brick. It was the place where she had been born and raised, where the ringing of bicycle bells mingled with the creak of doors in narrow houses, and where history felt so close that sometimes it seemed to be peeking out from behind the windows.
Sophia was ten years old when her father took her to Leiden University Library.
They walked down a long corridor toward the Asian Library and the special collections room. The atmosphere was quiet in an almost sacred way. The air inside was cool, the lighting soft, and the scent of old paper filled the spaces between the shelves. Behind glass and security doors were palm-leaf manuscripts, bark paper, and bamboo slats that preserved the voices of the Nusantara's past.
Her father mentioned names Sophia did not yet fully understand: La Galigo, Babad Diponegoro, Javanese and Sundanese manuscripts, records written in Batak script, and Bugis writings. Tens of thousands of manuscripts filled the collection. Some contained literature and religious texts, while others were colonial diaries. The same room also held ancient maps, printed illustrations, and documentary photographs from various islands that, at the time, looked to Sophia like nothing more than distant lines on paper.
She stood beside her father with both hands pressed against her sides. Even her breathing seemed too loud for the room.
“Don’t touch anything,” her father whispered.
Sophia nodded.
“Not because these things will be damaged,” he continued. “But because some of them hold more than what’s written on their surfaces.”
He led Sophia to a stop in front of a reading table. From behind a brown folder, her father took out several photocopies. His expression changed. He usually spoke like a professor explaining something, but this time his voice was barely audible.
“There’s a story that’s been passed down through our family,” he said. “I’m the third generation to know about it.”
Sophia looked at him. “A story about what?”
Her father did not answer right away. He glanced around, as though the old shelves had ears.
“Your grandfather was one of the colonial soldiers assigned to assist J.L.A. Brandes. He took part in collecting ancient manuscripts from Bali and Lombok when the Dutch carried out a military expedition in Bali in the late nineteenth century.”
The name Brandes was unfamiliar to Sophia, but the way her father spoke it made the name feel heavy.
“When war and unrest broke out in Bali,” he continued, “Brandes and your grandfather slipped into a room inside a palace that was under siege. Fire had already spread through parts of the building. They took as many manuscripts as they could still save.”
Her father opened one of the photocopies. Black ink covered the page, some of it faded with age.
“Among those manuscripts, your grandfather found a flat metal plate.”
“What did it look like?”
Her father took a small object from his suit pocket. The plate was no bigger than a fist. An eight-pointed sun symbol was engraved on its surface, with intricate carving at its center.
Sophia held her breath.
“Your grandfather felt that this object was extremely valuable,” her father said. “So he slipped it into a hidden pocket in his uniform. He didn’t report it to Brandes.”
“Wasn’t that stealing?”
“Yes.” Her father stared at the plate. “And perhaps, for the first time, your grandfather stole something not for himself.”
Years after the incident, Sophia’s grandfather returned to the Netherlands and settled in Leiden. He kept searching for the origin of the plate he had hidden. He read travel journals, compared symbols, and traced manuscripts that had never been entered into the official catalog.
At last, he found an old record about a relic believed to be capable of helping its owner conquer the world and become a ruler.
But the relic came with consequences.
If the person who possessed it had cultivated goodness within himself, the relic would strengthen his wisdom, justice, and inner calm. He could become a good king and lead his kingdom to glory.
But if the relic fell into the hands of an evil person, its power would magnify greed and fear. Its owner would become a cruel king, seeing threats everywhere and destroying anyone he believed stood in his way.
“So the relic is evil?” Sophia asked.
“It’s not that simple.”
“Then what makes it dangerous?”
Her father ran his thumb over the surface of the plate without touching the symbol at its center.
“The relic doesn’t create a person’s nature. It only removes the limits that have held it back.”
That sentence frightened Sophia more than the story about the cruel king.
Her father then showed her an old map. On it was a mark resembling the symbol on the metal plate. Based on the historical records he had found, the relic had been locked away by Brawijaya V, the last king of Majapahit, in a cave in the interior of Pacitan called Luweng Ombo.
“With his supernatural power, Brawijaya V locked away the relic’s power so no one could misuse it again,” her father said. “The route was sealed, and the water from the place where it was kept was diverted deep underground.”
Sophia studied the map. Its lines looked like roots creeping toward a black hole.
“Then why did you bring the key here?”
Her father raised the metal plate between them.
“Because this object is the key to opening the door that has kept the relic hidden all this time.”
The sounds of the library seemed to vanish. Sophia could hear only the ticking of a small clock on the wall and her father’s held breath.
“Are you going there?”
“Not now.”
But his answer did not sound like a refusal. A few months later, Sophia learned that a secret organization in the Netherlands was preparing an expedition to search for the relic in Luweng Ombo. Her father became one of the team members.
He did not join to open the door that had been sealed for centuries.
He joined to sabotage the expedition from within.
On the last night before their departure, her father stood in the doorway of Sophia’s room. Sophia was only ten years old, but she was old enough to understand that adults sometimes deliberately hid their fear.
“What if you don’t come home?” she asked.
Her father smiled, though the smile never reached his eyes.
“I’ll come home.”
The expedition departed for Indonesia. Then brief messages began to arrive, growing less frequent and less clear. After that, there was no news at all.
The expedition failed completely.
Every member of the team disappeared inside Luweng Ombo, including Sophia’s father.
Sophia woke from her reverie.
She was inside her tent, years after the day her father had shown her the metal plate in the special collections room. In front of her, a cup of hot coffee sent up a thin curl of steam. Morning light slipped through a gap in the tent fabric and fell across the surface of the plate, which now lay beside her hand.
Sophia touched the eight-pointed sun symbol with her fingertip.
A faint pulse stirred again beneath the carving.
Outside the tent, the expedition gear began to move. The day’s cave exploration was about to begin.
Sophia stared at the darkness waiting below Luweng Ombo.
“Today, I’ll find you, Dad.”