BLOOD OF BORNEO

CHAPTER 7: THE MANIFESTATION OF TRAUMA

Whoosh...

The sound of helicopter rotors suddenly echoed. It wasn't Thorne’s, but the military Black Hawk that had once brought him to the war zone. Damang jolted, his hands scrambling at his waist, searching for the SS2 rifle that was no longer there.

The Black Forest was never truly silent. This place was a stretch of dying, decaying vegetation. Damang leaned his back against the trunk of a dead, hardened ironwood tree. His breathing was heavy and raspy. A sharp, metallic scent rose from his wounds, signaling that his blood was beginning to dry.

Every time he tried to take a breath, excruciating pain pierced his chest from his broken ribs. Around him, a thin purple mist began to crawl across the ground. To Damang, the mist was no longer just water vapor, but the horrific shadows of his past rising once again.

Whoosh...

The sound of helicopter rotors suddenly shattered the silence. It wasn't Thorne’s group, but the sound of the military Black Hawk that had once brought him into the heart of the war zone. Damang jolted. His trembling hands fumbled at his waist, searching for the SS2 rifle that was now gone.

"Hold your position, Damang! Don't let them get close!" his commander’s shout suddenly rang in his ears, so real that he squeezed his eyes shut.

Damang coughed, spitting a thick, dark red liquid onto the blackened tree roots. He whispered to himself in a voice that was nearly gone, "Damn it, they’re coming again... they always come when I’m about to die."

He stared at the thickening mist, as if seeing the barrels of weapons pointed directly at his face from behind the trees.

"You cannot run from this forest, Sergeant," whispered a disembodied voice that resembled his own, yet sounded far colder. "This forest knows what you did in those swamps. It wants you to stay here... to rot with us."

Damang clawed at the earth with his dirty fingernails. "Shut up," he hissed, teeth gritted. "I’m not finished yet. I’m not allowed to die in this dumpster."

However, the sound of the helicopter grew louder, deafening, while the black shadows within the mist began to step closer without the slightest sound of footsteps. The forest seemed to be holding its breath, waiting for the final second of Damang’s heart to stop beating.

"Contact! Left flank! Ten o'clock!" a hoarse voice screamed.

Damang’s eyes widened. In front of him, Sergeant Aris, his teammate, was running while clutching his stomach, his intestines spilling out. Aris’s face was melting like wax, yet his voice was terrifyingly real.

"Commander! Don't leave me!" Aris’s shadow roared.

"Aris! Hang on!" Damang tried to rise, but the tattoos all over his body suddenly pulsed with a glowing red light.

"ARGH!" Damang fell back into the black mud. It felt like being doused in boiling gasoline. Aris’s shadow vanished, replaced by his father’s face, staring with a judgmental emptiness.

"You failed, Damang," thousands of voices whispered from behind the mist. "You trained for ten years to become a killing machine, but you couldn't save a single person you loved."

"Shut up..." Damang hissed, clutching his throbbing head. "It wasn't my fault... they had demonic technology..."

"Excuses are the pillow of a coward, Bujang."

Damang looked up. In the middle of the mist stood the figure of Indung Inan. Her eyes emitted a blue light that pierced into Damang’s bone marrow.

"Indung? You... you followed me here?" Damang muttered in disbelief.

"I am in the place where your sanity begins to crack," Indung Inan stepped closer without touching the ground. "You are dying. Not because of your physical wounds, but because you refuse to look into the mirror of your own soul. You are still hiding behind that torn military uniform!"

"I am a soldier! That is my identity! That is my way of life!" Damang shouted in frustration.

Indung Inan laughed, a sound like the croak of a raven in a storm. "A soldier? You are a child of Borneo who has forgotten how to hear the heartbeat of your own mother! Your military logic. Firing angles, operational procedures—all of that is trash in the face of the power of your blood! You are trying to control these tattoos like you control an automatic rifle. That is why they are burning you!"

"Then what am I supposed to do?!" Damang roared. "These tattoos kill me every time I move!"

"Because you are fighting the flow of their energy!" Indung Inan slammed her staff into the ground.

BOOM!

The world around Damang collapsed. He felt himself falling into an endless dark well, until he landed on the surface of pitch-black water. There, he saw a horrific reflection of himself. His face was covered in burns, and the tattoos had turned into living roots that pierced his skin.

"Welcome to the Manang ritual," Indung Inan’s voice echoed. "Here, trauma is no longer a memory. Here, trauma is a manifestation that can kill you."

Suddenly, from beneath the water, the figure of Commander Nyarung emerged with a Paladin thermal sword still embedded in his stomach.

"Father!" Damang tried to pull the sword out, but his hand passed through his father’s shadow.

"Look, Damang," Nyarung whispered, his mouth full of blood. "Look at how I died. Look again. And again."

The scene at the edge of the cliff looped like a broken tape. Damang was forced to watch his father being stabbed, over and over in slow motion.

"Stop it! Enough, Indung! Stop this!" Damang roared, closing his eyes.

"Not until you stop fighting your destiny!" Indung Inan replied. "Why is that Mandau as heavy as a mountain in your hands? Answer!"

"Because I’m not strong enough! I failed!"

"Wrong! Not because you are weak, but because you do not believe in your own blood!" Indung Inan pointed at Damang’s arm. "These tattoos are not ink, Damang! They are biological interface gates! New nerves that connect your soul to the energy of Borneo!"

Damang fell silent. He stared at his father’s shadow being stabbed for the thousandth time. This time, he did not turn away. He let the grief and anger flow in without resistance.

Don't fight it, he thought. Let the pain become a part of me.

Instantly, the heat in his tattoos changed into a stable, low-frequency vibration. He felt his nerves extending, creeping out from his skin pores and touching the surface of the black water.

"I understand now..." Damang whispered.

He reached out toward the shadow of the Paladin about to stab his father again. This time, his hand did not pass through. He gripped the shadow’s throat.

"You will not touch him again," Damang growled.

With a single jolt of intent, Damang shattered the Paladin’s shadow into dust. The vision broke instantly.

Damang jolted awake at the bottom of the Black Forest. His body was drenched in sweat, but the pain in his ribs had subsided. He looked at his arm. The tattoos there were now glowing with a soft, purplish-blue light, creeping gently under his skin like an electric current.

He placed his hand on the waste-contaminated ground. Suddenly, his brain was flooded with information. He could feel the chemical flow in the tree roots, the vibrations of insects in the distance, even the heartbeat of Thorne’s Harvester machine kilometers away.

"These tattoos..." Damang muttered, his voice calm and deep. "They are new nerves connecting me to the forest."

Indung Inan was not there physically, but her voice lingered in the wind. "You have passed through the gate of trauma, Damang. That Mandau will no longer feel heavy to a man who has cast away his fear."

Damang stood up. His movements were now fluid, like a predator. He walked toward the mud puddle where his Mandau was buried.

"Come closer," Damang whispered to the weapon.

Without touching it, the mud around the Mandau began to ripple. As his fingers touched the human-bone hilt, which had hardened like stone, an explosion of spiritual energy swept away the dry leaves around him.

WHOOSH!

The Mandau now felt as light as air in his hand. But Damang knew, one swing from it could cleave Paladin titanium armor.

"Commander! There’s an energy signature in sector 9!" a radio voice from a Paladin patrol sounded in the distance. "Two units, check the coordinates!"

Damang no longer hid. He spun the Mandau in his hand with a speed impossible for the human eye to follow, creating a hum that sliced through the night’s humidity.

"Elias Thorne," Damang’s voice sounded cold, echoing with an unnatural tone. "I hope you’re finished with your speech. Because now, it’s this forest’s turn to speak through my hands."

Two Paladins emerged from behind the bushes with thermal weapons drawn. "Target found! Fire—"

Before they could pull the trigger, Damang had already vanished.

CRACK!

One lightning-fast movement, and the heads of both Paladins fell to the ground along with their perfectly severed armor. Damang stood between their corpses, staring toward the lights of Thorne’s camp in the distance.

"This trauma no longer weakens me," Damang muttered, looking at his brightly glowing tattoos. "It is my weapon."

He darted into the darkness, not as a fugitive, but as an inevitable destruction. Tonight, Thorne would learn that the vengeance of a man who has made peace with his pain is a force that no machine algorithm can calculate.