They said she was born during a solar eclipse, her first cry rising as the sun died behind the moon.
They said her mother bled too long and whispered too much before passing—nonsense about shadows in the fields and statues that blinked. No one remembered her father.
But from the moment she could walk, she saw what others couldn't.
Not spirits in white. Not demons with twisted horns. Nothing so theatrical.
She saw truths.
The kind no one asked to see.
When a rice field turned sour, she saw the blood beneath the soil. When a smiling neighbor made an offering, she saw what they'd buried behind their compound wall.
They called her *anak terkutuk*—cursed child.
But the *pedanda* saw differently.
He took her to the temple high above the jungle, the one built with black volcanic stone and always damp with mist. There, they taught her silence. Ritual. How to listen to the water before drawing from it. How to smell a lie before hearing it.
By seventeen, she was no longer a cursed child.
She was a *penyawang*—a seer.
And that was when the real danger began.
---
### **II. The Vision She Shouldn't Have Seen**
It was during *ngusaba desa*, the great ritual to cleanse the village once every ten years.
She was called to the altar late in the night.
Everyone had left. Only her, the head priest, and a bowl of holy water beneath the banyan tree.
She sipped it, as custom demanded.
And the vision came.
Not softly. Not gently.
Like fire thrown against her mind.
She saw the king—not the current one, but his ancestor. Saw him cut the tongues of dissenters and bury them beneath the foundation stones of the palace. She saw the high priest poison the prince to stop a civil war. She saw the offerings turned into masks—literal ones—hollowed out and worn by nobles pretending piety.
When she awoke, her mouth tasted of iron.
And she screamed.
---
### **III. The Sealing**
The next day, they said she was possessed.
They said no woman should speak like that. Should accuse royalty. Should know things that were meant to be forgotten.
The *pemangku* tried to silence her with mantras. The healer brought sea salt and yellow thread.
But none of it worked.
Because she wasn't sick.
She was just awake.
So they decided to put her back to sleep.
They led her to the stone chamber beneath the temple. Not with violence, but with calm. With ritual. With songs sung backward. They wrapped her eyes in black cloth soaked in cow's milk and ash. They bound her hair with frangipani vines.
She didn't scream.
Not even when they sealed the stone slab behind her.
She whispered only one thing:
**"If you bury what sees, it learns to listen."**
---
### **IV. Becoming What Waits**
For a while, she was nothing.
Only memory.
Only dark.
But the land does not forget.
When the rains came, they seeped into the cracks. When the earthquakes came, the roots pushed against the seal. And when the tourists came centuries later, building villas near her tomb, they brought noise.
And noise brings attention.
One day, a foreigner stepped too close.
And she listened.
When he dreamed, she leaned in.
When he looked, she reached through.
She had no name now.
But she had patience.
And she had been waiting long enough to learn:
Some eyes are never closed. Only hidden.
Until someone dares to look back.