by Fendy Satria Tulodo
in Issue 159, April 2025
You are running. The night is thick like clotted blood, and the scent of burning rice fields sticks to your skin. The wind, heavy with the whispers of restless spirits, pushes against you. Somewhere behind, the creature howls—a sound not of this world, something neither beast nor man. Your father once told you that a shadow is just a shadow unless it remembers its name. The thing chasing you has remembered.
Kerta Waja was once a place of glory, its high bamboo walls sturdy against invaders and spirits alike. But the sorcery of the Giling Raga clan runs deep, and when their final war ended in flames, their curses remained, clinging to the land like leeches. They say the village was swallowed whole, replaced by something that looks like Kerta Waja but is not. No one enters. No one leaves. Except for you, foolish and desperate, searching for something that should have stayed lost.
The sky above churns, thick with unseen movements. There is no moon tonight, only the glow of the torches you left behind. You grip the kris at your side, its hilt slick with sweat. An heirloom, your mother said, a blade that drinks not just blood but the truth in a man’s soul. You hope it is enough. The path beneath your feet is not a path anymore—it shifts, bends, refuses to stay still. A trick of the cursed land, the elders warned. But there is no time to think. The breath on your neck is real.
In the days before the fall, Kerta Waja was known for its warriors, men and women who carved their names into history with blades and spells. But the war was not fought with swords alone. The Giling Raga knew of things older than steel, words that could unmake a man with a whisper. Your grandfather fought them and lived, but he never spoke of what he saw. His hands trembled when he held the kris, and in his last days, he muttered in his sleep of doors that should never be opened.
You see the tower now—its broken spine still clawing at the sky. The place where it all began. The place where you will end it. You do not stop running. The thing behind you is close, too close. You feel its breath, smell its decay. The kris hums in your hand.
Then, a voice. Not yours. Not human. A whisper from the tower, calling a name you do not know but somehow remember. The shadow that chases you falters, its form flickering. You take your chance.
The kris strikes true.
The thing screams, its shape unraveling, twisting in on itself. The air burns. Your mind shatters and rebuilds. And then—
Silence.
But this is not where the story begins.
It begins in the longhouse of your ancestors, where the air smelled of incense and old wood. It begins with the elders sitting in a half-circle, their faces carved with lines of age and wisdom, their eyes watching you with something between caution and pity. It begins with the words spoken by the oldest among them, a woman whose voice was as brittle as dry leaves.
“You are your father’s child,” she said. “And that is both your blessing and your curse.”
They had told you not to go. They had told you that the village was not meant to be found. That the things that walked in the ruins were not meant to be disturbed. That the curse of Kerta Waja was not merely death but something worse.
But you had not listened.
You had to find it.
Your father had gone before you, and he had not returned.
The road to Kerta Waja was not on any map. It was a path known only in whispers, traced in the memories of those who feared to remember. You followed the old markers—the twisted trees that bled sap the color of rust, the stones carved with words that shifted when you weren’t looking. You walked for three days and three nights, guided only by the weight of your father’s absence.
On the fourth night, the forest grew quiet.
Too quiet.
The insects stopped their endless chattering. The wind no longer rustled the leaves. Even your own footsteps seemed swallowed by the stillness. And then you saw it—the first sign that you were close.
A gate.
Or what remained of one.
The wooden pillars stood half-rotted, their surfaces carved with glyphs too ancient for you to understand. A rusted gong hung from one post, its surface dented and blackened. You stepped closer, reaching out a hesitant hand.
A voice rasped in your ear.
“Not yet.”
You spun, kris in hand, but there was no one there.
The air was thick with something unseen, something that pressed against your skin, your bones, your thoughts. It tasted of old prayers and broken promises. You took a step forward, and the world tilted.
The ground beneath you was not ground anymore. It was something deeper, something older. The trees bent, their trunks warping into impossible angles. The stars above blinked, rearranged themselves into patterns that had no meaning.
And then, in the distance, you saw the village.
Kerta Waja.
It should not have been there.
But it was.
Waiting.
The first thing you noticed was the silence.
There were no voices. No footsteps. No signs of life.
And yet…
The houses still stood, their walls worn but intact. The torches still burned, flickering with a light that cast no warmth. The streets were swept clean, as if someone—something—still cared for this place.
Your father had come here.
You knew it as surely as you knew your own name.
You took another step, and the ground pulsed beneath you. A ripple, like a stone dropped into water. The houses flickered, their shapes twisting, shifting. For a moment, you thought you saw faces in the windows. Watching.
Waiting.
Your hand tightened on the kris.
You had come too far to turn back now.
The tower loomed ahead, its broken peak stabbing into the sky. You knew, without knowing how, that the answers lay within.
But first—
A whisper.
Soft.
Insistent.
Calling your name.
You turned, and the shadow was there.
Waiting.
Hungry.
And then—
The chase began.
You ran.
Through streets that were not streets. Past houses that breathed. Past walls that sighed your name. The shadow followed, relentless, tireless, its form shifting with every step.
You ran until your legs burned. Until your lungs felt like fire. Until the tower was the only thing left.
The tower, and the thing behind you.
The kris pulsed in your grip. The whispering grew louder. The tower doors stood open, a darkness beyond darkness waiting within.
You had one chance.
One chance to end it.
One chance to find your father.
You took it.
And the world shattered.
The darkness swallowed you whole. It was not the absence of light but the presence of something else, something that saw you, weighed you, measured you in ways you did not understand. The tower stretched inward, an impossible space where the walls whispered in a language older than time. You felt the weight of a hundred eyes, unseen but felt, pressing into your skin, your bones, your memories. Your father had stood here before you. You knew this not from logic but from the scent in the air, the faint trace of clove and betel leaf, the things he carried, the things that made him real. He had walked deeper into the tower, into the maw of whatever held this place in its grip, and now it was your turn.
You stepped forward, and the ground pulsed beneath you like something alive. The walls shifted, revealing shadows that flickered in the torchlight—no, not shadows. Memories. Fractured glimpses of a time before the fall. Warriors standing in a half-circle, krises drawn, their faces grim with knowledge of what was to come. A man standing at the center, his hands raised in supplication, in surrender, in defiance. The air crackled, thick with the weight of spoken oaths. A name rang out—not yours, but one you recognized. One you should not know. The Giling Raga had not merely lost a war. They had been erased. Their souls unmade, their bodies repurposed into the shape of something else. And yet, something had remained. Something that waited. Something that called you here.
The air shifted, cold seeping into your skin. The whisper came again, no longer distant but right against your ear. “You should not have come.” The kris burned in your grip, its blade humming with something between warning and hunger. You turned sharply, but there was nothing behind you—only the shadows stretching longer, twisting into shapes that should not be. And then, from the darkness, a figure stepped forward. Not a man. Not a beast. Not a ghost. It was your father. And it was not.
His eyes were wrong, too deep, too empty, too filled with something that was not his own. His skin flickered like parchment too close to fire, his shape unsteady, his breath coming in slow, measured inhales that did not belong to a living man. He opened his mouth, but the words that came out were not his. “You have come too far. You must leave.” The thing wearing his face took another step forward, and for the first time, you felt fear that went beyond flesh, beyond instinct. This was not a battle you could fight with a blade. This was not a war that could be won with steel.
But you were your father’s child, and you were not here to turn back. The kris pulsed in your grip, and you took a step forward. “You are not my father.” The thing tilted its head, as if considering the weight of your words, and for a moment, the flickering of its form stilled. Then it smiled, a slow, terrible thing. “No,” it said. “But he is here.” And then the shadows moved.
They came from the walls, from the cracks in the stone, from the places where the light did not reach. A hundred hands, a hundred mouths whispering names long forgotten. You struck before they could reach you, the kris slicing through the air, through the space between reality and the thing that lived here. The blade met resistance, not flesh but something deeper, something that bent and screamed as it was cut. The walls shook, the floor cracked, the air filled with the scent of burned prayers. The thing that was not your father lunged, its hands stretching too long, too thin, its mouth opening to reveal nothing but void. You did not hesitate. The kris found its mark.
The scream that followed was not sound but feeling, a raw, searing agony that rippled through the tower, through the land, through the very bones of Kerta Waja itself. The shadows recoiled, their forms unraveling, their whispers breaking into fractured echoes. The thing that wore your father’s face shuddered, its shape coming apart, pieces of memory and sorrow peeling away like old skin. And then—nothing.
Silence.
You stood alone. The tower was still. The air was empty. The kris in your hand no longer hummed but felt heavier, as if it had taken something into itself, something it would carry for the rest of your life. Your father was gone. Truly gone. And yet, as you turned to leave, you felt it—the faintest brush of warmth against your shoulder, the scent of clove and betel leaf lingering for just a moment longer before fading into the wind.
Kerta Waja would not be found again. The village had been waiting for its ending, and you had given it one. You stepped past the broken gate, past the rusted gong, past the memories that would never be spoken of again. The forest was waiting. The world was waiting. And you walked forward, alone, but not empty. Never empty.
©April 2025, Fendy Satria Tulodo
Fendy Satria Tulodo is a writer from Malang, Indonesia. This is his first appearance in Swords & Sorcery Magazine.
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