The Upper World Cracks in Silence
Mateo returned from Lombok as a hero. He was praised by the media, caressed by politics, and lifted by the public as a noble young lord. He had "brought back" his brother's body to Brazil—a symbolic, emotional victory.
But within the quiet, opulent Moreira family estate on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, something had begun to stir in silence.
Dom Aureliano, the grandfather, observed Mateo from afar. His speech was too perfect. His tears on camera, too precise. Aureliano smelled something wrong. The old man sent out shadow investigators from within his inner circle—not to uncover the truth, but to ensure control remained in his hands.
Meanwhile, Antonio Moreira—Hulio's father—locked himself away in his mother's old house. But whispers in hidden corridors began to pierce his solitude. Several former military contacts quietly sent signals: something was off in Mateo's report.
And elsewhere, in a small laboratory in Yogyakarta, an Indonesian female researcher named Diah Saraswati contacted the Moreira family's secret network. She revealed traces of strange heat energy from the base of Mount Rinjani—not normal magma. Something was awakening.
---
Diah and Antonio's First Encounter (Flashback)
Two weeks earlier, above an old herbal shop in Kota Gede, Yogyakarta.
The ceiling fan creaked softly. In the dim light, Antonio sat on a rattan chair, leaning forward, his sharp eyes locked on the woman across from him.
Diah Saraswati stood in a half-open lab coat, her hair neatly tied up. She placed a geothermal heat map printout on the wooden table.
"This isn't normal volcanic activity," she said. "There's a rhythmic emission pattern... like a heartbeat."
Antonio picked up the graph without a word. His eyes traced the strange curves rippling from beneath Mount Rinjani. He nodded slowly.
"You sure it's not just a sensor error?"
Diah took a breath.
"I recalibrated it three times. Even used a sensor I planted myself, without the conservation center's permission. This isn't magma. This... is something waking up from below."
Antonio opened an old leather wallet. From it, he pulled out a photo—worn, nearly torn—a young man laughing as he climbed a mountain. Hulio.
"If you're right…" Antonio's voice dropped to a whisper, "…then my son is still alive in a place he shouldn't be."
"I'm not a spy. But I know what it feels like to lose someone and have the world refuse to look for them."
"I don't need a spy. I need someone who still knows the difference between science and courage."
"And if there's something inside that mountain… something that isn't human?"
Antonio smiled faintly.
"If that's what it takes to bring my son home, then let me sin one more time."
---
Fire and Shadow (The Lower World)
Hulio stood in the silence of the earth's belly, facing a figure that looked like him—taller, calmer, eyes glowing red like living embers.
"Who are you really?" Hulio asked.
"I am you. If you stopped begging to be seen. If you learned the world doesn't give you a place—you must take it."
A battle broke out. Not just physical—though their fists clashed, bodies shoved, blood splattered across stone walls—but also internal. The figure hurled every doubt, every shame, every fear Hulio had ever felt.
"You're just a failure. Rejected by your grandfather, erased from the family records, dumped on a foreign mountain."
Hulio fought back. Not just with muscle, but with memory. He remembered his mother's laughter, his first night seeing snow in the Andes, the folk tales whispered to him as a child.
"My name isn't just a line in some family archive. I'm alive. I'm real."
With a roar, Hulio struck the figure into the flames. It vanished—but the fire in his chest burned brighter. Glowing roots spread across his body. His breath steadied.
He no longer feared death. He had fought himself—and won.
---
Truth Sacrificed
Mateo sat in his private room in São Paulo, staring at a document on his desk: the SAR team report. But one name was redacted, erased from digital archives. Someone had reported "something inhuman" inside the mountain before the team was disbanded.
That person—a local guide named Rendra—had now vanished.
Mateo contacted Uncle Julius's men, ordering them to "handle" the situation. But within him, a different tremor was forming. When he looked in the mirror, he no longer saw a hero—but an actor in a drama whose ending he no longer knew.
Julius came to see him, a sly smile on his lips.
"You're getting better at playing the saint. But don't forget, Mateo. Our family doesn't believe in sin. Only in power."
Mateo didn't reply. But that night, he had a nightmare. In it, Hulio stood in fire, staring at him. Not angry. Not afraid. But... rising.
---
New Body, New Soul
Hulio healed quickly. Whether it was because his wounds were light, or his body unusually resilient—or perhaps because during his time deep inside Rinjani, he had eaten something—grass, moss, water from ancient roots—that gave him strange strength.
He didn't care. What mattered was that he was alive.
He hadn't noticed his body had changed. Stronger. Denser. Each muscle seemed filled with a power he'd never had before. The wound on his chest glowed like a divine birthmark—or a curse from the earth.
Hulio walked through roots and hot stone like a new man. He didn't yet know where the exit was. But one thing was certain: he was no longer the same.
---
A Name That Cannot Be Erased
Antonio Moreira reactivated his family's ancient Southeast Asian network. The dark diplomatic routes once used to smuggle prisoners, he now repurposed into secret passageways to Lombok. He had no solid proof, but as a father, he knew: Hulio was still alive.
"My son will return. And I will be his bridge."
In the underworld, Hulio stood at the edge of a lava cliff, the light from his chest wound forming glowing veins. He looked up at a crack in the rocks above—a flash of the upper world appeared. Mateo was being interviewed, his face full of false sorrow.
"If they want to erase me…"
"…then I will become something that cannot be erased."
He touched the stone wall. Glowing roots from his chest spread across the surface, forming a symbol. The mountain trembled lightly. Tunnels opened.
The journey home had begun. But not as an heir. As a new force.
---
Blood Never Truly Disappears
In an old wooden room lined with family history books, Dom Aureliano sat on an antique leather chair passed down through generations. The chandelier's light highlighted the deep lines on his face. Mateo stood before him.
"If the dead aren't truly dead," Dom Aureliano said slowly but firmly, "then we must ensure he can never reclaim a place that was never his."
Mateo bowed his head. He knew where this was going—but he also knew its limits.
"Are you asking me to... kill Hulio?"
Aureliano stared at him for a long time, then turned his gaze to the window overlooking the old garden.
"I cannot order the killing of my own grandson. My blood," he muttered. "But I also cannot allow this family's legacy to be unraveled by a child who was erased."
He rose slowly and walked to an old shelf of noble emblems. He touched one—an emblem of a half-burnt dragon.
"If Hulio wants to return," he continued, "then let him return... as something no longer part of us. Let the world judge him. But if he chooses to challenge us, then you know, Mateo… history never remembers the losers."
Mateo said nothing. His eyes glanced at his phone screen: a map of Rinjani with red dots.
Mateo understood—his grandfather wasn't giving an order to kill, but a blessing to erase Hulio more subtly: by destroying his name and influence. Making him a villain of history, not a victim.
---
In the underworld, Hulio stared at the light at the end of the tunnel. He knew: the upper world awaited. But he would not rise as a mere footnote in a great family.
He would rise as a name that could not be erased.
---
"One son returns from fire. One brother rises as a false hero. One name will change the Moreira family's history forever."
If you were Hulio, what would you do first: seek the truth or seek revenge?
💬 Drop your answer in the comments—the best response will be pinned!