Dr. Elias Thorne believed in order.
To him, order was a religion. It was the silent language spoken by the rows of artifacts in their glass display cases, by the meticulously arranged footnotes in academic journals, and, most importantly, by the quiet symphony of the Nusantara Heritage Museum's archive room. Tonight, in Yogyakarta, that symphony was discordant.
The air in the cargo storage room was heavy and humid, a tropical climate seeping past concrete and an overworked air conditioning system. The smell of mothball dust, old teakwood, and the ozone from a flickering fluorescent lamp filled the space. Elias stood before a folding table, sipping a syrupy, cold black coffee—his only colleague at this late hour.
Before him lay a cargo manifest. The paper was thin, printed on a dot-matrix printer that seemed to be from the same era as some of the artifacts it cataloged. His job tonight was supposed to be simple: verify a new shipment from the excavation site at Trowulan before the curatorial team took over in the morning. Simple, but vital. To him, the manifest was scripture. It was the promise that the past had been transported to the present, intact.
And tonight, his scripture was lying.
Elias pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up. His sharp eyes—eyes trained to see micro-fractures in pottery or the difference in brush strokes on a manuscript—scanned the list for the fifth time.
Earthenware Pottery, Majapahit Period, #1044. (Check).Coin Fragments, Song Dynasty, #1045. (Check).Bronze Spearhead, #1046. (Check).
The list continued until item #1090. Forty-seven items in total.
Elias counted the rough-hewn wooden crates stacked on the concrete floor behind him. Again.
There were forty-eight.
A familiar itch began to creep up the back of his neck. This wasn't a simple clerical error. This was an anomaly in his system. A wrong note in a perfect symphony. Someone—at the port, on the dig team, or here—had made a mistake. And for Elias, a mistake was the beginning of chaos.
He walked away from his table, the soles of his shoes squeaking softly on the polished floor. He counted the crates again, touching each rough wooden surface with his slender fingertips. Forty-eight.
He returned to the manifest. Forty-seven.
He re-checked the confirmation email from the field team. Forty-seven. He checked the museum's internal receiving log. Forty-seven.
The entire system, the entire order, insisted that only forty-seven crates existed. Yet his eyes—his most trusted sense—told him there were forty-eight.
The 48th crate was hiding in the darkest corner of the room, wedged between a steel archive shelf and Crate #1062 (Ritual Mask, Bali). This one was different. The other crates were stamped with the museum's logo and bright blue catalog numbers. This one was naked. No logo. No number. The only identifier was a faded black stencil on its side: T/S.
Elias felt a small vibration—a mix of professional annoyance and a tiny spark of something else. Something he had almost forgotten: pure, unadulterated curiosity.
Breaking at least three museum protocols, he retrieved a small crowbar from the toolkit on the wall. The metal groaned in protest as he pried the lid off the 48th crate. A musty, metallic smell stung his nose.
The contents were anticlimactic. No gleaming gold. No impressive statuary. Just a small, black-velvet-lined wooden box, worn with age, resting on a bed of dry straw. The box was perhaps the size of a paperback book.
Elias lifted it. It was light. Too light.
He opened it.
Inside, resting on velvet that had faded to gray, lay a bronze compass.
Elias frowned. He was an archivist, not a navigator. But he knew compasses. And this one was wrong.
It was made entirely of bronze, greened with age, its surface covered in fine scratches. The glass cover was thick and slightly convex. But that wasn't what was wrong. The markings were wrong. Instead of N, S, E, and W—North, South, East, and West—there were four sigils he didn't recognize. One looked like a closed eye, another a fractured spiral.
And the needle... The bronze needle wasn't pointing north. It was spinning slowly, erratically, as if confused, as if searching for something it couldn't find in this room full of dead history.
"Working late again, Mr. Elias?"
Elias flinched, nearly dropping the box. He spun around, his heart pounding.
Joko, one of the museum's security guards, was standing in the doorway. A portly man with a thick mustache and a tired smile. He held a large flashlight, even though the room's fluorescent lights were buzzing brightly.
"My apologies, Mr. Joko. I didn't hear you coming," Elias said, steadying his voice. He felt ridiculous, like a child caught stealing candy. "Just... a final verification."
Joko chuckled. "Always a final verification with you, sir. Can't let history escape, can we?" He tapped the doorframe. "Just doing my routine patrol. Everything secure?"
"Yes, of course. Secure. Just..." Elias hesitated. He glanced down at the compass in his hand.
That's when he noticed it.
The needle had stopped spinning.
It was no longer confused. It was now perfectly still, locked onto a single direction with absolute certainty. It was pointing straight at Mr. Joko's chest.
Elias looked up. "Mr. Joko?"
Joko, who had been about to turn to continue his patrol, stopped. He stopped mid-stride.
"Sir?" Elias repeated.
Joko didn't move. The tired smile was still frozen on his face. His kind eyes stared straight ahead, at the opposite wall. He wasn't blinking.
"Mr. Joko, are you all right?" Elias waved a hand. No response.
Elias moved closer, his curiosity turning to an icy dread in his stomach. He stood directly in front of the security guard. He could see the pores on the man's nose, the tiny beads of sweat forming at his temples from the humidity.
The beads of sweat were not dripping.
The man had become a statue. A perfect, living statue, frozen in a fraction of a second.
"This is impossible..." Elias whispered. He waved a hand in front of Joko's eyes. No blink. He touched Joko's shoulder—it was rigid and warm, the muscles locked in tension. He pressed his fingers to Joko's neck, searching for a pulse. There was none. But the man wasn't falling, either. He was just... paused.
Elias took a step back, his breath catching in his throat. He looked at the compass in his hand. The needle was still pointing straight at Joko, vibrating slightly as if under great strain.
An experiment. A crazy hypothesis formed in his archivist's mind.
With a trembling hand, Elias moved the compass to the left. The needle resisted, trying to stay locked on Joko, but as it got far enough away, it began to spin again, confused.
And Joko... collapsed.
The man coughed violently, gagging on the air, and fell to his knees as if he'd just run a marathon. He was panting, his eyes wild and disoriented. "What... what happened? I... where am I?"
"Mr. Joko!" Elias rushed forward, dropping the compass back into its box. "You fainted. Are you all right?"
"Fainted? I don't..." Joko clutched his head, looking utterly confused. "I was just about to... about to..."
Elias aimed the compass, still in its box, at him again.
Joko stopped.
He froze instantly. Mid-sentence. His hand raised to his temple. Frozen.
Elias pointed the compass away.
Joko snapped back to life, finishing his sentence as if there had been no pause. "...check the armory. Sir, my head is pounding."
This... This was not an artifact. This was not history. This was something else. Something wrong. Something that violated order in a way no cargo manifest could ever explain.
Elias's mind raced. Who should he call? The police? The museum director? What would he say? That he found a magic compass in a crate that shouldn't exist? They would think he was insane.
He looked at the T/S crate. Whoever sent this, they knew this was no ordinary artifact.
Elias pulled his phone from his pocket. He had to report this. He had to tell someone.
That's when he heard it. Not Joko's soft footsteps. Not the whine of the air conditioner.
It was the sound of combat boots. Many of them. Running on the marble museum corridor above him. And then, the sound of the main cargo bay door being kicked open, splintering off its hinges.
"HANDS ABOVE YOUR HEAD! DO NOT MOVE!"
Elias froze, his phone slipping from his grasp.
Five figures in all-black, full tactical gear and armed with assault rifles, swarmed the room. They moved with a brutal, inhuman efficiency. Two immediately secured the bewildered Joko, slamming him to the floor. The other three surrounded Elias, their rifles aimed squarely at his head.
A woman stepped past them. She wore no helmet, just a form-fitting black tactical uniform. Her face was severe, and she held a pistol calmly at her side. Her eyes weren't on Elias. Her eyes were locked directly on the velvet box in Elias's hand.
"On behalf of the Institution," the woman said, her voice as cold and sharp as broken glass. "The Asset is secure. Detain the archivist."