Shards of the Gods

Chapter 6: The Corridor of Doors

How do I ask?" Reksa asked.

Politely, Wiratma replied. And honestly. The Gate does not like being lied to.

Reksa pressed his palm against the cold stone surface, closed his eyes, and spoke softly, as if to a sleeping elder.

"I need to get to Rakta. Bagas only has three days left. I don't have time."

The stone pulsed. Then, silently, the two giant doors parted a hand's breadth, and a golden light that was not sunlight poured from the narrow opening. It swirled around him, and before Reksa could even draw a breath, the dirt floor vanished from beneath his feet.

He wasn't falling. He was floating.

Around him stretched an endless corridor, its walls made of pale light, with countless giant doors lining both sides. Eight of them were larger than the rest, each glowing with a different light: gold, silver, blue, red. The others were small, pitchblack, and tightly shut.

Don't look at the black ones, Wiratma whispered urgently. Those are doors that were never meant to be opened.

Why are they whispering? Sarnika asked. For the first time, her voice sounded afraid. I can hear them. So many voices.

"Me too," Reksa said.

The whispers came from behind the black doors, overlapping, calling his name in a language he didn't understand but somehow comprehended. The Closer. The Closer. Open. You owe us.

Don't answer, Wiratma hissed.

Something pounded on a black door in the distance. Once. Twice. The corridor shuddered, and a thin crack spiderwebbed across the door's surface, oozing a red light that pulsed like a wound.

Don't stop, Wiratma urged. If you stop, you will answer. And if you answer, it will know you can hear.

"Who is 'it'?"

I don't know, Wiratma admitted, and the confession was more terrifying than a thousand warnings. But it has been pounding on that door for a long time. Since before I died.

Reksa gritted his teeth and stared straight ahead toward a silver door glowing faintly in the distance. He drifted toward it, and every yard he crossed felt like dragging himself through thick water. A heavy pressure weighed on his chest, his head, and his eyes.

When he finally broke through the silver door, the world spun and slammed into him from all sides.

He woke up inhaling dust.

Reksa was lying on a cracked stone floor beneath a halfcollapsed roof. The night air was biting cold. His head throbbed as if struck by a hammer, and when he raised a hand to touch his temple, he saw a strand of hair fall in front of his eyes.

The hair was silverwhite.

The price of passage, Wiratma said softly. Every corridor demands a toll.

"How long was I out?"

About half a day.

Reksa swore, and for once, Sarnika didn't mock him.

He got up and swept his gaze around. He was inside a small, halfruined temple, its walls carved with patterns similar to the gateway in the Valley. On the far wall, a tiny stone door was tightly shut. The carvings around it were choked with moss, but Reksa could still make out a cloaked figure standing with its back to a cracked circle.

He paused, then brushed his fingertips over the carving. Nothing changed. Yet his chest tightened, a feeling like running into someone he knew but whose name he couldn't recall.

The Southern Gate, Wiratma murmured. No one is supposed to remember this place.

Reksa stepped out of the temple. The night air welcomed him, and before him, sprawling beneath the hill, lay a sea of light.

Rakta.

The city was far larger than he had ever imagined. Towers of black stone rose amidst thousands of oil lamps, the city walls encircling it like a ring around a giant's neck, and at its center stood a tall tower with a bronze bell large enough to swallow a house. The bell swayed gently, and its toll, which felt painful even from this distance, made the pulse in Reksa's chest beat erratically.

A shard of that size, Wiratma whispered, in equal parts awe and horror. I wonder which god it belonged to?

In the wide plaza at the foot of the tower, people were erecting a wooden stage. From here, it was unmistakable: a gallows, with a small stool beneath it.

Reksa clenched his fists until his knuckles turned white.

"Hey."

A small voice, from behind him.

Reksa turned quickly. A boy stood in the temple's doorway—thin, maybe eleven years old, carrying a small lantern and a cloth bundle. His hair was messy and his eyes were as large as an owl's.

"Are you the whitehaired one?" he asked.

"Who are you?"

"Pipit." The boy lifted his chin. "Nyai Kemuning said if someone appeared from this temple, he'd be the one I'm looking for. You're half a day late, you know."

Reksa stared at him in disbelief. "Nyai knew I would come through here?"

"Nyai knows a lot of things." Pipit tossed the cloth bundle to him. "Eat. You look like a corpse. Then follow me. Don't make a sound. Don't glow."

"Glow?"

"Your hand." The boy pointed without hesitation. "It's been glowing this whole time."

Reksa glanced at his right hand. It was true. Faint golden veins pulsed beneath his skin. He quickly covered it with his lead cloak and followed the boy down the hill.

The safehouse turned out to be a dye workshop on the edge of town, filled with large vats of blue and red liquids that smelled pungent. Nyai Kemuning was already waiting inside, sitting on a roll of fabric with a tired face. She stared at Reksa's silver hair for a moment but made no comment.

"Sit. Eat. Listen."

Reksa sat down. He listened while chewing on the bread and salted meat Pipit had brought.

"Bagas is being held in the Bell Tower," Nyai Kemuning said, unrolling a map of the city. "Forty Sweepers stand guard at the base of the tower, twelve inside, and there are small bells on every floor. If you step inside carrying even a single shard, the entire tower will chime. It's not a place you can just storm."

"Then what can I do?"

"Wait." She pointed to a spot on the map: the plaza at the foot of the tower. "The execution is scheduled for two days from now, at noon. Dharsa will bring Bagas out and hang him in front of the entire city. That is the only time Bagas will be outside the tower."

"And that's when I can save him?"

"That is when you can try." Nyai Kemuning gave him a sharp look. "And I, along with all the scavengers, merchants, and dyers who owe Bagas a debt of gratitude, will cause as much chaos as we can. One chance. No more."

"It's a gamble."

"Everything of value is a gamble, boy."

From the corner of the room, Pipit spoke up. "If your hand keeps glowing like that, you'll be dead before you even reach the tower."

"I know."

"Then you have to learn to suppress it." The boy dragged a small tub of deep blue liquid and set it in front of Reksa. "Try it. Dip your hand in, and don't let the liquid change color."

Reksa stared at him suspiciously. "What is this?"

"Manasensitive dye. If you leak even a tiny bit of your light, it turns green." Pipit shrugged. "Nyai made it specifically to train people like you. A few have come before you, but none of them lasted long."

People like you? Sarnika repeated, suspicious. How many came before?

No one answered the question. Reksa dipped his hand, closed his eyes, and imagined still water. The blue liquid rippled slightly, turning green around the edges, before slowly deepening back to its original color.

"Not bad," Pipit said, smiling for the first time. "Not bad for a scavenger."

Reksa fell silent. In his head, Wiratma and Sarnika were silent too, both waiting, as if this time, even they had no advice to offer.

"There is one more thing," Nyai Kemuning continued, lowering her voice. "Something I didn't bring up at the market because I wasn't sure. But after three days of listening to the whispers across the city, I am certain."

"What?"

"Dharsa is not working for the Duke of Rakta." She leaned in. "The Duke hasn't been seen in public for two years. All orders come through Dharsa, but no one has ever seen a letter bearing the Duke's seal. There is someone else behind this city. Someone who is having the Sweepers hunt down shards not to sell them, but to amass them."

"Collected for what?"

"That, I don't know yet." Nyai Kemuning stared at the black cloth peeking from Reksa's shoulder. "But I suspect the answer lies with you."

That night, Reksa couldn't sleep.

He climbed onto the roof of the dye house, sitting among lines of drying fabric fluttering in the wind, and stared at the Bell Tower in the distance. Its giant bell swayed gently, torchlight illuminating its bronze side from below.

On the highest floor of the tower, there was a single lit window.

Reksa narrowed his eyes. Someone was standing at that window—a thin figure with graying hair.

His heart stopped.

"Bagas," he whispered.

From such a distance, it should have been impossible to make out anyone's face. But somehow, the figure at the window raised his head, and Reksa was sure—as sure as he was of his own breath—that Bagas was looking straight at him.

The old man's lips moved. Slowly. Clearly.

Reksa couldn't hear him, but he didn't need to. He had read those lips thousands of times since childhood, every time Bagas told him to stay away from something dangerous.

Don't come.

Then, once more, even slower, as if ensuring Reksa wouldn't misread:

Run.

Reksa gripped the edge of the roof until his nails split.

For seventeen years, whenever Bagas told him to back down, Reksa had obeyed. He had always believed it was the old man's way of loving him. Tonight, for the first time, he realized it could also mean something else: that Bagas knew what awaited him at the end of this road, and would rather die than see him reach it.

In his head, Wiratma whispered, very softly: He knows you are watching him.

He knows far more than we think, Sarnika added, and this time there was no mockery in her voice.

Reksa did not reply. He only stared at the small window until its light went out, and the glow at the base of the tower slowly faded.

Two days left.