Three days had already passed since the grueling engagement with Purba by the time Suria and Riang stepped out of the portal and back into the mountainous, snowy cirque.
Riang's true form was finally restored.
Standing at five times the size of her miniature self, she strode ahead with a new, commanding presence. With a casual flick of her hand, a soft, resonant hum of Shakti rippled through the air.
From the very heart of the mountain wall, a stone ladder unfurled itself, locking into place against the cliffside.
"Not flying, Riang?" Suria asked, glancing up at the newly formed steps.
"I'm still losing my balance a bit since returning to my true size," Riang admitted, adjusting to her altered center of gravity. "Besides, you forgot how to fly entirely, Suria. Let's just walk for now."
Suria offered no argument. She followed close behind, the soles of her chappals crunching rhythmically against the rocky surface of the natural stairs. As they ascended, the pristine white and blue ice of the cirque briefly gave way to a short-lived strip of vibrant greenery.
As they pressed deeper into their journey toward Tambora, the lushness vanished, replaced entirely by a bleak, barren expanse.
A strange, unnatural wind danced beneath the harsh midday sun, carrying a biting chill despite the heat. The skeletons of dead trees rose from the cracked earth, their branches twisted like gnarled claws reaching toward an empty sky. Bleached bones of long-dead animals lay scattered across the parched ground, picked clean by time.
"This place gives me the creeps," Suria muttered.
She pulled out the mission map, squinting to confirm their coordinates. Relief softened the hard lines of her face, though a flicker of worry remained in her eyes.
"At least we're on the right track. Tambora isn't far. We need to find a place to rest, Riang."
Riang stopped in her tracks, planting her hands firmly on her hips as her sharp gaze swept the desolate horizon.
"Yeah, I know. But..." Riang trailed off, her voice dropping. "Something is deeply wrong here. I sense absolutely no life for miles. Nothing to hunt, nothing moving. Even the air feels… empty. I'm starving, Suria, and there's no food to be found."
"WE ARE LEAVING!"
The distant scream echoed sharply across the wasteland. Riang's hand instinctively dropped to her weapon, her muscles tensing for a fight, while Suria quickly motioned for absolute silence.
Moving in tandem, they crept forward, slipping behind the jagged trunk of a massive, dead tree. Peering cautiously around the rotting wood, they spotted a group of villagers.
Their faces were hollowed out by fear and exhaustion, their clothes tattered and coated in dust. They stood in a tight, panicked cluster, shouting aggressively at an old man who was struggling just to keep pace with them.
"There's no hope left! We're entirely out of food!" the leader of the group shouted, his voice laced with a bitter desperation that bordered on madness.
"We'll die if we stay here! The land is dead!"
The old man, however, remained remarkably calm amidst the hostility.
"I've planted seeds," he replied softly, his voice a gentle contrast to the panic surrounding him. "They will grow. Our village still has hope."
"Hope? Against the Puaka?!" The leader scoffed, spitting the words with pure bitterness. "Stay if you want, old man. We're leaving!"
With a sharp turn, the leader marched away, guiding the remaining crowd out of the wasteland. They abandoned the village and its lone defender, their retreating footsteps echoing like a funeral march in the desolate silence.
"We have to help him, Riang," she murmured, her eyes tracking the departing villagers before settling on the elderly figure who had collapsed onto the dry earth in quiet defeat.
Once the last of the villagers vanished over the horizon, Suria and Riang stepped out from the shadows and approached the old man.
Clad in tattered brown garments, his bald head gleamed under the unforgiving sun, a faded cloth tied tightly around his forehead. His head hung low against his chest, and a worn leather pouch lay discarded in the dirt beside him.
"You look like you could use a hand," Riang offered. She extended her hand.
The old man looked up slowly, his weathered face etched with deep-seated weariness and a flicker of suspicion.
"And who might you two be...?"
"Just travelers passing through," Suria answered smoothly, keeping her tone steady but laced with gentle curiosity. "What was all that shouting about?"
"They are the locals," the old man sighed, the sound heavy with the accumulated weight of a hundred heartbreaks. "They're abandoning their homes because the soil can no longer feed us. Our village… it's dying. Slowly and painfully."
"Do you know what's causing this blight?" Riang asked, her brows drawing together in a sharp frown of concern.
"The Darkseed," the old man murmured, the word dropping like a heavy stone. His voice grew thick with sorrow. "A Rakshasa Puaka is draining the life from the land. It doesn't attack us with outward violence, but with a slow, insidious rot. It saps our spirits. It drives us apart, leaving nothing but despair in its wake."
Suria and Riang exchanged a long, meaningful glance. A silent understanding passed between them. The mention of a Puaka stirred something deep within their souls—a sudden alignment of purpose. This wasn't just a detour; this was exactly why they were here.
"Forgive me," the old man said after a long pause, shaking his head with regret. "I should have invited you to my hearth rather than speaking of such dark things out in the open. Please, follow me."
They continued down the path until the skeletal remains of a settlement emerged from the dust.
"This is my village," the old man said quietly. "Coldiang."
Coldiang was a ghost town. Its streets were entirely silent, draped in a suffocating blanket of emptiness. To the side, the sprawling paddy fields were an absolute graveyard of brittle, dead brown stalks.
The only sound was the mournful whisper of the wind whistling through empty window frames—a quiet lament for everything that had been lost. Remnants of abandoned lives littered the cracked earth: a child's toy half-buried in the dirt, a cracked cooking pot, a lone sandal.
The old man led them up a winding, ascending path toward a modest house perched atop a hill. Behind his house stood a fractured stone pillar, its weathered surface carved with ancient, faded text.
The house itself was a humble, fragile structure; its roof sagged heavily under the weight of the years, and its walls had long since surrendered to the harsh elements.
"Come in, come in," he said, his voice gentle but firm. "Rest your feet for a moment. I'll fetch something."
The comforting scents of woodsmoke and dried herbs hung thick in the air. The room was dim, illuminated only by the soft, amber glow of a brazier burning in the corner, casting long, dancing shadows across a worn rug and rough-hewn furniture.
The old man shuffled toward an ancient wooden cupboard that groaned loudly in protest under his touch. He rummaged through the shelves for a moment before pulling out a small pouch.
With a weary sigh, he placed it carefully on the table.
"These," he rasped, his fingers trembling with age and emotion as he untied the simple string, "are the last hope of Coldiang."
Inside the pouch, nestled safely among tiny scraps of old cloth, lay a handful of seeds. They were small, shriveled, and entirely unimpressive to the untrained eye—yet the old man regarded them as if he were holding the very future of the world.
"I don't mean to sound harsh," Suria said, her voice direct but carefully softened by respect, "but with that Puaka still roaming the area, those seeds won't stand a chance."
Riang nodded in firm agreement, eyeing the pouch with a knowing frown.
"The root of all this suffering is the Darkseed. Until it's gone, nothing will grow."
The old man let out a long, deflated sigh, the lines on his face deepening with the weight of his perceived failures.
"Perhaps I am just a foolish old man," he muttered, his voice heavy with utter resignation. "But it's all I have left to give. What can someone like me do anyway? Go out and beat up the Puakas?"
"Old man, let us rest here for a bit. Tonight, we will go out and hunt the Puaka down for you. Once it's gone, you'll have all the time in the world to plant your seeds. Sound like a plan?"
The old man hesitated, a stark flicker of disbelief and doubt crossing his weathered features.
"Can… can you truly do that? It is an incredibly dangerous creature…"
"Of course we can!" Riang assured him, breaking into a broad, brilliant grin. Her eyes sparkling with absolute, unshakeable confidence. "You've got nothing to worry about when we're on the job."
Suria offered a reassuring smile.
"Just leave it to us."
The old man's tense shoulders finally relaxed a fraction.
"I suppose... if you are truly set on this path. Before I forget, let me offer you what little hospitality I have left."
With a weary, grateful sigh, he shuffled over to a small wooden table and retrieved a few withered curry leaves. Their once-vibrant green had faded to a pale, brittle yellow, cracking like dry paper between his calloused fingers.
He placed them carefully into a chipped ceramic bowl and handed it to Suria with an apologetic glance.
"It's not much... in fact, it's a shameful offering. But it is all I can give. The land doesn't even provide enough for a proper meal these days."
N
Suria took the bowl gracefully. She examined the shriveled leaves, rubbing one between her fingers to release its faint, spicy aroma.
"Well, it's certainly... unique. But we'll take what we can get, right, Riang?"
Riang grinned broadly, giving Suria a playful nudge with her elbow.
"I think it'll be just fine! After all, who need of meat when you've got premium curry leaves?"
The old man let out a soft, genuine laugh—though it sounded more like a profound sigh of relief.
"You are both incredibly kind to indulge an old fool like me."
They ate their meager offering in a comfortable silence. The leaves tasted exactly as dry and bitter as the dying land outside, but the profound weight of the gesture meant far more than the meal itself.
Once they finished, the old man led them to a small woven mat laid out in the corner of his humble home.
"I'll wake you when the time is right."
"Ah, you don't need to worry about that," Suria replied gently, settling her posture onto the mat to rest. "We'll know exactly when the right time comes. Leave the rest to us, old man. Just promise you'll stay safely inside while we handle the hunting."
Suria and Riang lay down; the brazier in the corner continued to radiate a gentle, pulsing warmth, casting long, flickering shadows against the wooden walls.
Outside, the harsh midday sun finally dipped beneath the horizon, painting the sky in deep, bruised hues of orange and purple.
Past midnight, while the old man slept fitfully in his bed, Suria and Riang slipped silently out of the house and ventured into the desolate forest.
Suria's kris floated effortlessly just ahead of her, its wavy blade glimmered with a faint, ethereal light in the pitch darkness. It darted forward like a hound on a scent, twisting left and right as if entirely alive, tracking the foul disturbance in the air.
The midnight air was perfectly still and biting cold, heavy with the oppressive scent of decaying flora and damp, stagnant earth. Not a single sound echoed through the woods, save for the incredibly soft, synchronized crunch of their footsteps stepping over brittle leaves as the duo broke into a silent run to keep pace, their breaths forming small clouds of mist.
Suddenly, the kris halted mid-air with a sharp, metallic hiss. Ahead, looming in the darkness, they saw it.
The Rakshasa Puaka.
Towering over the ruined landscape, the titan's colossal form cast an oppressive, terrifying shadow across the forest. Its stark white armor gleamed with a sickening, unnatural luminescence under the cold gaze of the moon. Every jagged edge of its massive form pulsed with an ominous, corrupted energy.
The razor-sharp points of its armored shell snapped open and shut with terrifying speed, acting as a massive, deadly maw that violently siphoned the latent life force from everything around it.
Its monstrous limbs, tipped with wickedly sharp scythe-like points, moved with a horrifying, predatory grace—each deliberate gesture a promise of unmitigated violence.
A skeletal, vulture-like face dominated by malevolent, burning red eyes leered from beneath a wild mane of long black hair that flowed behind it like a heavy shroud of darkness.
The very atmosphere crackled around the creature, its towering presence an unstoppable, corrupted force of nature hellbent on consuming everything in its path.
An impenetrable barrier of dark power completely shielded the Puaka, forming a shimmering dome of absolute force that allowed nothing to penetrate its perimeter.
From their hiding spot, Suria and Riang watched in horror as the faint, iridescent shimmer of pure life force was forcibly ripped from the surrounding land, leaving a literal trail of instantly withered grass and deeply cracked earth in its wake.
The Puaka's armored shell snapped tightly shut, its gruesome feast finally complete. As the creature digested the stolen energy, the dark barrier shimmered and dissolved out of existence.
Riang stepped out from the shadows, her knuckles turning stark white as her fists clenched.
"You damn creature, you eat too much and left nothing for poor people! I'm gonna punch out everything inside those skeleton face of yours! Here I come!"