After the forest collapsed, there was no returning road. Sawerigading and the spirit who had watched and guided him stood at the threshold of something utterly changed: a plain of obsidian glass, gleaming and still, stretching to horizons tinged with bleeding, red stars. Each step echoed unnaturally loud, ringing out as though the world beneath them was a shell waiting to break.
Sawerigading's grip tightened around his badik, though the blade remained sheathed. His intuition thrummed with unease, despite his steady heart. Beside him, the spectral companion lingered, silent and intent, now less a haunting than a quiet ally.
Then, from the trembling plain, a voice emerged, a resonance that felt older than words, as if it belonged to the foundations of time. "You chase her," it intoned, "but it was I who placed her smile in your path."
Sawerigading glared into the darkness. "You?" he challenged.
A ripple surged through the glass surface, and a figure rose, shifting, indefinable, woven from strands of shadow and moonlight. At times, it flickered between the appearance of man, beast, and mist, crowned with antlers then dissolving into smoke. Its gaze, though, piercing and unwavering, seemed to weigh every thread of Sawerigading's being.
"You were never meant to cross Waliala's veil," the shape said. "But you shattered boundaries, so now I watch with curiosity. A mortal with god-bones, walking realms reserved for legend. Why?"
Sawerigading hesitated, measuring the depth of the quiet before him. But his voice, once released, carried force and certainty. "I seek her. Nothing else."
The figure tilted, considering. "Her? Or the part of yourself you lost when fate pulled you apart?"
Jaw clenched, Sawerigading kept his weapon close, unwilling to be drawn into games of meaning. "Speak plainly, if you speak at all."
"I speak in threads, not riddles," the shape replied, voice tightening like silk on a loom. "No story exists without the weaver. I…" The vision trembled, fracturing, then resettled, steady and vast. "…I have woven for longer than memory."
The spirit at Sawerigading's side stirred and hissed, "This is no ordinary phantom. Beware."
But Sawerigading stepped forward, fire crackling in his voice. "If you are the weaver, did you also weave her, Walakina, into my path?"
The figure's eyes gleamed, as if a secret had been exposed. The obsidian plain rippled violently; the red stars above shattered into silver streams. From the darkness, countless faces emerged, smiling, weeping, bearing glimpses of Walakina among their ranks.
Sawerigading's heart hammered, and his grip on the badik turned white-knuckled.
"She is not singular," the figure thundered. "She is the reflection scattered over worlds, the echo multiplied by longing. You are chasing a shadow of a shadow."
Sawerigading's retort rang out clear and sharp: "Then let me choose which shadow is truly mine."
The figure's laughter was ancient, resonant, a song of mountains splitting in winter. It leaned closer, just enough to form a nearly human face; eyes swirling with mysteries of fate.
"Bold. Reckless. Remarkable. No wonder fate itself bends to your madness." The voice paused, heavy with promise. "I will open a path. Know this, every step will demand more than you can imagine."
Before Sawerigading could answer, the ground tore itself open. He plummeted through darkness, the weaver's voice trailing after him like chains: "Find her… if you can survive yourself."
As shadow closed in, a faint glimmer, a trembling smile, familiar yet elusive, floated above the abyss.
Was it truly Walakina, or only another memory, another shadow spun into his journey?
The fall offered nothing but silence, leaving fate and truth to wait on the edge of the next encounter.