Chapter 2 - The Shadow and the Flame

The Silk of Fate

Chapter 2 – The Shadow and the Flame

Morning in Tumapel began with drums.
A deep, steady rhythm echoing from the palace gates to the servant halls, rousing the guards, the concubines, the scholars still asleep on their scrolls. The rising sun was barely a sliver of gold when Idran stepped into the training courtyard, already laced in the scent of sweat and iron.

His brother was there, of course—Wirabumi, the flame. A man of edges and motion, barely two years older, yet somehow already made of bronze and command. He had their father’s sharp jaw, the booming voice that made soldiers stand straighter, and the kind of certainty that made Idran feel like drifting mist beside him.

“Late again, adik.” Wirabumi smirked, flipping a spear in one hand before tossing it at Idran’s feet. “The spear doesn’t wait for dreams.”

“I was reading,” Idran said simply, picking it up. “The laws of Dharma. Thought I should understand what we’re supposed to uphold before pretending to defend it.”

A few of the guards chuckled. Wirabumi didn’t.

“You hide behind books because you’re afraid of choosing a side.”

Idran didn’t respond. He knew better. Words with his brother were like stepping into fire—bright, beautiful, and capable of leaving burns that didn’t show.

Their father, King Jayanegara, often pit them against one another in quiet ways. A council meeting where only one was invited. A ritual where the other was praised. It was his way of ensuring balance—or perhaps, keeping both sons just hungry enough to obey.

But Idran no longer felt hungry for his father’s approval.

He had seen too much in the harbor towns—poverty dressed in silence, justice tangled in bribes, priests reciting verses with gold on their tongues and emptiness in their eyes. And worse still, the blind obedience of it all.

He didn’t want to rule like this. If at all.

But he also knew this: If he did not act, Wirabumi would one day become king. And the world Idran dreamed of—the one where faith was not forced, and truth was not sold—would never come to be.

Later that day, Idran sat cross-legged in the garden behind his mother’s old quarters. Few came here. The breeze smelled of frangipani and damp stone. Beneath a banyan tree, he pulled out a folded parchment, carefully inked with his own hand.

He was working on a new translation—a verse from the Qur’an rendered into Old Javanese.
Karim had lent him a worn copy, its pages dog-eared and soft from years of turning.

“Indeed, God does not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves.”

He read the verse aloud.

Slowly.

As if weighing its truth in his mouth.

Later that night, he visited the royal archives. Few nobles cared for it—too dusty, too quiet—but Idran moved through the aisles like one who belonged.

He retrieved maps.

Of the seas north of Java.

Of China.

Of Dadu—the capital of the Yuan.

He wasn’t planning anything. Not yet.

But curiosity, like faith, had a way of becoming a compass.