PART 1: THE BITTER TASTE OF INJUSTICE
The sky over the Village of Garu was never truly blue; it was a bruised purple, choked by a perpetual haze of forest fires and the suffocating dust kicked up by the gilded carriages of nobles. These lords passed through the mud-caked streets like gods among insects, their silk curtains drawn tight to avoid the stench of the dying. By the edge of a stagnant, emerald-green ditch that reeked of rot and iron, Sutarjo sat in a heavy, stony silence.
He was a giant for his age. His skin was the color of scorched earth, baked by the sun and the searing heat of the forge. His hands were maps of pain—thick with calluses and scarred by the sparks of glowing steel from his father's smithy. Beside him, Lilis worked with trembling hands to bandage a jagged gash on Dadang's forearm. Lilis was beautiful in a way that felt fragile in this world, her eyes wide and constantly darting, always finding their way back to Dadang with a desperate, quiet longing.
"Stop dreaming of the Kingdom's justice, Dang," Lilis whispered, her voice cracking. "You'll only get yourself beaten into the dirt by the market guards again. Or worse."
Dadang didn't flinch. His eyes, sharp and burning with a feverish intensity, were locked onto the white stone spires of the castle in the far distance. "The world is hemorrhaging, Lis. Yesterday, I watched them drag an eight-year-old orphan from the asylum for the 'crime' of stealing a moldy crust of bread. The knights didn't just arrest him; they broke his fingers one by one while they toasted with stolen wine. If the law is merely a weapon for the cruel, then something more savage than the law must rise to break it."
Sutarjo let out a low, guttural growl that sounded like stones grinding together. "The world doesn't bleed because you talk, Dang. It bleeds because it wants to. The world only bows to the man who holds the heaviest hammer and the sharpest blade. As long as I am here, keep your mouth shut and your head down. I have no desire to scrape your intestines off the town square cobbles."
Sutarjo was a fortress for them. To him, Dadang was the spark of intellect that needed a shield, and Lilis was the only scrap of gentleness left in a life built on coal and iron. But deep in his gut, Sutarjo knew that in a land where violation was a pastime and murder was a hobby for the elite, bravery was nothing more than a fast-track to an unmarked grave.
PART 2: THE HARVEST OF SCREAMS
The silence of the midnight hour was not broken—it was slaughtered. The sound was a conch shell trumpet, a high, dissonant wail that signaled the end of everything. Then came the thunder: the heavy, rhythmic pounding of armored hooves. These were not common highwaymen.
"MONSTERS! THEY'VE BROUGHT THE VOID-BEASTS!"
The scream was severed by the wet, sickening sound of a blade cleaving through a windpipe. Sutarjo bolted upright, his hand instinctively closing around his massive 20-pound sledgehammer. Outside, Garu had been transformed into a living furnace. The air was thick with the copper tang of blood and the greasy smell of burning hair.
Bandits in rusted, filth-stained armor surged through the streets alongside nightmares made flesh—Apostles. They stood seven feet tall, their heads twisted into the likeness of rabid jackals, but their bodies were disturbingly human—long, pallid limbs tipped with obsidian claws that could strip bark from a tree, or skin from a man.
"Sutarjo! Father!" Lilis shrieked, her voice lost in the roar of the flames.
They raced toward their home, but the gods of death had arrived first. In the muddy courtyard, Sutarjo saw his world end. His father, the strongest man he knew, was on his knees, his massive chest heaving. A tall man in jagged black armor stood over him, laughing as he raised a massive, serrated executioner's blade.
CRAAAKK!
The blade didn't just cut; it tore. Sutarjo's father's head was ripped from his shoulders, spinning through the air before wetly thudding into the mud at Sutarjo's feet. The eyes were still wide, fixed in a final, unspoken plea. Sutarjo's soul turned to ash.
PART 3: THE VIOLATION OF THE INNOCENT
"NO!" Sutarjo's roar was a tectonic shift, but he was instantly swarmed. Five bandits threw themselves onto him like hyenas. Even with his monstrous strength, the weight was too much. Heavy iron shackles were slammed onto his wrists, the jagged metal biting deep into his flesh. Two Apostle monsters lunged, their claws sinking into his trapezius muscles, pinning him facedown into the filth.
At the doorstep, their mother was dragged out by three men. Lilis tried to intervene, but a mailed fist caught her squarely in the jaw, spinning her into the dirt where she lay catatonic. Dadang lunged with a small paring knife, only to have his skull slammed against the anvil. Blood coated his face, masking the hatred that was solidifying in his pupils.
"Look at this, you little shits!" the bandit leader bellowed, his voice dripping with sadistic glee.
The true horror began in the center of the yard, under the cold light of the moon. They dragged Sutarjo's mother to the center of a circle formed by the bandits. The leader, a man whose very skin seemed to reek of old sweat and ancient sin, wound his hand into her hair and yanked her head back until the skin of her neck threatened to tear.
"Please... take me... take anything... just let the children live..." she sobbed, her dignity already beginning to fray.
The leader leaned in, his rotting yellow teeth bared in a grin. "Oh, we are taking you, sweetheart. Every single inch of you. But they? They get the best seat in the house. They get to watch the 'Saint of Garu' become a common bitch for the pack."
With a violent, rhythmic tearing sound, they shredded her clothes, casting the rags into the bonfire. Sutarjo screamed, his neck muscles bulging until the veins were on the verge of bursting. The Apostles dug their claws deeper, forcing his head up, pinning his eyelids open with their foul, cold breath.
The bandits descended like starving dogs.
One by one, they forced themselves upon her. The leader went first, his actions a rhythmic, brutal assault that shook her entire frame. Sutarjo had to listen to the sickening thud of flesh against flesh, a sound far more violent than any hammer on an anvil. The leader didn't just use her; he tried to break her, his hands bruising her thighs until they were black and swollen, his mouth spitting filth onto her face.
When he finished, the next man stepped forward, unbuckling his filth-caked trousers. And then the next. And the next.
The courtyard became a mass slaughterhouse of human dignity. Sutarjo's mother was no longer a person to them; she was a vessel for their bottomless depravity. Her screams, once sharp and piercing, slowly devolved into a wet, hollow gurgle. In the shadows of the yard, other village girls—some barely past puberty—were being treated with the same animalistic cruelty. Sutarjo saw a group of men pinning a neighbor's daughter against the very forge where he worked, her small body trembling as they took turns violating her with a violence that transcended mere lust.
The air was a heavy, humid soup of iron-rich blood, the pungent musk of aroused predators, and the waste of victims whose bodies had simply shut down under the sheer, agonizing trauma.
"Sutarjo... help me..."
It was her last whisper, a ghostly breath of air. Sutarjo watched as her eyes—the eyes that had once looked at him with such infinite warmth—dilated into empty, black holes. Her head lolled back into the mud.
Finally, a bandit the size of a bear stepped forward. He threw his entire, crushing weight onto her broken frame. KRA-KRAK. The sound of her pelvis shattering under the impact was like a branch snapping in a winter storm. Her body arched in one last, violent spasm of agony, and then went limp. The light in her eyes flickered and died, replaced by the dull, milky glaze of a corpse.
Even as her heart stopped, the beasts did not. They continued to violate the cooling body, their laughter a jagged anthem of the abyss.
PART 4: THE FAILED RAMPAGE
A terrifying silence enveloped Sutarjo's soul. His rage didn't explode; it calcified. It turned into a frozen, razor-sharp edge. He no longer felt the claws in his back or the iron in his wrists.
With a roar that seemed to tear his own vocal cords, Sutarjo surged upward. The sheer, suicidal strength of the movement threw the two Apostle monsters off balance for a split second. Sutarjo didn't run. He lunged.
He used his shackled hands like a twin-headed flail, swinging the iron chain with everything he had. He caught one bandit in the temple, the metal link caving the man's skull in with a wet crunch. He dove for another, his teeth sinking into the man's throat, tearing away the windpipe in a spray of hot, arterial blood. For ten seconds, Sutarjo was the only monster in the yard that mattered. He was a whirlwind of gore and broken bone.
"I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL DRAG YOUR SOULS TO THE LOWEST HELL!"
But the hope was a cruel lie.
The bandit leader didn't even draw his sword. He stepped into Sutarjo's guard and delivered a crushing, armored kick to Sutarjo's already cracked ribs. Sutarjo hit the mud, the air driven from his lungs. Before he could crawl an inch, the heavy hilt of a broadsword descended on the back of his skull.
WHAM.
The world tilted and went gray. His strength drained away, leaving him hollow. He was weak. He was a child playing at being a warrior, and the world had reminded him of his insignificance.
"Spirited brat," the leader spat, wiping blood from his face. "Chain him with the other cattle. The mines are hungry for fresh meat. He'll last a month if we're lucky."
"And the girl, Captain?" a bandit asked, dragging Lilis up. She was awake, but her eyes were glassy, her mind completely shattered by what she had seen.
The leader looked at Lilis, his eyes scanning her with a cold, transactional gaze. "She's too clean for the pits. Pack her into the velvet wagon. The Governor likes them 'broken and silent.' She'll be his favorite toy before the sun even peaks."
"Lilis..." Sutarjo tried to scream, but only a mouthful of bloody bile leaked out.
He watched, pinned to the earth, as they threw Lilis into a caged carriage. Her hand hung limp through the bars, her fingers mere inches from his as the horses began to pull. The carriage wheels churned the mud—the mud that was now a slurry of his father's brains and his mother's blood.
As the final darkness claimed him, Sutarjo recorded every detail of the leader's face. He didn't feel the cold. He didn't feel the grief. He only felt the heavy, black weight of the DESOLATOR waiting to be born from the rot.