Era: Majapahit Kingdom, 14th Century.
Third Person Limited (Dhiyan).
---
The scribe saw the red words for the first time on the day the Crown Princess was sold.
He stood in the shadows of the great hall, his bamboo stylus poised over a lontar leaf, his duty to record the proceedings for the royal archives. The air was thick with incense and betrayal. The aging King sat on his golden throne, his face carved from stone, while envoys from the eastern kingdom presented their terms with smiles that did not reach their eyes.
And in the center of it all, draped in white silk and gold ornaments, stood the Crown Princess.
Dyah Padmi.
Even her name was a prayer. The foremost. The first. The only daughter of a dying King, raised to be a symbol, not a sovereign. A treasure to be traded. A bridge between kingdoms. Her face was a mask of cold composure, her dark eyes fixed on a point just above the envoys' heads, as if she could will herself somewhere else. Anywhere else.
The scribe's hand trembled.
His name was Dhiyan. He had served the court for seven years, ever since his father, also a scribe, had died of a coughing sickness and left him nothing but a bamboo stylus and a talent for remembering words. He had recorded treaties and executions, births and deaths, festivals and famines. He was invisible. A shadow with ink stained fingers. A pair of eyes that no one bothered to meet.
But he saw her.
He always saw her.
From his corner of the great hall, he watched the way Dyah Padmi's jaw tightened when the King spoke of her as an "asset to the kingdom." He noticed the way her hands clasped too tightly in front of her, knuckles white beneath the gold bangles. He memorized the slight tremor in her breath when the lead envoy, a prince from the eastern kingdom, stepped forward and smiled.
The prince was handsome. Charming. His voice was honey and his promises were silk.
Rakryan Adinata.
He was tall and broad shouldered, his skin golden in the torchlight, his smile warm and disarming. He spoke of peace with the sincerity of a holy man. His gifts to the court were extravagant. Rare spices. Exquisite silks. A golden keris with a ruby the size of a sparrow's egg embedded in its hilt.
"A union of two great kingdoms," Rakryan Adinata declared, his arms spread wide as if to embrace the entire hall. "Peace. Prosperity. An eternal alliance sealed by the sacred bond of marriage. Let there be no more war between our lands. Let our children inherit friendship instead of bloodshed."
The court murmured its approval. The King nodded slowly, his old eyes gleaming with relief. This marriage would end the border wars that had plagued his reign. It would fill the royal coffers, depleted by years of conflict. It would secure his legacy.
Dyah Padmi said nothing.
Dhiyan's stylus moved across the lontar leaf, recording the words. Union. Peace. Prosperity. Marriage. But his eyes were on the princess. On her silent, frozen face. On the way she seemed to be shrinking into herself, disappearing beneath the weight of silk and gold and duty.
And then he saw it.
Above her head.
It was faint at first. A shimmer of heat, like the air above a candle flame. Dhiyan blinked, certain his eyes were playing tricks. He had been sleeping poorly. The rains had come late this year, and the humidity made his small chamber feel like a tomb.
But the shimmer did not fade.
It grew. Sharpened. Darkened. Until it hung above Dyah Padmi's head like a shroud woven from blood and shadow.
Red.
Blood red.
Words. Floating. Jagged and cruel, carved into the very air by an invisible hand.
*"Sold to the Serpent. Kingdom falls. Her light extinguished." *
Dhiyan dropped his stylus.
It clattered against the stone floor, the sound obscenely loud in the hushed great hall. Heads turned. The King's eyes narrowed with displeasure. The envoys glanced at each other with barely concealed disdain. Even Rakryan Adinata paused mid sentence, his warm smile flickering for just a moment.
But Dhiyan couldn't move. He couldn't breathe.
Because above the Crown Princess's head, the red words pulsed like a dying heart. And for the first time in his life of quiet, invisible service, he understood that he was seeing something he was never meant to see.
Fate.
Her fate.
And it was death.
---
Rakryan Adinata's smile returned, smooth and seamless.
"Is there a problem with your scribe, Your Majesty?" he asked, his tone light and amused. "Perhaps the heat has addled his senses."
The King waved a dismissive hand. "Pay him no mind. Scribes are strange creatures. Continue."
Rakryan Adinata inclined his head graciously and resumed his speech. But as he spoke, his gaze flickered toward Dhiyan. Just for an instant. A single, piercing glance that felt like a blade pressed against the scribe's throat.
And above the prince's head, Dhiyan saw words too.
They were not red.
They were black. Vantablack. The color of a moonless night. The color of a pit that had no bottom. The color of a soul that had been hollowed out and filled with nothing but hunger.
*"Serpent's heart. Hollow soul. Will consume the light and call it love." *
Dhiyan's blood turned to ice.
The ceremony continued. The betrothal was announced. The court erupted in applause. Dyah Padmi stood motionless at the center of it all, a statue draped in silk, her dark eyes empty.
And Dhiyan, the invisible scribe, knelt to retrieve his fallen stylus with shaking hands.
He had seen the truth.
Now he had to find a way to stop it.
---
He tried.
Three days before the wedding, Dhiyan found a moment alone in the palace gardens. It was dusk, the sky streaked with orange and purple, the air heavy with the scent of frangipani. Dyah Padmi was seated by the lotus pond, her reflection rippling in the dark water. She looked up as he approached, her eyes sharp and suspicious despite her exhaustion.
"You are the scribe who dropped his stylus," she said. It was not a question.
"Yes, Padmi."
"Why are you here? The gardens are forbidden to servants after sunset."
Dhiyan hesitated. He could feel the weight of the red words even now, hovering above her head like an executioner's blade. Her light extinguished. He wanted to tell her everything. He needed to tell her.
But what could he say? I see words floating above your head that predict your death? I see the void where Rakryan Adinata's soul should be?
He would be executed for witchcraft before the next sunrise.
"Be careful, Padmi," he said finally, his voice barely above a whisper. "The prince... he is not what he seems. His heart is hollow. He will consume you and call it love."
Dyah Padmi stared at him.
The silence stretched. A warm breeze stirred the lotus leaves. Somewhere in the distance, a gamelan played softly, the notes drifting through the evening air like ghosts.
And then, slowly, her mask cracked.
"You see it too," she whispered.
Dhiyan's heart stopped. "Padmi?"
"The darkness in him." Her voice was barely audible. "I feel it. Every time he smiles. Every time he speaks of our 'beautiful future.' It's like drowning. Like being swallowed by something that has no bottom. My father doesn't see it. The court doesn't see it. They see a savior. A hero. A handsome prince from a wealthy kingdom." She laughed, a hollow, broken sound. "I see... nothing. Behind his eyes, there is nothing."
She looked at him with desperate, haunted eyes. In the fading light, she was no longer a Crown Princess. She was just a young woman, barely twenty years old, being sold to a monster.
"I thought I was going mad," she confessed. "I thought the grief of losing my mother, the weight of my father's expectations... I thought it had broken something in my mind. That I was imagining the cold that seeps from him whenever he touches my hand."
Dhiyan shook his head slowly. "You are not mad, Padmi. He is the darkness. And I..." He took a shaky breath. "I will find a way to stop him. I swear it on my life."
Dyah Padmi studied him for a long moment. The last light of day caught her eyes, and for an instant, they glowed like embers.
"What is your name, scribe?"
He hesitated. No one had asked his name in seven years. He was simply "the scribe." A function. A tool.
"Dhiyan," he said. "My name is Dhiyan."
She nodded slowly. "Dhiyan." She tested the name, and something in her voice softened. "It means light. Did you know that?"
"I... yes, Padmi."
"How fitting." A ghost of a smile touched her lips. "A scribe named Light who sees darkness no one else can see."
She reached out and, for the briefest instant, her fingers brushed against his. The touch was electric, forbidden, terrifying. A princess and a scribe. A gulf as wide as the ocean separated their worlds.
But in that moment, they were just two people who had seen the same monster and recognized each other as fellow prey.
"Do not let him take me, Dhiyan," she whispered. "Please. Do not let him extinguish my light."
Dhiyan's throat tightened. "I swear it, Padmi. I will find a way."
---
He failed.
Three months later, Dyah Padmi was married to Rakryan Adinata in a ceremony that lasted three days and three nights. The kingdom celebrated. The streets ran with palm wine and the air was thick with music and laughter. Peace had been secured. The border wars were over. The Crown Princess had done her duty.
Dhiyan watched from his shadowed corner in the great hall, his stylus frozen in his hand, as Dyah Padmi spoke vows she did not believe to a man whose soul was a void. The red words above her head had grown larger. Darker. They consumed the air around her like a storm cloud.
*"Her light extinguished." *
She caught his eye once, during the final ceremony. Just a flicker. A moment of connection across a sea of silk and gold and false celebration.
Her lips moved silently.
I'm sorry.
Dhiyan's heart shattered.
---
Six months after the wedding, the Crown Princess was dead.
The official record, which Dhiyan was forced to write with his own hand, stated that she had fallen ill. A fever of the lungs. Tragic. Unexpected. The kingdom mourned. Rakryan Adinata wept publicly at her funeral, his grief so convincing that even the most cynical courtiers were moved.
But Dhiyan knew.
He had seen the bruises beneath her silk sleeves in the weeks before her death. Hidden carefully, always hidden, but visible to someone who knew where to look. He had watched her grow thinner, paler, her spirit drained drop by drop like water from a cracked vessel. He had heard the servants whisper, when they thought no one was listening, about the prince's "private punishments." About the isolation. About the way he broke her down piece by piece until there was nothing left but a hollow shell wearing a princess's face.
Rakryan Adinata had consumed her.
And called it love.
---
On the night Dyah Padmi died, Dhiyan stood outside her chambers, hidden in the shadows of a stone pillar. The red words above her door pulsed weakly, like a candle drowning in its own wax.
*"Light extinguished." *
But then, as he watched, new words appeared. Smaller. Fainter. Written in a hand that trembled with grief and fury and an oath that would outlast death itself.
*"But not forgotten. The Scribe will remember. The Scribe will return. This story is not finished." *
Dhiyan pressed his forehead against the cold stone and wept.
He did not know how. He did not know when. But he understood, with a certainty that went deeper than bone, that this was not the end.
He would remember.
He would return.
And next time, he would not fail her.
---
Six hundred years later.
Dion Pratama woke in his cramped kosan in South Jakarta, drenched in sweat, his heart pounding against his ribs. The dream was already fading, slipping through his fingers like water. A great hall. A princess in white silk. Red words floating above her head.
And a voice. Ancient. Desperate. Whispering across centuries.
"Remember. Save her. This time, save her."
Dion pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes and tried to breathe.
Just a dream. It was just a dream.
But when he opened his eyes and looked at his reflection in the cracked mirror on the wall, he saw words floating above his own head for the first time.
Golden. Soft. Ancient.
*"The CEO's Savior. Or Die Trying." *
Dion stared.
He didn't understand. He didn't know what any of it meant. He was just a failed lawyer. A delivery guy. A nobody with a 4.7 star rating and a tendency to disappoint everyone who believed in him.
But somewhere, in the depths of his soul, something that had been sleeping for six hundred years stirred.
And remembered.