The jungle was no longer silent. it hummed. it watched. it remebered.
Aryasa stood at the edge of teh sacred grove, the kris strapped to his waist, his breath steady but uncertain. The events of the last two nights had cracked something inside him something old, something buried.
Mangku Gede had begun his training. Not with weapons, but with silence. "To hear the veil," he said, "you must first quiet your own noise."
Aryasa spent hours meditating beneath the banyan tree, listening to the wind, the insects, the distant chants from the temple. But what he heard most was the mask.
It called to him not in words, but in rhythm. A pulse. A beat. A memory.
Mangku led Aryasa deeper into the forest, to a shrine long abandoned. Vines covered its walls. Statues lay broken. But the air was thick with power.
"This was once the Temple of the Mask," Mangku said. "Where the guardians trained. Where the veil was strongest."
Aryasa stepped inside. The moment he did, the kris pulsed. Light flickered. And the mask appeared.
Not physically. But in his mind. A vision. A memory. A battle.
He saw his father young, fierce, standing against a tide of shadows. Rangda's cult. The veil tearing. And the mask glowing in his hand.
Aryasa gasped. The vision faded. Mangku was watching.
"You saw him," Mangku said. "The mask remembers."
That night, Aryasa returned alone. He placed the kris before the shrine and sat cross-legged. He closed his eyes. He listened.
The jungle shifted. The air thickened. And from the shadows, a figure emerged. Not Rangda. Not Barong. But something in between.
A masked spirit. Twisted. Broken. Forgotten.
It lunged. Aryasa raised the kris. Light met shadow. The clash echoed through the trees.
Aryasa stumbled, but didn't fall. He remembered the rhythm. The pulse. The mask.
He struck. The spirit screamed. And vanished.
Aryasa collapsed to his knees, breath ragged. But the kris glowed. The mask pulsed. And the veil held.
He had passed the first test. But the echoes were only beginning.