Keira and Kalek were led to the third floor. There, a room with large glass windows overlooked a city now swathed in the grey haze of tear gas.
Inside, three men in suits and one woman in a bureaucratic uniform sat waiting. All of them looked exhausted, some with bloodshot eyes—whether from stress or the gas seeping through the vents, it was hard to tell.
The eldest man in a suit spoke first. "The letter from Rakaya?" he asked, devoid of pleasantries.
Kalek handed over the envelope. Keira remained silent. She knew her task was only to deliver.
No one invited them to sit. The empty chairs near the door remained untouched, as if their presence wasn't important enough to warrant comfort, let alone time. Everything felt like a minor nuisance that needed to be swept out of the room as quickly as possible.
The female council member opened the envelope, scanning it rapidly. The sound of rustling paper was loud in the silence of the cool, air-conditioned office. The others stared at Keira as if she were merely a child from the backcountry, too naive and innocent to grasp the world of these bureaucrats.
The woman then handed the pages to the man beside her.
"A request to halt the development project..." muttered the bespectacled man in the far-left seat. "Ancestral land, forest territory, access to clean water..."
The portly man in the far-right seat chimed in with a tone of wonder, bordering on mockery. "You're asking for the area around Muntuwu to be exempted from the new capital's master plan?"
The old man in the suit curled his lip. "This is no time for agrarian affairs. The world is burning out there."
The man with glasses arched an eyebrow and leaned lazily back into his chair.
"How many times have we received letters like this...? This is the third one, isn't it?" he mused.
The man in the suit sneered again. "And now you think that by coming here in person, we will simply grant all these requests?"
He turned to Kalek, then to Keira. His face was ice. "I'm afraid not. We have matters far more urgent than this."
The woman then opened the second sheet. Her eyebrows shot up slightly.
"And this... an objection to the arrest of seven village youths. No official notification, no word on legal proceedings."
The portly man at the far end let out a short laugh. "Village kids playing militant, stirring up trouble, and now... they're whimpering?"
Keira held her breath, trying to stay composed. She took a small step forward, bowing politely.
"Pardon me, sir. They are not militants. They are just village youths. They were born and raised in that forest—the very one you are targeting for development. They never took up arms; they didn't cause riots. They were only defending the land and the forest they love."
Keira's voice trembled slightly. "We didn't come here to demand. We only want to know... why they were taken, and where they are now."
The room fell silent for a heartbeat.
The man in the suit smirked, nudging his colleague. "Look at the way she talks. Trained beforehand, surely? To make us feel pity? Sending a little girl here, as if that could deceive us?"
The bureaucrat in the middle leaned back and exhaled a long sigh. "This is not the time to discuss tiny villages that aren't even on the map. We are short-staffed. This city is on the brink of collapse."
Keira bit her lower lip. "That is exactly why we came here. Because you are the only ones left who can still speak for this Republic."
The man with glasses interjected coldly, "This Republic is dead, child. What you see here are just the remains."
"But we aren't dead, sir!" Keira's voice rose, her polite veneer beginning to crack. "We are still here. Still waiting for word from this city. From you."
The portly man at the far end smirked again. "If you want word, here it is: you... do not matter."
Keira stiffened. Her eyes swept across the long table.
"We didn't come to ask for charity or donations. We came because our rights were violated. Because no one cares. Because you think we can just be erased."
The man with glasses slammed his pen onto the table. "And you think we have time for drama regarding seven criminal village brats who caused trouble?! This country is in shambles! The world is at war! We can't even secure food on the streets!"
"But we live there...!" Keira cried out. Her voice broke. "We live there! It's not just some forest or godforsaken land! It's our home! It's—"
"Keira..." Kalek moved closer, trying to quiet her, but she was beyond restraint.
"We might be far up on that mountain. We might be small, off the map as you say. But we are not animals!" Keira shouted. Her eyes welled up, her voice choked with emotion. "Seven of our boys were taken away without a word! No explanation! No justice! Are you not human?! Do you not have children?!"
The portly man mocked her, "How pathetic. The world is ending, and they're worried about seven missing criminal brats. Besides, what was Muntuwu thinking, sending a slip of a girl as an envoy? Her emotions are exploding like this."
Keira stepped forward, slow but resolute. The look in her eyes shifted, sharpening.
Behind her calm and gentle face, something else lay hidden—a resolve she hadn't yet fully realized, a courage growing silently under pressure, like a wild root forcing its way through stony ground. She was no longer just an envoy from Muntuwu. She was the voice of a land that had been silenced for far too long.
"The people in the village were right," she hissed, low but biting. "This Republic never truly thought about the regions outside the capital. We were never considered important. We are just numbers. Just dots on a map that are easily erased."
Her gaze swept across the bureaucrats before her.
"We... are only a territory considered important for its natural resources. Not for the human beings within it."
The woman in the center suddenly stood up.
Her steps were slow and deliberate. She stared straight into Keira's eyes, then waved at two security officers standing in the corner.
"You want to know my answer?"
Keira stared back, unyielding.
The woman leaned in, stopping just inches from Keira's face.
Then—slap!—a hard blow landed on Keira's left cheek, snapping her head to the side.
"I am sick of your self-righteous attitude. Mountain people teaching us how to run a country?" the woman hissed coldly, her voice nearly trembling with suppressed rage. She looked at Keira as if she were filth beneath her shoe.
"You're lucky we don't detain you right now and throw you into a cell," she continued. "Do you think it would be hard for us to make two insignificant mountain dwellers disappear, just like those seven youths?!"
She hissed again, full of disgust.
"Get them out of here. Now!"
The two officers moved immediately. Kalek quickly put his arm around Keira, who remained frozen. Her cheek was flushed red, her eyes staring blankly—not out of fear, but because her fury had transcended the limits of words.
The officers' movements were rough. Keira's arm was wrenched from Kalek's grip as she was forcibly dragged out. But she didn't cry. She didn't scream. She turned her head slowly, looking back at the tables of power that had just insulted her. Her breath was deep and steady, but her eyes burned like embers that would not go out.
The only sound was the heavy tread of boots and Kalek's labored breathing behind her.
The door slammed shut.
And the room returned to silence—as if no one had ever come to fight for anything inside those walls.
***
When they exited the building, the scene was far more chaotic.
Fire consumed a guard post outside the fence. A group of protesters tried to scale the walls. Sirens wailed incessantly. A mother screamed, searching for her child. The sharp sting of tear gas still hung heavy in the air.
In the distance, gunshots rang out. Whether they were rubber bullets or not was unclear. But the human screams that followed seemed to provide the answer.
Keira watched it all with eyes that were no longer afraid, but ablaze.
She had just met the true face of power: cold hands that slapped without hesitation, eyes that appraised humans like inanimate objects, and voices that laughed while suffering was turned into a punchline. Those Council members—whose names she had heard mentioned with respect on the village radio, who supposedly represented the people—were nothing more than luxury chairs occupied by people who only feared losing their grip on power, not losing their people.
They were crude, mocking, and condescending. The same way they treated Rakaya's letter, the same way they treated the seven missing boys, the same way they treated the land they were asked to protect. The same way they had treated her—a child from the mountains who dared to speak.
The world had changed. And Keira knew now—change would not come from behind the glass and the bureaucratic desks.
On the journey home, Kalek didn't say much.
But before they entered the forest region, he finally spoke. "What you saw and experienced today, Keira... is not something easy to face. Many people choose to forget. Because remembering means carrying a wound for a lifetime."
Keira stared straight ahead. Unwavering.
"I won't forget," she said softly, but firmly. "If everyone chooses to forget, who will move to change it?"
Kalek turned to her. There was a mix of sadness and hope in his eyes, but he only nodded slowly.
***
As night fell over Muntuwu Village, Keira stood at the edge of a cliff, watching the faint flickers of the city far below. Those lights used to represent hope, progress, a larger world. But tonight, they were like an unhealed wound—glistening, but burning.
It was no longer the light of civilization.
It was an ember. A symbol of a power that was slowly consuming everything.
And the world, Keira knew, was crumbling piece by piece.
She closed her eyes. In the silence, she offered a prayer—not just for safety, but for the strength to endure, to resist, and to never surrender to a reality that so easily swallowed the truth.
***
The scent of incense and burning wood filled the ancestral hall of Muntuwu Village that morning. Thin wisps of smoke rose from small braziers in the corners of the room, while sunlight pierced through the gaps in the palm-fiber roof and wooden walls. In the center of the circular room sat twelve Elders from across the lands of Central Banua Rimba Province.
Rakaya—Keira's father—sat slightly apart. Before him, faces lined with age but burning with a spark of rage and resolve looked at one another.
"The time has come," said Lempang, one of the Muntuwu Elders.