Jaya pushed himself up, wincing, his gaze sharpening with wary calculation. Sati leaned into the slick bank, her marrow hollowed out as though scraped clean by a dull knife. The borrowed fire had vanished, leaving only a dull throb behind her eyes. The canopy pulsed with sickly white brilliance, suffocating as wet hemp.
“We need to move,” Jaya finally grated, his voice still hoarse with silt. His movements were stiff, but purposeful. He didn’t question or accuse. The blooming thicket was an open beacon, screaming their position.
Sati nodded, too drained to argue, too weary to even muster a sarcastic quip. Jaya hauled her to her feet, his grip callous-rough and steady. They stumbled inland, steered only by the milky phosphorescence of the bloated stalks. He led her to a small, hidden indentation in a rock face, partially obscured by a cascade of thick, broad leaves – a tiny alcove, barely enough for two. It smelled of damp earth and something acrid, like old bat droppings, but it was dry. Sati sank down, pressing her back against the cool stone, her limbs protesting every movement.
Jaya took the first watch, facing the narrow cleft to scan the undergrowth. Cicadas sawed in the dark, undercut by the low drone of the distorted woods. Sati shut her lids, trying to gather her wits, but her skull remained a swarm. The sting in her palms, the terror of the surge, and the memory of Jaya choked by brown water collided behind her forehead. Exhaustion dragged her under into a memory from twelve years back.
She was small again, six years old, bark-sap sticking to her scuffed knees as she clung to the ancient fruit tree in the estate orchard. The sun filtered through the leaves, dappling the ground in shifting gold. Dianti sat beneath the tree, a pale, solemn child, her small hands clasped over a perpetually congested chest. A hollow cough shook the girl's ribs, sharp and dry. Sati had pelted Dianti's lap with hairy red fruit, staining the white cotton of her skirt.
“Eat them!” Sati had called down, shimmying higher along the bough. “The rind's soft!” Dianti merely picked at the fruit, her gaze distant, wistful. She watched Sati with an unblinking, heavy stare that Sati had always brushed off as mere shyness.
Then, a gentle hand landed on Dianti’s head. Grandmother Rukmi. Her hair, even then, was a braid of silver, her smile serene and knowing. She carried a small, intricately carved wooden box, the kind Sati’s father used to keep rare spices. Rukmi settled beside Dianti, ignoring Sati’s boisterous presence in the tree.
“My little bird, still feeling the chill, eh?” Rukmi’s voice was soft, laced with a honeyed concern. Dianti nodded, her cough returning. Rukmi opened the small box, revealing a dried betel nut etched with coiled spiral grooves. “I was just telling Dianti a story, Sati,” Rukmi said, looking up with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “About the very first Life-Givers. Long, long ago, when the Suwarna Archipelago was still young, there were those who could mend what was broken, bring back what was lost.”
Sati paused her pelt of fruit, intrigued. She loved Rukmi’s stories, full of ancient heroes and mythical creatures. Dianti, too, seemed to brighten, her gaze fixed on Rukmi’s face.
“But their power,” Rukmi continued, her voice dropping to a near-hush, “it was never truly theirs alone. It was a gift from the Great Arus itself, meant to be shared. The most powerful of them, the ones who truly understood the Cycle, could share their very light, their very *life*, with those they loved. Those who needed it most, to make them whole. Imagine, Dianti, a flicker of someone’s own vitality, brightening the dimness within another.”
Sati, still just a child, imagined sharing her rambutan with Dianti, making her strong enough to climb the tree with her. “Like giving her a super-sweet fruit?” she asked, a giggle escaping her lips. Rukmi chuckled, a dry, rustling sound, and patted Dianti’s hand. Dianti, however, didn’t laugh. Her dark pupils locked onto the nut in Rukmi’s hand, then flicked to Sati with predatory stillness. A nascent hunger hardened the girl's thin jaw, cold enough to bite through the humid orchard air.
The orchard melted away into twisting grease and shadow. The drone of the thicket outside turned to a shrill whistle in her ears. The engraved nut blew up across her vision, huge and jagged. Then, it shattered, replaced by a blinding, terrible flash.
Her father's broad grin, her mother's dark hair braided with silver pins. Laughter, the scent of her mother’s jasmine perfume, the warmth of her father’s hand. They were in the distillery’s inner sanctum, a place usually reserved for the most sacred rituals. Sati, a toddler, had snuck in, hiding behind a towering copper still. Her parents were examining a newly distilled batch of spirit, talking in low, happy tones. Then, a sudden, searing light, not the golden glow of Arus, but a harsh, sickly emerald. A branded sigil, burning in black-green radiance, carved itself into the air above them. It was a vicious, claw-like mark, intricately detailed, reminiscent of the swirling pattern on the betel nut Rukmi had shown Dianti, the one Sati had consumed just weeks ago. Not identical, but horrifyingly similar in style, in its underlying iconography. The air crackled with malevolence. Sati screamed, a tiny, unheard cry. Her parents turned, their expressions morphing from joy to utter terror, not for themselves, but for her, hidden behind the still. The emerald strike fell without thunder—just an implosive tear through the stone floor. They crumpled, not bloodied, but utterly lifeless, their forms somehow... *empty*. The light faded, leaving behind only the metallic tang of ozone and a silence more profound than any Sati had ever known. A figure stepped from the shadows, cloaked, but the silhouette felt familiar, tall and slender, with a distinct way of holding their head.
Sati jerked upright, snapping back to the dark alcove. The chill of the cave pressed in. Jaya was still facing outwards, a silent, unmoving sentinel. But Sati was no longer shivering from cold. A frigid bile surged into her throat. The vision had been so clear, so real. The betel nut. The sigil. Her parents’ death, not an accident, but an attack. And the figure, shrouded but familiar, the way they stood, the sense of calculating stillness. A hideous conclusion locked into place.
Grandmother Rukmi had not simply cultivated the betel nuts. She had been there.