The Jakarta sky that afternoon was a dense shade of grey, hanging low as if ready to dump its heavy burden onto the earth. The colour was as bleak as Raden's fortunes today.
In a corner of the Jatinegara Flea Market that was starting to quiet down, Raden sat pensively on his small wooden bench. He straightened his aching legs slightly, trying to ward off the cramps that were starting to set in. Before him lay the "treasures" he prided himself on: a metal fan from the 70s that no longer spun, rows of cassette tapes with tangled ribbons, several green glass bottles from the colonial era he found at a construction dig, and piles of old magazines with yellowed, brittle paper.
"Bang, does this radio actually turn on?"
A middle-aged man in a slightly shabby batik shirt crouched down, pointing at an old transistor radio.
Raden immediately straightened his back, an automatic salesman's smile plastered on his weary face. "It turns on, Pak! It just needs a little servicing on the tuner part. But the body is still smooth, genuine teak wood. This is a rare item."
The man twisted the radio knobs roughly, making Raden's heart ache a little. "Ah, junk like this. Ten thousand, yeah?"
Raden's smile twitched. "Wow, Pak. Ten thousand isn't even enough to buy nasi uduk these days. Fifty thousand, Pak. It's an antique."
"Antique my foot. This is just trash you fished out of the river, right?" The man laughed dismissively, then stood up and walked away without looking back.
Raden could only sigh deeply, his breath visible thinly in the cooling air. He couldn't be angry. The man was half right. Raden called himself an "antique collector," a term that sounded far more impressive than reality. In reality, he wasn't much different from a scavenger who had a slightly keen eye for history. He spent his days squatting amidst dust, rust, and the discarded memories of others.
He glanced at his phone. The screen was cracked in a thousand places, tied with a rubber band to keep the battery from falling out. 5:45 PM. Not a single item had sold today.
Bzzzt... Bzzzt...
The phone vibrated on his wooden stall. The name "Nila" flashed on the blurry screen.
Raden's heart fluttered. Nila. His wife. The only beautiful thing he somehow managed to have in this wretched life. However, a call at this hour usually wasn't a good sign.
He slid the green button with his dust-dirty thumb. "Hello, dear?"
"Mas Raden..." Nila's voice sounded soft, but there was a subtle tremor there that Raden recognized immediately. It was the voice of someone who had just been crying.
Raden stood up instantly, forgetting his cramped legs. "Nil? What's wrong? Are you crying?"
"No, Mas. I'm fine," Nila lied, but it was a terrible lie. in the background, Raden could hear loud television noise and the crisp laughter of several women. He knew those voices. Nila's aunts. They were gathering at his mother-in-law's house.
"Are you at Mother's house?" Raden asked, his voice heavy.
"Yes... Mother asked me to help deliver a catering order earlier. Then Aunt Ratna and Aunt Siska came over."
Raden closed his eyes. He could imagine the scene clearly. Nila, his beautiful and patient wife, treated like a servant in her own mother's house, while her wealthy aunts showed off their new jewellery while throwing snide comments disguised as "advice."
"What did they say to you now, Nil?"
Silence for a moment. "Mas, it's almost maghrib. Come home, okay? It's about to rain."
"Nila, answer me. What did they say?" Raden pressed.
Nila took a deep, shaky breath. "Aunt Ratna said... she said it's a pity, I'm still young but already look old because of a hard life. Mother... Mother said if Mas Raden really can't feed me, I should just come back home to Mother. She said... she said you're just a parasite making me wither."
THUMP.
The word "parasite" hit Raden's chest harder than any physical blow.
His hand gripped the phone so tightly his knuckles turned white. He wanted to scream, wanted to rage. But at whom? They were right. He was poor. He was a failure. He brought the beloved daughter of a gold merchant family into a life in a rented shack with a leaky roof.
"Mas? Don't listen to them, okay," Nila's voice suddenly turned panicked, realizing Raden's silence. "I don't care what they say. I'm happy with you. Really. I just want to go home with you. I'll wait at the rented house, okay? I already cooked tumis kangkung, your favourite. And lots of flour-fried tempeh."
Raden swallowed bitter saliva. His wife... was too good a woman for this cruel world. Even when hurt by her own family for defending her husband, she still tried to comfort Raden.
"Yes, dear. I'm coming home now. Wait for me."
"Be careful on the road, Mas. I love you."
"I love you too, Nil."
Raden hung up. The sky finally poured down drizzle. Cold water droplets hit his face, mixing with a single warm drop that escaped the corner of his eye. He quickly wiped it away roughly.
"Parasite," he muttered to himself.
He started packing up his wares with quick, rough movements, throwing the worthless items into his wooden cart. He hated being poor. He hated being looked down upon. But more than anything, he hated seeing Nila suffer because of her choice to marry him.
He had to change. He had to find a way. Somehow.
The journey home took an hour pushing the cart. Raden passed glittering Jakarta skyscrapers, where people inside probably spent money on a single dinner equal to his monthly earnings.
He arrived at their rented shack in a narrow alley in the Cipinang area. The exterior wall paint had peeled off, revealing damp grey cement.
But when he opened the creaking wooden door, the aroma of garlic and chili welcomed him. The smell of home.
Nila was there, sitting on the plastic mat that served as their living room and dining room. Her face was slightly puffy, but seeing Raden, her smile blossomed wide. A smile that could always make the burden on Raden's shoulders feel a little lighter.
"Assalamualaikum," Raden said, trying to smile.
"Waalaikumsalam. Mas, your clothes are wet," Nila immediately stood up, taking a small, dull towel and drying her husband's hair gently. "Go take a bath first, I already warmed the water a bit with a pot."
It was these small attentions that kept Raden going.
Their dinner was simple, but Raden ate ravenously as if it were a five-star restaurant dish. Nila talked about funny little things, deliberately avoiding the topic of her family. She talked about the neighbourhood chief's cat stealing salted fish, about the neighbour's kid crying because his kite broke.
Raden listened, laughing at the right times, but his mind drifted.
That night, after Nila fell fast asleep from exhaustion, Raden was still awake. He stared at the ceiling of the room decorated with mould spots. Nila's soft snoring beside him became the background music to his restlessness.
He got up slowly so as not to wake his wife, then walked to the corner of the room where he kept his "personal items" not for sale.
That was where the object was. A small teak wood box, its carvings almost gone with age.
His father gave him this box on his deathbed, ten years ago.
"Den... guard this," his father whispered then, breathing raggedly. "We might be poor now. But our ancestors... they were great people. This... this is an heirloom. Don't sell it, no matter how desperate you are."
Raden was often tempted to sell it when they really had no money to buy rice. But every time he intended to, the image of his pleading father's face always stopped him.
He opened the box slowly.
Inside lay a whetstone. It was pitch black, jet black like a starless night. Its surface was smooth but felt bone-chillingly cold to the touch. No carvings, no decorations. Just a simple black stone block.
"Heirloom," Raden snorted cynically, weighing the stone in his hand. "What's so great about a whetstone? Were our ancestors Keris making masters or kitchen knife sharpeners?"
He felt stupid for harboring hope in a lump of stone. His mother-in-law was right, he might truly be stupid. Too sentimental about an unclear past, while his wife's future was threatened with bleakness.
Raden was about to put the stone back into its box roughly. However, because it was dark and his mind was chaotic, his finger grazed the sharp corner of the broken wooden box.
"Ah!" He hissed softly.
Fresh blood flowed from the tip of his index finger. Reflexively, he didn't want the blood to drip onto the mat—Nila would have trouble cleaning it later. He caught the blood droplets with the hand holding the whetstone.
Drip.
A single drop of thick red blood fell right onto the surface of the black stone.
Raden was about to look for a rag when he saw something strange.
The blood didn't pool on the stone's surface. The blood... absorbed. Like water falling onto dry sand in a desert. In the blink of an eye, the red stain vanished, swallowed by the stone's black colour.
"Huh?" Raden brought the stone closer to his squinting eyes.
Suddenly, the previously cold stone became warm. Not ordinary warm, but a pulsating heat. Like a small heart starting to beat inside it.
THUMP... THUMP... THUMP...
Raden was startled and almost dropped it, but his hand seemed locked. The stone stuck to his palm.
The world around Raden began to spin. The damp walls of his rented house faded, replaced by a vast, endless darkness. The sound of crickets outside vanished, replaced by a low hum that rattled his teeth.
Then, a voice was heard. Not in his ears, but exploding directly inside his skull. The voice was heavy, ancient, authoritative, and carried a strong metallic aura.
"...It has been too long..."
Raden wanted to scream, but his voice was choked.
"...The blood of my descendant finally awakens this long slumber. But... weak. Too weak..."
Shadows began to appear in the darkness. Raden saw flashes of incandescent fire. He saw a giant hammer striking red-hot metal on an anvil. Every strike sent shockwaves he could feel in his soul.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
"...This world has dulled. Qi has dried up, leaving empty, fragile shells. Humans of today have forgotten how to be sharp..."
Raden didn't understand anything the voice was saying. Qi? Dull? He was just a junk collector!
"...Do not fear, child. You may be weak, but you possess my eyes. You have the talent to see what is hidden behind rust and dust..."
The whetstone in his hand glowed with a dim silvery light. Raden felt a flow of foreign energy—warm, sharp, and powerful—flowing from the stone, creeping up his arm, to his chest, then to his eyes.
It felt painful, like fine needles pricking his optic nerves. He closed his eyes tightly, holding back a groan so Nila wouldn't wake up.
"...I am an Echo from the past. And you, are my first Echo Cultivator in this pitiful era. Your task is not to forge iron, but to reforge your destiny..."
"...Now, open your eyes."
The light extinguished. The voice vanished.
Raden jolted back to reality. He was panting, cold sweat soaking his thin t-shirt. He was still kneeling in the corner of his cramped rented room. Nila was still fast asleep, her chest rising and falling regularly.
"A dream?" Raden muttered, his breath still racing. He stared at the whetstone in his hand. The stone was cold and black again, looking completely harmless.
But then, a transparent text box, like a hologram in science fiction movies he once watched on a neighbor's TV, appeared floating in front of his eyes.
[ Echo System Activated ]
[ User: Raden ]
[ Legacy Detected: The Ancestral Smith ]
[ Status: Not Cultivating (Mortal Body) ]
Raden rubbed his eyes. The text didn't disappear. It was real.
And not just that. As he shifted his gaze around the dimly lit room, the world looked different.
He saw their plastic clothes cabinet. Above it, floated small writing: [Cheap Plastic Cabinet. Durability: 30%. Left door hinge will break in 43 open-close cycles.]
He turned towards the junk fan he brought home this afternoon.
[Maspion Fan Year 1998. Status: Broken. Damage: Capacitor blown, dynamo jammed due to rust. Echo Potential: Very Low.]
"Echo... Potential?"
Raden's heart pounded. Fear slowly replaced by amazement, and then... hope. Wild, burning hope.
If he could see an object's damage just by looking at it, that meant he could fix it perfectly. And if he could fix it...
He stared at the fan again. His eyes were now no longer the eyes of a desperate scavenger. They were the eyes of a hunter who had just found his first weapon.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow he would return to the market. And this time, he wouldn't be prey.