Shards of the Gods

Chapter 7: Blood on the Stone

Nyai Kemuning had told him to wait. Reksa couldn't wait.

He had realized this all afternoon, sitting among the dye vats as he practiced containing the light in his hands. Every time the blue liquid turned green, he remembered Bagas’s face at the tower window, and the lips mouthing the word run. Every time he managed to keep it blue, he thought of only one thing: it had been two days, and he had done nothing but hide.

As evening approached, he found Pipit sewing fabric in a corner of the room.

"Do you know a way into that tower?"

Pipit didn't look up. "Nyai said that tower can't be stormed."

"I'm not storming it. I just want to speak to him."

The needle in the child's hand stopped. She stared at Reksa for a long moment, with the look of someone who had seen adults do stupid things far too often.

"There's an ash chute," she said finally, her voice low. "It used to be used to dump furnace ash from the upper floors to the basement. It hasn't been used in decades, but it hasn't been sealed off. My father used to work there."

This is a bad idea, Sarnika said.

I agree, Wiratma added, though his tone was hesitant.

"You two don't have to come," Reksa muttered in his mind.

We live in your hand, Sarnika shot back coldly. Of course we are coming.

Before leaving, Reksa slipped a scrap of cloth under the teacup of Nyai Kemuning, who was fast asleep in the corner, her spectacles still perched on her nose. He had written on it with charcoal: I'm just going to look. I will be back before dawn. He knew it was a halflie, but he couldn't bring himself to write the truth.

Pipit peered over his shoulder. "Nyai is going to be furious."

"I know."

"Furious with me, I mean." The child let out a long sigh. "But my father used to say, those who wait too long to help someone usually regret it for the rest of their lives. So, let's go."

Near midnight, they slipped into the sewers on the east side of the city. A foul stench and thick, murky water welcomed them, and Pipit led the way with a small, clothshrouded lantern. Rats scurried along the edges of the drain. Overhead, the faint chiming of small bells echoed from the watchtowers.

His leadlined cloak kept the trackers at bay, but Reksa could still feel a pressure in his chest growing heavier with every step they took toward the city center.

The shard in that tower, Wiratma said tensely. Its great bell. I can feel it from here. That is no ordinary shard.

Quiet, Sarnika hissed suddenly. Something is wrong.

"What is it?"

I'm listening to the guards above us. Do you know what I hear? She paused. Nothing.

"Isn't that a good thing?"

No. Her tone sharpened. Humans on guard duty have intentions: boredom, sleepiness, alertness, fear. I hear all of that, all the time. But this place... it's too quiet. As if their intentions are being actively suppressed.

Reksa stopped in his tracks. Pipit looked back, her brow furrowing.

"Why did you stop?"

"It's nothing." Reksa shook his head, but his back felt cold. "Keep going."

They reached the end of the sewer, a narrow stone passage with a rusted iron door. Pipit unlocked it with an old key from her pocket, revealing a vast, dark cellar that smelled of ash and cold iron. On the far wall, a square opening gaped, wide enough for a single person, rising straight up into the darkness.

"The ash chute," Pipit whispered. "It goes all the way to the top floor. I'm not coming with you. I'll wait here."

"If anyone comes..."

"I'll scream." Pipit gave a nervous grin. "But I hope you're already dead before that happens."

Reksa almost laughed.

He pressed his palm against the wall of the chute, and in his mind, he recalled the Guardian's Touch. He asked, rather than commanded. The stone beneath his fingers vibrated subtly, then jutted out to form small footholds, one by one, like a ladder growing out of the wall.

He began to climb.

The chute was narrow and hot, choked with leftover ash that puffed up whenever he moved. Reksa climbed slowly, holding his breath, and in the dark, he heard the beat of his own heart, echoing as if through the entire tower.

Floor after floor passed. Occasionally he heard the clack of boots and whispered voices behind the stone walls, but no one came near. It was too quiet, just as Sarnika had said.

On the sixth floor, a small slit in the chute wall revealed the corridor outside, lit by torches. Reksa froze. Two Sweepers stood there, leaning on their spears, their faces blank. They were looking directly at the slit. They did not react.

They see you, Sarnika whispered, dread creeping into her voice. I can feel it. But there is no intent. No surprise, no urge to alert anyone. It's as if they have been ordered to let you through.

We have to go down, Wiratma said quickly.

Reksa looked up, toward the small, lit window in the distance on the top floor. He was too close to turn back. He gritted his teeth and continued climbing, ignoring the foreboding that sliced down his spine like a cold blade.

After what felt like an eternity, he found a small opening in the chute wall, blocked by rusted iron bars. He kicked it gently, and the grate gave way with a soft clatter.

Behind it was a small cell with a single window.

Bagas sat on the stone floor, leaning against the wall, his hands chained to iron rings in the masonry. His face was weary, and a fresh scar marked his temple, but when he raised his eyes and saw who had emerged from the hole, a faint smile graced his lips.

"I knew it," he murmured. "Foolish boy."

Reksa crawled out of the chute and knelt by his side. His hands trembled as he touched the chains binding the old man's wrists. "Bagas..."

"Don't. These chains are inscribed with dampening runes. If you touch them, the bells will ring." Bagas stared at Reksa's silver hair, and something in his expression softened. "Your hair."

"The price of the journey."

"You used the Passage." Bagas closed his eyes for a moment, as if enduring a wave of pain. "So you've opened the gate."

"You know about the gate? You know about all this?" Reksa kept his voice from rising. "Who are you really, Bagas? Who made me this way?"

Bagas stared at him for a long time. For the first time, Reksa saw something the old man had hidden all this time behind his tired scavenger's face: something ancient, weary, and incredibly cautious.

"Once, I was the Keeper of the Southern Gate," he said finally, in a soft voice. "We had only one duty: to ensure the door remained shut. We did not fight. We waited."

A Keeper, Wiratma whispered in shock. A mortal trusted by the Guardians.

"That night, someone cloaked in black passed through my gate." Bagas swallowed hard. "I didn't see their face. But I saw what they carried. And what they left in the crater, seventeen years ago."

"Me."

"A little boy who remembered nothing." Bagas smiled bitterly. "I didn't know who you were, child. I only knew one thing: you weren't the one who killed them."

Reksa froze. Inside his head, Sarnika went silent.

"The final door," Bagas continued, his pace quickening as if his time were running out. "There is something behind that door. Someone sealed it from the inside, and to do so, they had to shatter themselves. That is what I know. That is what I learned from the ruins of the gate over seventeen years."

"Then why did Dharsa..."

"Because whatever is behind that door is trying to get out." Bagas leaned forward as far as his chains allowed. "And it needs the one who closed it to open it again. Dharsa didn't capture me to kill me, Reksa. He captured me so that you would come. The execution is just bait. You must run. Now, before..."

Ting.

The sound was clear, coming from below, from inside the tower.

Ting. Ting.

Reksa turned toward the opening of the chute. The smell of ash was now mingled with something else: incense, and a thin gray mist was creeping up from the hole.

"Go," Bagas whispered. "Through the window. There's a rope on the west side..."

"No."

"Reksa!"

"I'm not leaving you behind again." Reksa stood up, golden veins blazing beneath his skin. He made no attempt to hold it back this time. "Wiratma. Sarnika."

I am here, Wiratma said.

Me too, Sarnika murmured. Unfortunately.

Reksa pressed his hand to Bagas's chains. The runes on the metal flared, screaming, and the bells throughout the tower rang out in unison. But the chains cracked, then shattered, and Bagas stumbled free.

The room's door blew wide open.

Dharsa stood on the threshold, his gray robes immaculate, the shard in his chest pulsing a deep, dark red. Behind him, twenty Sweepers stood in tight formation, all armed, all silent.

"Thank you for coming," he said softly. "I have been waiting for you."

He stepped inside slowly, like a host welcoming a guest, and stared at Bagas's broken chains with an expression bordering on awe.

"Runedampened chains, specifically crafted to suppress highgrade shards. You broke them with a single touch." He shook his head slowly. "I knew you could. But seeing it in person... is something else entirely."

"You let me in," Reksa said, his voice raspy.

"Of course. Did you think forty Sweepers couldn't hear someone climbing up an ash chute for an hour?" Dharsa smiled. "I only needed you to stand here, inside this tower, beneath this bell. The perfect place to awaken something that sleeps."

In the distance, the colossal bell at the top of the tower began to move on its own, pulled by no one, swaying gently as if in welcome.

Bagas tugged at Reksa's arm with his trembling hand. "Run," he whispered, his voice carrying the weight of a desperate plea. "Reksa, please."

But Reksa couldn't move. The golden veins on both of his arms flared of their own accord, uncontrollable, and from deep within him, something ancient and massive began to answer the bell's call.

Reksa, Wiratma called out, his voice barely a whisper. Feel the floor.

Reksa felt it. Beneath the stone, deep below the tower's foundations, something was pulsing. It wasn't a shard, nor was it mana. It was something else—something that had hidden beneath layers of earth and stone for a thousand years.

The door, Sarnika whispered. They built this tower right on top of it.

From the floor beneath their feet, the first crack spiderwebbed outward like black lightning.

And from within that crack, very softly, someone knocked once from the other side.