They often say that time is a healer, a gentle balm that mends the jagged edges of a broken soul. But in Ponorogo, time was a slow-acting venom, a poison that caused memories to rot rather than fade. Two years had crawled by since the crimson tragedy in the temple square—the massacre that had decimated the Liu bloodline—yet for the residents, the phantom scent of gunpowder still seemed to hang static in the humid air. It mingled with the metallic tang of blood that refused to be washed from the soil, a permanent stain on the town’s conscience.
For Jaka Pradana, the man once celebrated as Dhana, the last year had been a walking hell. His existence was no longer defined by the thunderous glory of the Reog or the fierce pride of being a Pembarong. His life had dwindled into a singular, agonizing purpose: waiting for death to call his name.
The terror had arrived without a herald, exactly one year after the Dutch-orchestrated slaughter. An invisible curse seemed to have descended upon the Reog troupe and every remaining branch of Dhana’s family tree. Without a clear cause and leaving no traces behind, one by one, the Reog members and Dhana’s kin were discovered dead in states of gruesome disarray.
The pattern of the killings followed a horrific, clockwork schedule: on the first day of every month, a life was extinguished. This storm of death had swept away almost everyone Dhana had ever loved, leaving a hollow, aching void in his chest. The padepokan—the training sanctuary that once vibrated with the rhythmic beat of kendang drums, the boisterous laughter of martial artists, and the rich aroma of morning coffee—had been transformed into a silent, suffocating tomb.
Now, only Dhana and his uncle, Ki Sumo, remained as the final survivors inhabiting the ancient structure. They spent their nights in a state of hyper-vigilance, staring into the shadows and wondering which of them would be the next to have their soul torn away.
Every night was consumed by a burning rage and a recursive, maddening confusion. Dhana and Ki Sumo had deployed every martial skill they possessed, patrolling the perimeter of the padepokan every hour, following every microscopic clue, but the killer remained ten steps ahead.
"How is it possible for someone to penetrate the very heart of our defense, kill with such clinical precision, and then vanish into the dark like mist?" Dhana growled one evening. His hands, trembling with a mixture of exhaustion and fury, continuously sharpened his dagger under the dim, flickering light of an oil lamp. The sound of steel against stone was the only music left in their lives.
Ki Sumo remained silent in the corner, a shadow of his former self. His eyes, dimmed by age and the weight of a thousand sorrows, stared blankly at the rows of peacock crowns and Reog masks now buried under a thick layer of dust—symbols of a glory that had died long ago.
"This is no ordinary assassin, Le," Ki Sumo murmured, his voice a dry, papery rasp. "This is someone who knows how to move in the gloom, someone who recognizes the very rhythm of our breath". Yet, no matter how desperately they stood guard, the executioner remained a faceless wraith, leaving not a single footprint upon the earth, as if they were a spirit walking upon the wind.
THE NIGHT OF THE FINAL VIGIL
That night, on yet another fateful first of the month, the Ponorogo sky was smothered by a thick, oppressive blanket of black clouds. The suffocating silence of the padepokan was suddenly shattered by the ear-splitting clash of metal against metal coming from the backyard.
Dhana bolted from his fitful sleep. With his heart hammering against his ribs, he snatched his weapon and sprinted toward the sound. Under the pale, sickly light of a moon that occasionally peered through the clouds, he froze. He watched in horror as Ki Sumo fought a desperate, losing battle against a black shadow that moved with supernatural speed.
The combat was brief, fast, and devastatingly lethal. Dhana stood paralyzed for a heartbeat, his mind struggling to process the killer’s movements, which were as bizarre as they were familiar. There was a lethal fluidity to the body, a low-spinning evasion, and unarmed strikes delivered with surgical precision—a terrifying hybrid of the powerful Ponorogo Silat and the agile Wu Shi Kung Fu he knew so well.
Ki Sumo, withered by age and a heart broken by years of grief, finally lost his momentum. A crushing blow struck his chest, sending him sprawling to the ground, his breath coming in jagged, dying gasps. The killer offered no mercy. With one cold, efficient movement, the life of the last person Dhana had left in the world was extinguished without a hint of hesitation.
"STOP!" Dhana screamed, his voice a raw, agonizing blend of tears and explosive rage.
The killer stood upright in the center of the yard, their back to the moonlight. Their face was concealed behind a small, eerily beautiful Reog mask that looked grotesque in the shifting shadows of the night. Dhana felt a strange, sickening vibration in his chest. The posture, the sharp intensity of the gaze through the mask’s eye-slits—it all felt devastatingly close to his own heart.
"Why must you be the one to kill? Why have you destroyed everything?" Dhana asked, his voice trembling so violently he could barely form the words. His heart had already whispered the answer long before his lips could speak it.
The killer remained silent for a long moment, letting the night wind sweep across the blood-slicked courtyard. Slowly, the hand holding the weapon rose to untie the silk cords of the small Reog mask. As the mask fell away, the moonlight illuminated a pale face of haunting beauty, now frozen in a mask of ice: Liu Mei.
"I wanted you to feel the same agony I felt, Dhana," Mei’s voice was a cold, sharp blade, cutting slowly through the air. "I wanted you to witness every member of your family and your troupe being hunted down and slaughtered one by one, until you have no one left in this world—just as you did to me".
"Mei, by the heavens, I swear to you—I had no idea the Dutch were coming that day!" Dhana pleaded, his breath coming in ragged gasps, hot tears beginning to blur his vision. "I never planned the death of your family! I loved you!"
"DO NOT LIE!" Mei screamed, her eyes ignited by a pure, inextinguishable hatred. "I saw it with my own eyes! After they butchered my father and my brother, that Dutch leader looked at you and smiled! You and your uncle stood there, safe and untouched, while my family’s blood flowed like a river in that arena!"
Dhana tried to take a step forward, his hand reaching out in a desperate attempt to touch the woman he still loved. But Mei instantly leveled her weapon at his heart.
"That smile was a trap, Mei! The Dutch did it on purpose to shatter us, to destroy everything we had built!" Dhana cried out in absolute despair.
"It is far too late for empty words," Mei replied, her tone flat and dead, as if her soul had long since departed. "Now, we are even. You have lost everything, just as I lost everything two years ago".
Mei looked down at Ki Sumo’s cooling corpse, then turned her hollow, vacant gaze back to Dhana one last time. Without another word, she turned and vanished into the darkness of the night, leaving Dhana kneeling alone amidst the bodies of his kin, crushed by the weight of a vengeance that had found the wrong target.
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