On that Wednesday, the storm came without warning.
Seven-year-old Saguna Taksa pressed his face against the window, watching dark clouds gather over Teluk Jati with unnatural speed. What had been clear morning skies just moments ago now churned with angry purple-black masses that seemed to spiral inward rather than drift with the wind.
"Get away from there," his sister Sahara ordered, pulling him back from the glass. At fourteen, she stood nearly a foot taller than him, her expression tense as she secured the window shutters. "This isn't a normal storm."
"But Mom and Dad are still out fishing," Saguna protested, trying to peer through the cracks between the wooden shutters. The family boat had left at dawn, as it did every day. "They don't know it's coming!"
"They'll see it. They'll come back." Sahara didn't sound convinced. She moved through their small house with purpose, checking each window, each door. Her movements were too practiced, too precise for a fourteen-year-old facing an unexpected storm.
She'd been expecting this, Saguna realized. Or something like it.
Outside, the wind rose to a mournful howl. Not the straight-line gusts of typhoon season, but something erratic and wrong, like the air itself was in pain. The wooden walls of their stilted house creaked in protest.
"What kind of storm is this?" Saguna asked, his small hands clutching the jade pendant his mother had given him for protection.
Sahara paused in her preparations, her eyes meeting his with unexpected gravity. "The kind that hunts."
Before Saguna could ask what she meant, the house shuddered. Not from wind, but from something striking the support pillars below. A sharp cracking sound echoed through the floorboards, followed by another, and another.
Footsteps. But wrong somehow. Too many. Too quick.
"They're here," Sahara whispered. She grabbed Saguna's arm, pulling him toward the back room where they slept. "Remember what I taught you?"
"The hiding game," Saguna nodded, fear making his voice small.
"Yes. Hide like I showed you. Don't come out, no matter what you hear." Sahara's voice was steady, though her fingers trembled against his skin. "Don't make a sound until I come for you."
From below came a sound like no animal Saguna had ever heard, a wet, sliding noise punctuated by clicks that reminded him of breaking ice. The house vibrated again as something began to climb the outer wall.
Sahara pushed him into their room and toward the storage chest at the foot of her bed. "In. Now."
"What about you?" Saguna asked, already climbing into the carved wooden box where they kept their winter blankets.
His sister didn't answer. Instead, she reached into her pocket and pulled out something Saguna had never seen before, a small carved stone disk with strange symbols etched into its surface. She pressed it into his palm, closing his fingers around it.
"Keep this with you. If—" She swallowed hard. "If I don't come back, find Professor Nyala at the Imperial Academy in Meridian City. Show her this. She'll understand."
"Sahara, you're scaring me," Saguna whispered, clutching the disk.
For a moment, his brave sister looked terrified too. Then her expression hardened into something else, a determination that made her look suddenly older than their parents.
"I've been training for this," she said, pressing a quick kiss to his forehead. "Now hide."
As Saguna curled into the chest, Sahara lowered the heavy wooden lid. Through the small gap she left for air, he watched as she moved to the center of the room and closed her eyes. Her lips moved in words he couldn't hear, her hands tracing shapes in the air before her.
Something impossible happened.
Fire blossomed between Sahara's palms, a perfect sphere of orange and gold flame that cast dancing shadows across the walls. His sister, who had always been fascinated by fire but was never allowed near the cooking hearth because of "accidents," now held living flame in her bare hands.
The scratching at the walls stopped abruptly.
Then every window in the house burst inward simultaneously, glass and wood exploding into deadly shrapnel. Sahara's flames expanded into a protective dome around her, incinerating the debris before it could reach her.
Through the gap in the chest, Saguna bit back a scream as he saw what crawled through the shattered windows.
They weren't human. They weren't animals. They moved like smoke given physical form, undulating, rippling shapes of darkness deeper than the stormy sky outside. Where features should have been, there were elongated limbs that stretched and contracted, torsos that twisted unnaturally, and worst of all, faces that seemed to be constantly forming and dissolving, never quite resolving into anything recognisable except for hollow pits where eyes should be.
"You can't have him," Sahara's voice rang out, stronger than Saguna had ever heard it. The fire around her blazed brighter. "I won't let you."
The shadow things hissed, it's like steam escaping a pressure valve. They circled Sahara warily, flowing across walls and ceiling rather than walking. Where they touched, frost formed instantly, spreading in crystalline patterns.
So warm... The voice wasn't spoken but felt, vibrating through Saguna's bones from inside the chest. Give us the warm one...
Sahara's hands moved in complex patterns, the fire following her gestures. Flaming projectiles shot from her palms, striking the nearest shadow creature. It shrieked—a sound that made Saguna's teeth ache—and recoiled, its form smoking where the fire had touched it.
"I said NO!" Sahara shouted, sending another burst of flame toward a second creature as it tried to circle behind her.
For a moment, it seemed his sister might win. The shadow things kept their distance, clearly afraid of her fire. Hope flared in Saguna's chest, even as fear kept him frozen in his hiding place.
Then the temperature plummeted.