Chapter 7: The One Beneath the Breath
"Every song has a silence that follows it—unless something sings back."
The forest exhaled.
For the first time in weeks, Alas Purwo fell into stillness.
Birds, winds, beasts, spirits—all held their breath as Tenggirang emerged from the Hollow Root. Her hair was luminous with golden threads. Her eyes—sharper. Deeper. She remembered the moon-song now. But more than that, she remembered herself—not just the warrior, or the protector, or the one who had loved Wira, but the little girl who once chased fireflies near the old well, long before she became legend.
Ki Ranu bowed the moment he saw her.
Wira took her hands and smiled, tears trembling on his lashes.
"You found it," he whispered.
She nodded.
"I became it," she replied.
But even as the trees whispered in celebration and the mist unfurled from the valleys like silk, a silence had taken root.
And somewhere, beneath even the Hollow Root… something breathed.
The change came slowly at first.
It began with the animals. They started fleeing the eastern woods. Entire colonies of spirit-monkeys vanished overnight. Deer avoided their ancient migration paths. Even the macan putih—white jungle tigers sacred to the land—roamed far west, their paws uneasy on soil that once sang beneath them.
Ki Ranu read the signs with growing dread.
"There's an imbalance," he murmured, eyes sweeping over burned bird feathers and cracked snake shells. "You pulled yourself from the edge… but something else climbed out with you."
They stood on a cliff overlooking the forest, where the wind carried only half its usual voices.
Tenggirang folded her arms. "The echo is gone. I scattered it myself."
Ki Ranu shook his head. "Yes. But echoes… come from something."
Wira frowned. "You think the echo was only a symptom?"
"I think the forest is remembering things it was made to forget."
That night, Ki Ranu gathered stones, incense, and seven copper bells. He laid them in a circle around Tenggirang and poured salt across the thresholds of their dwelling.
He did not sleep.
And neither did the wind.
It was on the ninth day after the Hollow Root that a storm arrived.
But it was no ordinary storm.
The sky turned inward, clouds rolling not across the heavens but into a spiral that hovered directly above a hollow hill. Rain fell in drops of ash, staining the leaves black. Lightning struck without sound, and when it did, the earth cracked open—not in jagged scars, but in precise, geometric patterns.
Tenggirang stood under the storm, letting the ash coat her arms.
She felt it—not rage. Not chaos. But intention.
"Something is calling," she said.
Wira stood beside her, tense. "From where?"
Ki Ranu stepped out from the shadows of the hut, his eyes hollow. "From beneath the Urang Nyusup."
Tenggirang blinked. "The Burrowing Ones?"
Ki Ranu nodded. "The oldest myths. From before the forest had names."
Legends spoke of the Urang Nyusup—beings older than spirits, born of root and silence. They lived in the spaces between earth and sky, where breath could not reach. Not dead. Not alive. Simply waiting. Bound by the First Songs, long forgotten.
"Something has unbound them," Ki Ranu whispered. "And I fear… it was you."
They made their way to the eastern hill the next morning.
A sacred place—once a resting ground for guardian spirits. Now, it hummed like a living heart. The ground was soft beneath their feet, like walking on lungs that inhaled with every step.
The trees leaned away from the hill. No birds sang. The air smelled not of rain, but of iron and sap.
At the hill's base, a hole had opened. Not dug, not collapsed—peeled, like the earth had unzipped itself.
From its depths, wind rose. Cold, wet, but… whispering.
Tenggirang leaned closer.
The voice spoke no words—but her bones understood.
Return.
She stepped back, face pale.
"It's calling me."
Ki Ranu touched the edge of the hole. "Not you. Your song."
And then, from the darkness, something reached out.
A hand—twisted like roots, knuckles of stone, veins glowing red.
It didn't grasp.
It offered.
A gift: a petal.
One petal.
But not kenanga.
A flower no longer grown in this world.
Wira's eyes widened.
"Bunga Ratna Kasih."
The Flower of Compassionate Blood.
It only grew in the realm between life and afterlife—among the souls not yet judged.
Tenggirang took it gently.
"It's a message," she said.
Ki Ranu was already pulling chalk from his pouch.
He began to draw a circle.
"We have to go back."
"Back where?" Wira asked.
Ki Ranu's hands trembled.
"To the Batas Sunyi."
The Silence Border.
Where the veil between realms was thinnest.
Where the Urang Nyusup once breathed.
They arrived by dusk.
The Batas Sunyi was not a place, but a condition.
Birds stopped flying above it. Insects crawled into trees and never returned. Even sound itself bent unnaturally—voices dulled, footsteps silent, heartbeats muffled.
Ki Ranu built a gate of bone and ironwood, then burned a bundle of dried kemenyan. The smoke curled into symbols.
Tenggirang stepped through first.
And the world bent.
She stood not in forest, not in dream—but in a vast plain of glass, where trees hung upside-down in the sky, and rivers ran upward.
Spirits walked here. But not as forms.
As echoes of memory.
Wira and Ki Ranu followed, their shapes dimmed by the plane's rules.
Before them stood a figure.
Cloaked in branches.
Crowned in fungus.
Eyes of milky moonlight.
It was not man. Not woman. Not even beast.
It was the One Beneath the Breath.
A legend never spoken aloud.
A forgotten god, buried not by war—but by consensus.
Tenggirang stepped forward.
"You called me."
The being tilted its head.
"No," it said.
"You woke me."
She felt her knees weaken.
The creature's voice was not heard—it was felt, like memory being rewritten.
"I was once the first root," it continued. "The Breath Between Leaves. The Pause Between Thunder."
Wira stepped beside her. "Why now?"
The god's gaze shifted.
"Because when she gave her memory, she left a hollow."
It pointed at Tenggirang.
"And in that hollow, I grew back."
Silence.
Then it spoke a word:
"Mubali."
Tenggirang staggered.
The word hit her like a flood of light.
Her true name.
The one before "Tenggirang."
Before she became legend.
The name her mother whispered into the wind.
She remembered.
Her father's last breath. Her first leap into spirit-waters. The pain of transformation.
And the promise she made to the forest—not to protect it, but to be it.
"Mubali," she whispered.
And the forest trembled.
The being smiled.
"You have remembered."
"And now?" Tenggirang asked.
The forest around them began to shiver, as if all of existence waited for her next breath.
"You choose," it said.
"Reclaim the hollow. Seal me again. And lose your name once more."
"Or…"
"Let me remain. Let the old roots rise. And learn what you were meant to become."
Tenggirang turned to Wira.
His eyes were full of questions.
Ki Ranu whispered, "This is beyond balance now. This is becoming."
Tenggirang looked at her hands.
One carried the Ratna Kasih petal.
The other, nothing.
She closed her eyes.
And breathed.
When she opened them, she was alone.
No god.
No plain of echoes.
Just her—on the Batas Sunyi.
But something was different.
She remembered everything now.
Not just the pain.
Not just the song.
But the root of it all.
Her birthright.
The old gods had not died.
They had been silenced.
Buried by those who feared what might grow.
And now—they would return.
Not as conquerors.
But as reminders.
That even silence has a voice.
And even forgotten names still echo in the wind.