The air in Waliala that night was unlike any Sawerigading had felt. It was neither burdensome nor light, more a breath caught between the living and the dead, a silence woven through the forest, carried by every shifting leaf and unmoving shadow. He walked with careful purpose, the trees shimmering and bending, whispering secrets only those who wander long enough might hear.
From the shadows at last, the trailing figure stepped forward. The man's gait hovered between earth and elsewhere, eyes observant but not unkind. He studied Sawerigading with the curiosity of someone accustomed to borderlands, the kind where stories bleed into each other and nothing is quite what it seems.
"So," the man's voice echoed with a timbre suggesting he'd spoken across ages, "you truly wish to walk here as if this place is your own?"
Sawerigading's stride barely slowed. "A king's road is never his to claim. It's a promise paid in wandering, a debt, a curse, and sometimes hope. If Waliala is the path laid before me, I walk it, not because I choose, but because I must."
The man smiled softly, steps unwavering. "You speak as though you've traveled too many circles and returned to the same crossroads." There was no contempt, only recognition.
Their gazes met, brief, charged with a tension older than either. And for the first time, the shadow introduced himself. His name was Jantaka.
Silence followed, thick and knowing.
Sawerigading was the one to break it. "I know who you are, or perhaps I know what you choose to be, a spirit unanchored, bound eternally not to places but to longing itself. So, tell me: why haunt these woods? What keeps you where even spirits tread lightly?"
Jantaka's features softened, his eyes glinting with memories. "Sometimes there is a string that pulls us. Even for spirits, smoke or dust, a thread so fine you barely know it is there. I saw it once, passing between stars and crossing oceans. It ties wanderers to exile, lovers to heartbreak. Invisible, red, impossible to cut or ignore."
"A thread of fate?" Sawerigading asked, voice skeptical yet unmistakably shaken.
"They say it belongs to the far East," Jantaka replied, his tone slipping into story. "Some claim it is woven in China, binding souls together no matter how far they travel. I thought it folly… until I felt its pull myself. Even here. Even now."
Sawerigading's steps slowed as memories flooded him, We Tenriabeng, the love forbidden, the path pursued long after hope had grown thin. Wasn't his own journey just another knot in the endless string?
He sighed, voice laced with bitter wisdom. "Strings, fate, these are stories men weave so they can bear the choices that break them."
Yet even as he gave voice to doubt, his mind flickered to Walakina, the maiden he chased beyond islands and storms, through battles and darkness. He remembered entering Waliala, haunted by shadows, ancestors whispering truths before he'd dared ask, the warnings that even if he found her, she would slip away again. The journeys had always been less about finding her, more about unraveling himself.
He turned to Jantaka, his voice dropping lower. "Did you ever hear her name? Walakina, the one I chased beyond sanity, across worlds known and forbidden. I faced storms, spirits, battles no mortal should see. If I found her, I knew she'd vanish again. That my quest was never really about her… but about becoming someone who might be worthy of the chase."
Jantaka listened in silence. Something deep flickered in his eyes, a glimmer of empathy, or understanding earned from exile.
"And still you ran toward the pain," Jantaka finally replied.
"Yes," Sawerigading admitted. The edge in his jaw spoke volumes. "Because any man who doesn't chase what breaks him is already dead."
The space between them thickened, both legends swelling in the hush, neither sure which storm would break first.
Suddenly, from the distant ridge of Waliala, a cry erupted, animal yet human, enough to chill marrow and shudder the ancient ground. Both men spun. Sawerigading's fingers found his blade, while Jantaka faded to the edge, his outline flickering between worlds.
Jantaka's voice, laced with wry humor, cut through the growing dread. "Maybe tonight, that string leads us into more than words."
The cry intensified. A being detached from mortal boundaries surged from the mist, eyes burning, form twisted beyond recognition. Sawerigading stood his ground, blade shining in trembling hands. Jantaka watched from the periphery, poised to become part of the fight or possibly even the trial.
The creature advanced, the very air tightening with menace. Sawerigading muttered, "Not all strings are sacred. Some must be severed."
Steel met claw, fire sparked in the mist, and echoes of the living and dead mingled in the air.
As the blows traded, time fractured, a single moment stretched, splitting the world between what was and what must come. At the crescendo, Jantaka's voice reached him from the shadows.
"Tell me, King, when the string finally snaps, what is left of the man?"
Darkness surged, swallowing all but the question, as the chapter closed, leaving fate trembling on the edge of what comes next.