NARAK: The Blood Covenant

The sun filtered through the canopies of Denpasar's older districts, casting soft warmth across the temple roads and coastal air.

Class XI-C had scattered across the nearby villages, divided into groups by subject—photography, cultural documentation, spiritual architecture, and environmental observation.

On paper, it was a field assignment.

In practice, it was a way to keep them distracted.

"Our group's supposed to document three different pura and note their cultural differences," Raka said, checking the itinerary sheet, "but none of these names match the one we saw last night."

"Because the temple isn't on any list," Nayla replied, Archive scrolls flickering faintly beneath her sleeves. "It's hidden, erased from record. A memory fracture."

Vicki scanned the treeline beyond the dirt road, jaw clenched.

"Then we find it the same way they tried to erase it. Through something that doesn't rely on logic."

Raka raised a brow. "You mean magic?"

"No," Vicki said flatly. "Worse. We ask Putri."

Cue: Lavender perfume and unnecessary wind chime sounds.

Putri Vasanta strolled out from behind a tree, pendulum already spinning between her fingers like a flex.

"You called?" she said sweetly.

"How are you always near when we don't want you?" Nayla muttered.

"Because your souls scream louder than your voices," Putri replied, pulling out a notebook filled with chaotic scribbles and glitter pens.

"Also because I tracked your aura across the parking lot."

"You said you saw this temple in your dream," Vicki said.

Putri nodded.

"And when I woke up, my pendulum was spinning before I even picked it up. That never happens unless something ancient is trying to be seen."

"You brought the pendulum, right?" Raka asked.

She raised it like a mystical badge of honor.

"I brought three. Jade, quartz, and obsidian. For aesthetic variety and spiritual clarity."

Daramahesa peeked out of Nayla's backpack, unimpressed.

"Great. Spiritual Pokémon."

The team followed Putri's lead—the pendulum swinging slowly at first, then faster as they veered off the official trail and toward a part of the forest where no tourists wandered.

A faded stone path appeared, half-consumed by moss and time.

Birds went quiet. Shadows lengthened.

And the pendulum began spinning wildly.

"We're close," Putri whispered. "It's right here... but it doesn't want to be found."

Nayla narrowed her eyes.

A faint shimmer crossed the air ahead, like heatwaves on asphalt, but colder.

"It's a barrier," she said. "Not a wall. A narrative filter."

"Push through," Arkana's voice echoed calmly in Raka's head. "Memory rejects it. But meaning never lies."

Vicki stepped forward, pressed his hand into the air.

And it rippled.

The veil parted.

And behind it...

They saw stone.

Dark.

Silent.

Covered in glyphs they didn't recognize.

A temple that shouldn't exist.

They stepped past the veil.

The moment they did, the air changed.

Not heavier. Not cursed. Just... quiet.

Unnaturally so.

Even the insects had stopped chirping.

Even the shadows looked like they were holding their breath.

The erased temple stood in silence. No vines grew on its surface. No moss dared claim it.

Every stone was too precise. Every statue too smooth.

Like the temple hadn't aged. Like it had been waiting.

"Okay," Raka said, voice low, "this is officially the creepiest place we've ever stepped into."

"No screams, no illusions, no curse glyphs so far," Nayla noted. "Weirdly... calm."

"Which is the worst sign of all," Daramahesa muttered, tail flicking.

"Why?" Putri asked.

"Because it means this place is listening."

The team moved through the main hall, passing rows of carved reliefs—some cracked, some pristine. Faces half-erased. Eyes scratched out.One mural looked like it had been rewritten multiple times.

"That's not decay," Nayla said, pointing. "That's narrative corrosion. Something keeps changing this place's story."

"Or something doesn't want us to know it," Vicki added.

They entered a central chamber, circular, with a shallow stone basin in the center.

The floor was covered in strange pressure plates—circular, with spiraling motifs.

"Definitely cursed," Raka said, not even joking.

"Don't step on anything suspicious," Nayla warned.

"Define 'suspicious,'" Putri replied.

"If it looks like it'll summon an ancient guardian or open a dimension, it's suspicious."

"So the entire floor, basically."

Then—

Click.

Everyone froze.

They all turned slowly toward the noise.

And there, standing casually on one of the spiraled tiles, was…

Daramahesa.

"…Oops."

The glyph beneath his paw lit up with a flash of cold blue light.

The walls began to shift.

Not crumble—slide.

Like the temple itself was changing shape.

Glyphs along the ceiling realigned.

The floor trembled.

Then—

CRACK.

The floor split beneath them in jagged lines, and the party fell.

Not deep—only a few meters—but into separate passageways, sealed by shifting stone.

Raka and Nayla landed hard on a stone corridor lined with ancient offerings and hanging bone chimes.

Vicki and Putri stumbled into a dim hallway pulsing with soft red light, the walls covered in shadows that didn't match their movements.

Daramahesa, alone in a narrow tunnel lit only by faint Archive echoes, just sighed dramatically.

"Wonderful. Separated. In a haunted temple. Classic narrative pacing."

And somewhere deep beneath the split halls... Something stirred.

A door that hadn't opened in centuries.

A name that didn't belong.

Dust hung in the air like unmoving fog.The temple's mechanisms had quieted, but the separation remained.

Each section of the ruin had sealed like a locked memory, isolating the four of them into individual echoes of fate.

RAKA & NAYLA – The Chamber of Offerings

Their corridor was narrow and angular, lined with stone bowls and shallow carvings of mythical beasts. What should've been centuries-old items, burned incense, dry petals, decayed rice, still smelled fresh.

Too fresh.

"This place isn't forgotten," Nayla whispered. "It's just... paused."

"Frozen in a loop," Raka added. "Like it's waiting to resume something."

The deeper they went, the air grew colder.

And in the silence, a chant began to echo.

Old. Layered.

Voices without bodies, repeating one line in Sanskrit so ancient that the Archive could barely process it:

"To speak the name of what never was... is to birth it again."

VICKI & PUTRI – The Hall of Mirrors That Never Were

Their passageway twisted, half-lit by crimson glyphs that pulsed like breathing wounds.

Carvings along the wall didn't depict gods—but people.

Their poses shifted slightly with each step Vicki and Putri took—like watching actors mid-scene freeze frame by frame.

Then they entered a chamber of broken mirrors.

Not reflective glass.

Polished black obsidian, cracked like spiderwebs.

Putri reached out toward one—then froze.

"Vicki… these don't show us."

He stepped closer.

Looked in.

Reflected back wasn't him.

It was a version of himself in a different uniform.

Different posture.

Eyes not his own.

And behind him?

Someone who looked exactly like Nayla—except her Archive was wrapped in chains.

"This temple..." Putri whispered. "...remembers things we never did."

DARAMAHESA – The Corridor of Echoes

The cat walked alone.

Only faint traces of Archive light hovered above the cracked floor.

Stray sparks. Broken sigils.

Whispers tickling the edges of his mind.

Then—something called him.

"Not the cat... not the name they gave you..."

A voice from the dark. Gentle. Familiar.

"Come closer, Mahesa. Come as what you are."

He stepped toward the sound, fur bristling.

His tail curled, alert.

Then—

He saw him.

A figure.Wrapped in gray-blue light, seated beneath a forgotten stone pillar carved with Archive spiral sigils.

Eyes like violet dusk.

Robes faded but regal.

He didn't look decayed.

Just… missing.

"You," Daramahesa said. "You're…"

"Karuna Dharma," the man answered, smiling gently.

"I was the last to hold the Archive before the flame split the bloodline."

Daramahesa's eyes narrowed.

"You vanished."

"Because I had to. To protect the Whisper. To bury what wasn't ready to be spoken."

"Why now? Why appear now?"

Karuna's form shimmered faintly.

"Because the Archive has begun to remember things we never wrote.""And the Untold are hunting our names."

The temple rumbled softly—just for a moment.

Like it exhaled.

"Go," Karuna whispered, fading back into the walls.

"Tell the flame. Tell the frost. Tell the girl with the chained Archive…"

His words trembled in Daramahesa's mind:

"The first Gate is not a place. It is a question."

"And someone is about to answer it."

Karuna's violet aura dimmed, but his voice remained—clear and resonant inside Daramahesa's mind.

"You must understand, Mahesa… what we call 'The First Gate' was never built. It was never carved from stone, nor summoned through sigils."

"Then what is it?" Daramahesa asked.

Karuna turned toward one of the walls. A glyph glowed faintly—a spiral with three concentric rings, each marked with a question mark instead of a rune.

"It is a system. One that predates the Archives. Before memory. Before names. Before form. It exists as a fail-safe across all narrative realms."

"A fail-safe for what?"

"For the multiverse itself."

"...You're saying this gate is a kind of... security mechanism?"

Karuna nodded.

"The Question appears only in realms where narrative equilibrium is threatened. When too many truths are silenced, or when a name is stolen without being forgotten, the system activates."

"It poses a question. Not out loud. But deep within reality."

"And?"

"If someone answers it—correctly or not—the seal shatters. A flood of forgotten truths, alternate selves, and untold consequences pour through."

"It doesn't care if you're ready. It only asks: 'Do you remember what never was?'"

Daramahesa swallowed, the weight of those words settling into his chest like cold iron.

"So what happens if someone answers it?"

Karuna's eyes turned toward him.

"Then stories will collapse. And in the ruins... the Untold will rewrite what comes next."

"And Vicki... is already carrying the key."

CRACK.

The wall beside them shuddered.

Something—no, someone—on the other side.Pressing against the stone.

Karuna turned sharply.

"You have to leave. Now."

"What's coming?"

"Something that should've never been given a name."

Karuna reached forward, placed a paw—his own, long-forgotten, violet-glowing paw—against Daramahesa's chest.

"I give you my name.Not as inheritance.But as protection."

The glyphs flared.

And with that, Karuna vanished.

Swallowed by the wall.

Like he had never been there.

And behind the stone...

A scream began to rise.

Not loud.

But wrong.

Like a story tearing itself apart from the inside.