Chapter 7: The Circle and the Shadow

The Circle Awakens

By dawn, the paddy fields shimmered with something unseen—an ancient presence rising like dew. The village, still nestled in mist, felt it before it saw it: a tremble in the bamboo groves, a low hum beneath their soles, like the breath of the earth had changed.

Sangpi was the first to act.

With Mili’s hand in hers and memory burning in her bones, she called for those who still believed—not in gods or ghosts, but in Sintu, the protector who had once walked the border between spirit and soil.

They came, one by one.

Sarpo, the gardener, who claimed the jasmine in his field only bloomed after he dreamt of a girl whispering old lullabies.

Kamir, who always set out two cups of tea—one for herself, and one for the unseen.

Aru, the village’s blind weaver, who never saw Sintu but wove tapestries of her shape from whispers alone.

These were the Circle. Not priests. Not magicians. Just keepers of quiet faith, raised on stories passed from the tongues of their ancestors—about the girl-guardian who died long ago, but whose spirit never truly left.

They gathered beneath the ancient banyan tree, with Mili placed gently in the center. Her chest still glowed faintly with the mark of Sintu’s presence.

“She holds the flicker,” Sangpi said, “but the storm is not hers alone to face.”

The Shadow 

In a lean-to near the crumbling shrine, Dongka Chingthu stood before a cracked mirror, murmuring to something only he could see.

The face staring back was no longer just his.

It was layered with something older—memories not his own, drawn from books drenched in blood and chants stolen from forbidden fire rituals. He was not the first to seek Sintu. But he would be the last to catch her.

His mother had long ago in another time, another dimension told him the legend in a voice cold with resentment:

“There was a girl born with the moon in her blood. Sojong’s daughter. She died too young—before she fulfilled her role. But the power didn’t die with her. It waits. It hides. It calls.”

And Dongka Chingthu had answered.

He had crossed lands where no road remained, traded offerings in ruins where snakes nested in temples, and memorized verses that cracked his own reflection.

Tonight—on the black moon, the sky’s emptiest hour—he would finish the Binding using Sintu’s remnants: a sliver of her braid preserved by ancient flame, and a single ash flake stolen from her sacred mound.

“She was no saint,” he hissed. “She was a beacon. And beacons are meant to be claimed.”