Chapter 1 - The Prince Who Loved the Rain
The Silk of Fate
Act I: Threads of Distant Shores
Chapter 1 – The Prince Who Loved the Rain
The rain had a scent in the Javanese highlands—a scent that clung to wet stone and sandalwood trees, rising like breath from the earth. Raden Mas Idran stood alone in the courtyard, barefoot, the hem of his sarong darkened by the downpour. He tilted his head toward the grey sky, letting the water wash over him like it might cleanse what his titles never could.
The second son of King Jayanegara of Tumapel, Idran was never meant to rule. His older brother, Wirabumi, trained with iron and command. Idran trained with silence and shadows. While Wirabumi rode horses with diplomats and sparred before sunrise, Idran stole away to the libraries—reading everything from court epics to Persian poetry brought by traders.
He was seventeen now. Lean and tall, with sharp eyes that often made servants hesitate—not from fear, but from the sense that he saw more than he let on. That he heard things not meant for him. His skin had grown a shade darker under the mountain sun, and his calloused fingers betrayed the hours he spent writing instead of resting.
He had always been different.
His tutors called him “the drifting mind.”
His mother, who died when he was thirteen, had called him anak hujan—the rain child.
“You always come alive when the world slows down,” she used to whisper, rubbing his damp hair with a towel. “As if you hear music the rest of us don’t.”
She was the only one who understood his quiet ache. And after her death, the ache turned inward, taking root behind his ribs like a vine he couldn’t tear out.
In public, Idran fulfilled his duties with the measured grace expected of a royal. He bowed to the temple priests. He gave alms at the gate. He debated ethics with visiting monks—always careful, always precise.
But in private, he questioned.
Why did some gods demand incense while others spoke through silence? Why did one man’s truth demand another man’s death? And most of all—why, when he heard the traders from Pasai whisper prayers in a foreign tongue, did something in his chest tighten… as if it recognized them?
He began frequenting the harbor towns under the guise of inspecting shipments. There, amidst the clang of copper and clatter of spices, he met Abdul Karim—an old man from Gujarat who sold scrolls beside a coffee stall.
“You read like a man looking for something he doesn’t have the words for,” Karim once told him.
“I’m reading to remember something I’ve never learned,” Idran replied.
Karim smiled, lines on his face folding like well-worn parchment. “Then perhaps, you are remembering God.”
Idran did not convert that day.
But he returned again. And again. Sitting beside Karim under the awning while rain spattered the dirt, listening not just to the words of the Qur’an but to the cadence—how it held sorrow and stillness at once.
In the palace, no one knew. Not yet. To them, he remained the introspective prince with ink-stained hands. But inside, a quiet storm had begun.
And that night, as thunder rolled across the highlands and lightning split the sky above the palace, Idran did not pray to the gods of his father.
He closed his eyes and whispered a line Karim had taught him—
“Guide me to the straight path.”