The sky over East Kalimantan dimmed under a blanket of clouds as the pickup truck carrying Reina and her team finally stopped in front of an old wooden gate on the outskirts of Penyinggahan Village. The Mahakam River flowed calmly in the distance, yet beneath its surface lay bitter stories, quietly stored in the data on their laptops.
The air in the village was thick—humid, heavy, and laced with the scent of peat and rusty metal. As if validating the traces of pollution that had been the subject of their discussions lately.
Reina, head of the Environmental Care NGO, was the first to step down. Her steps were firm, though her eyes carried a weight. She surveyed the village—simple wooden stilt houses made from ulin wood, muddy dirt paths, and villagers peeking from behind doors. But the most striking thing was… the silence. As if the village breathed in quiet secrecy, hiding something from outsiders like them.
Adit, the field coordinator and operations lead, followed Reina and checked the environmental research equipment. Rico and Shasi came next, visibly uneasy. All of them were from the same NGO, tasked with investigating suspected industrial waste pollution from a large company operating nearby. But since their arrival, the village's atmosphere had made every step feel heavier.
“This place… it’s unnaturally quiet,” Shasi, the data analyst and policy advocate, murmured under her breath.
Reina only nodded. Her chest felt tight under the cold, heavy air, as if an invisible pressure cloaked them. Even the birds were silent.
At the village hall, a young man named Rando greeted them. He would serve as their liaison with the locals. On the way to their temporary lodging, they passed a massive tree wrapped with red twine. Hanging from its branches were small purple stones, like fruits that would never ripen.
“That’s the boundary,” Rando said without being asked. “The guardian tree. Beyond that… it’s not our world.”
Reina turned to look at the tree longer than the others. There was something strange about it—not just local superstition. It was as if the land itself… was alive.
That night, they spent time on the porch of their stilt house, lit by oil lamps. The forest loomed in the distance, a wall of darkness. Suddenly, there was a sound—not wind, not an animal, but the soft steps of something walking through dry leaves. Adit pointed his flashlight, but found nothing. Yet Reina felt it: something watching them from within the trees—not with malice, but with… longing.
As night deepened and the others slept, Reina dreamt.
She stood in the middle of a misty lake. The water didn’t touch her feet, and the world seemed frozen in grey. Before her stood a tall woman in a flowing black cloak, her face hidden beneath a long veil. From beneath it, a soft voice whispered a single word.
“Arunika…”
The voice echoed like a tremor from deep beneath the earth. Then a wind rose from nowhere, carrying with it strange whispers—an ancient language, unknown spells, and the roar of massive wings.
Reina couldn’t move, her body frozen, but her heart pounded wildly.
“You are called. It is time to return…”
The veiled woman pointed toward the sky, where two moons appeared—one large, one small, side by side, glowing red and silver. Lightning struck the water—and Reina jolted awake, gasping. Her forehead was damp with sweat.
Outside the window, a black bird sat motionless on the wooden fence, its eyes glowing red before it slowly spread its wings and flew into the forbidden forest.
Reina sat in silence. She couldn’t explain what had just happened. But one thing was clear—it wasn’t just a dream.
It was… a calling.
The morning sun hadn’t yet fully kissed the damp ground by the Mahakam River when Reina finally got up. The strange dream still lingered, clinging to her thoughts. But she forced herself to focus. Taking a deep breath, she pulled back the tent’s curtain.
Reality greeted her once again. In the distance, children played, roosters crowed, and the smell of burning grass filled the air. Everything seemed ordinary. Yet… something felt off. Something had changed.
“Rein, come eat,” Adit called her to breakfast. Reina nodded, got ready, and joined the others minutes later.
They now sat in a circle beneath an old tree, eating boiled bananas and cassava while reviewing the previous day’s water quality data. Yet Reina couldn’t concentrate. Her eyes kept drifting toward the river upstream, where thick trees stood in eerie silence.
“I feel like we’re being watched,” Reina whispered.
Rico, the team’s documentarian and media specialist, chuckled. “You’re starting to sound like the locals. Scared of ghosts now?”
Adit frowned. “Don’t mock it. Grandpa Upa warned about certain places. I heard something strange happened during a student camping trip two years ago. One of them disappeared.”
Reina nodded faintly. Last night’s dream felt like an omen. Especially since, when she washed her hands in the river that morning, she saw a figure in the water—not a fish, not a branch, but a human-like form staring up at her with glowing, hollow eyes.
They agreed to recheck the water sample site. But when they arrived, something had changed.
A large banyan tree that stood tall yesterday had now fallen. Its roots were scorched from within. At its base, an odd symbol was carved—the same one Reina had seen in her dream.
“This… isn’t human work,” Reina whispered.
Shasi, who had been quiet, shivered. “We have to leave. This place… isn’t right.”
But Reina moved closer, drawn by an unseen force. She touched the scorched root—and suddenly, a fierce wind blew. There was no storm. Yet the air turned cold. Too cold for a tropical forest.
Then came a voice. Deep. Whispered. Not echoing—but resonating directly into their bones.
“Time has begun anew… The bearer has been chosen…”
Reina’s legs gave out. She collapsed to her knees as her friends shouted her name. But the voice still echoed in her mind, filling the corners of her awareness.
“We were never meant to be here…”
As night slowly fell, the air grew more humid, and mist began to gather along the riverbanks, cloaking the trees in a hostile grey shroud. Inside one of the villagers’ simple wooden huts, Reina sat staring at the conservation map they had carried since the start of the expedition.
But tonight, it wasn’t the map that drew her focus. It was the symbol she saw that morning. With trembling hands, she drew it again. Her strokes were hesitant, but the shape was clear: an imperfect circle with two dots—one like a sun, the other like a moon—and three vertical lines through its center.
“What is this symbol…” she whispered to herself.
Moments later, Adit entered the hut, worry etched on his face.
“Rein, are you sure you want to go through with the infiltration tonight? Jaya Coal seems on edge. Rico and Shasi don’t want to come. They think someone followed them during today’s shoot.”
Reina turned, eyes sharp. “That’s exactly why we can’t wait. If they’re dumping fresh waste, we need evidence before it’s all covered up.”
Adit sighed, then nodded. “Fine. But after this, we leave. This place… isn’t meant for us.”
Night thickened. Wearing dark clothes and carrying a flashlight wrapped in cloth to dim its light, Reina and Adit crept through the brush toward the back fence of the Jaya Coal Corporation facility.
The clinking of metal could be faintly heard in the distance—signs of activity. Then… a strong stench hit them, a mix of acid, iron, and rotting flesh, wafting from a small river behind the factory.
“Look at that…” Adit whispered.
A large pipe jutted from the back of the main building, releasing thick black liquid directly into the river. Dead fish floated on the surface. Reina’s hands trembled as she snapped photos. But then—a shout. A guard had spotted them.
“Run!” Adit yelled.
Flashlights lit up from all directions. Dogs barked, breaking the stillness.
They ran, not looking back. Gunshots rang out, and a bullet tore through Adit’s shoulder. Reina screamed, but he pulled her along, urging her to keep running. They leapt over ditches, dashed between trees, and—without realizing—crossed the boundary of the forbidden forest.
Adit collapsed, breathing hard. Reina knelt beside him—but the ground began to tremble.
Branches cracked around them. Wind spun into a small vortex. And then—a gaping hole opened before them, glowing with violet light. Like a tear in space and time.
There was no time to think. The hole pulled them in like an ocean current. They tried to resist, clinging to the ground—but the force was too strong.
Just before Reina was pulled in, she saw something inside the light—a tower rising from a lake… and a man with a weapon staring straight at her.
Eyes she recognized.
The eyes from her dream.
Then everything went dark.