Chapter 6: Sky Resonance
I never planned to be awake before sunrise.
But sleep had been evasive lately. Not because of noise or nightmares—just… unrest. That quiet kind of disquiet that stirs under your ribs and won't name itself.
My mind wouldn't settle. It looped like a broken compass, circling around the same thoughts—again and again. The strategy test. The look on the instructor's face. The murmurs in the hallway.
"He learns like he remembers…"
What did that even mean?
I hated how that line stuck. Like a seed caught between teeth. What did they see in me that I didn't?
What was I remembering?
I didn't realize I'd wandered until the lantern-lit corridors gave way to open night air and cracked stone. The old meditation courtyard. I hadn't been here in months.
It was hidden behind the South Wing archives—wedged between two collapsed pagodas and half-swallowed by vine roots. The kind of place that smelled like wet bark and forgotten incense. No students came here. Too many spiders. No wi-fi charms. Too little glamour for photo scrolls.
But it was quiet. The kind of quiet that lets your breath echo back to you.
Sometimes, I didn't want answers. I just wanted *space*—room to sit with the questions.
So I sat.
Beneath the old tamarind tree, its crooked limbs reaching out like the arms of someone half-awake, I folded my legs and shut my eyes.
And I breathed.
The way my mother taught me.
"Inhale like you're sipping the sky," she would say.
"Hold it. Let it speak. Then let it go."
She had a voice that made you believe the world still held secrets. Not in the loud, mystical sense—but in the quiet way rivers know their own path. Her mind was full of shapes and sounds I hadn't yet learned to translate.
She used to call it Rasa Langit—sky resonance.
Most people thought my mother was strange.
Too soft-spoken for palace debates. Too poetic for the academy. Too… drifting to be trusted with power.
I remember the way nobles would smile politely when she spoke, then glance sideways, dismissively, as soon as she walked away.
Maybe that's why she left court life without a sound. She never belonged to rooms with rules.
She belonged to spaces like this.
And maybe that's what people never understood about her—she didn't try to explain the world by force. She let it explain itself to her.
Me?
I used to think she was just odd.
Now, I'm not so sure.
Because lately, I've started to understand her words in ways I never could before. Like how silence isn't empty—it's *charged*. Like how breath isn't just a reflex—it's a doorway.
And how sometimes, what we call thinking… maybe it is really just remembering differently.
Maybe she wasn't strange.
Maybe she was just ahead.
And I'm only now starting to catch up.
---
I wasn't trying to summon anything.
Just… slow things down.
But something shifted.
One moment I was counting breaths.
The next—blue flames hovered over my palms.
Not hot. Not wild. Just… there. Flickering softly like the memory of something ancient. My heart should've panicked, but it didn't.
It felt right.
Like remembering a name you forgot you knew.
And then a voice cut through the silence:
"You're not supposed to be here."
I blinked. Looked up.
A man stood a few paces away, half-shadowed by a carved pillar. Tall. Formal. The kind of face that had memorized too many regulations. His robe carried the seal of the Imperial Pavilion. Discipline Division.
Great.
I stood up, slowly, brushing off my sleeves. The flames vanished the moment I shifted. Gone, like they were never there.
"Neither are you," I said, trying to keep my voice level.
He raised an eyebrow.
"Touché."
There was a pause. His gaze dropped to where the fire had been.
"Blue flame. No chant. No tool. No markings."
"How did you do that?"
"I didn't," I said honestly. "Not on purpose."
He stepped forward, eyes narrowed.
"Sky Resonance," he muttered.
That stopped me.
"What did you say?"
"Nothing," he said quickly. "Forget it."
"No. You said Sky Resonance."
His lips tightened. "It's a theory. Outdated. Forbidden, technically. You shouldn't know it."
"I don't."
"But your body does," he said. "That's the problem."
---
I sat back down. He didn't stop me.
Didn't even move, really—just stayed standing there, arms loose at his sides, like he was more used to listening to wind than people.
Maybe that's why I spoke.
"Can I ask you something?" I said, glancing up.
He didn't look down. "You just did."
I half-smiled. "Seriously."
He gave a slight nod. It felt like permission.
"If someone knows something they've never learned… is it still knowledge? Or is it memory?"
The question had been rattling in my chest for days. Since the test. Since the whispers. Since my own hands moved faster than my logic could keep up with.
He actually tilted his head—just a little. Not mocking. Just… present. Like he'd heard the question before in a hundred different ways.
"Depends on who you ask," he said slowly. "The northern scholars would call it ancestral imprinting—the way knowledge skips generations and waits in the blood. The eastern sects think it's soul-memory—fragments of past lives stored in the spirit's quiet places. And the Sundanese mystics…"
He paused.
And for some reason, the air felt a bit thinner when he did.
"Well," he said finally, "they'd say the sky remembers through us."
I didn't reply right away.
Because something in that last line didn't just make sense—it stirred. Like a door creaked open somewhere in the back of my chest.
The sky remembers through us.
It wasn't just an idea. It was familiar. Like I'd heard it before, only not in this language. Not in this lifetime, maybe.
Images came unbidden. My mother's voice. Candlelight flickering against the bamboo walls of my childhood room. The smell of clove and honeyed rice.
She used to say things like that.
"The sky doesn't forget, Tianhe. It just waits for us to listen again."
Not in a lesson. Not as a rule. Just as a bedtime murmur, like she was telling me a truth wrapped in lullaby.
And I had forgotten.
Until now.
I looked at the palace official again. I realized I didn't even know his name. But he stood there like he didn't need one—like whatever he was, it had more to do with presence than identity.
"You believe in that?" I asked.
He shrugged, slow and deliberate.
"I believe in questions that don't die easily."
Then he gave me one long look. Not judgmental. Just quiet, like he saw the storm behind my eyes and chose not to comment.
"But belief," he added, "isn't required. Attention is."
Then he turned and walked away, as though the conversation had been a falling leaf—noticed, appreciated, and then released.
And I sat there, watching the empty space where he'd been, with a strange feeling curling in my chest.
Not clarity.
Not confusion.
Something older.
Something that might've had wings once.
That last part sparked something deep.
---
When I was a kid, my mom used to tell stories right before I fell asleep.
Not fairy tales. Not the kind with talking rabbits or golden swords or heroes who won because the script said they had to.
No, hers were different.
They weren't soft or ornamental. They were heavy, slow-burning things—histories, she called them. Though I never found them in any books.
Stories of rivers that whispered prophecies if you listened long enough. Trees that could sing—not with words, but with resonance that made your chest vibrate like a second heartbeat. Mountains that guarded memories, not because they wanted to, but because no one else could.
And kings.
Always kings.
Not the ones who ruled by decree or bloodline. But the ones who ruled by listening. By feeling. By becoming so still, they could hear the rhythm of clouds. Kings who could speak with storms not to command them, but to understand them.
She always began the same way, voice soft like rice wind over water:
"Once, in Pajajaran, there were those who could feel what the sky felt.
They didn't predict. They resonated."
Back then, I thought she was being poetic. Dramatic, even.
I would roll over on my side, pulling my blanket to my chin, one eye peeking at the candlelight dancing along our clay walls.
"Resonated? What does that even mean?" I'd mumble, half-asleep.
She would smile—but never explain. Not directly. My mother never handed answers. She offered seeds.
"They didn't tell the future, Tianhe," she'd say. "They remembered the future."
That made even less sense.
But she didn't care whether it made sense.
"Memory isn't just in the past," she insisted one night, tucking the edge of my blanket. "Sometimes the future has already been felt. Like a song you've only heard once—but you know how it ends. Not because you guessed. Because something inside you already knows the melody."
She said things like that often.
At school, my classmates memorized policies and read imperial edicts. At home, I learned about sentient volcanoes and ancient oaths carved into sunlight.
To others, she was strange. Dreamy. Too untethered to be taken seriously. Even in the court, before she left it behind, they called her the Wind Widow. A woman with too many thoughts and not enough caution.
But to me?
To me, she was a sky in human form. Always listening. Always just a little too far above for anyone else to grasp.
And maybe that's why she disappeared from court life so easily.
Maybe the weight of things no one else believed became too much to carry while pretending to be normal.
She never told me why she left the palace. Or why she raised me on the outskirts of both worlds—half-royal, half-mystic, never quite belonging anywhere.
But now, sitting beneath a tamarind tree at a military academy that still didn't know what to make of me… her stories were starting to echo louder.
Especially that one phrase:
"They resonated."
Back then, it sounded like myth.
Now, after the flames in my hands this morning. After the silent dome and the test I didn't know I'd passed. After the instructor whispered, He learns like he remembers…
I was beginning to wonder:
Was my mother making up stories?
Or was she remembering them, too?
And if it is so, what were we remembering?
I closed my eyes again, letting the breeze move past my face. The air was cooler now. Thinner, the way it gets just before sunrise, when the night still clings to the edges of everything like it doesn't want to leave.
I remembered one particular night, clearer than the others.
I must've been seven. Or maybe six.
I had just come in crying. The other children had laughed at me again—called me names I didn't fully understand. Not for what I said. But for how I said it. The way I drifted off during group lessons. The way I asked why too much.
I sat on the woven mat near the window, arms wrapped around my knees.
And she knelt beside me.
"Did they mock your heart again?" she asked gently, brushing the hair from my face.
I nodded.
She didn't get angry. Didn't run to defend me.
She simply said, "Do you know why trees bend, Tianhe?"
I shook my head.
"Because wind asks them to."
That made me frown.
"That doesn't make sense."
"It does," she said softly, "when you stop expecting everything to be explained and start listening instead."
I remember staring at her then, confused and a little frustrated. I wanted comfort. She gave me riddles.
But now, I wonder if that was her comfort all along—planting the kind of thoughts that would only grow when I needed them most.
Because today, when my hands glowed blue and I felt something open inside me—like a memory that didn't belong to me—I didn't panic.
I didn't question it.
I just listened.
And the fire responded.
Maybe that's what resonance really is.
Not power. Not prophecy.
Just listening deeply enough to something beyond words.
A frequency beneath thought.
A memory older than personal memory.
The sky doesn't speak in language, my mother used to say. It speaks in feeling. In rhythm. In grief and joy and pressure systems too vast for any single mind.
"But we were born with antennae," she'd whisper, tracing the line from my temple to my chest. "We just forget how to tune them."
Maybe I was starting to remember.
And maybe that scared me more than I wanted to admit.
Because if this was real—if this was the beginning of something ancient stirring inside me—what did that make me?
A prodigy?
A fluke?
Or a vessel?
And did I want to be any of those things?
I exhaled slowly, just like she taught me. Inhale like you're sipping the sky. Hold it. Let it speak. Then let it go.
The wind rustled the tamarind branches above, shaking loose a few leaves that danced their way down to the courtyard stone.
I watched them fall, weightless and honest.
Maybe that's all I could be for now.
Not certain.
Just open.
---
The leaves hadn't yet touched the ground when I felt it.
A presence.
Not loud. Not threatening. But not a student.
Footsteps measured walk, deliberate sounding just faintly off the courtyard walls.
I didn't open my eyes at first. I thought maybe I was imagining it. Maybe the thoughts had pulled me too deep, and this was just another dream fragment stitched together by old stories and half-sleep.
But then the breeze shifted.
Someone stood behind me. Breathing.
Waiting.
I turned slowly, still seated beneath the tamarind tree. A silhouette stood at the edge of the courtyard path, tall, draped in muted royal blue with thin gold embroidery at the cuffs. Not a student robe. Not an instructor's uniform either.
His hair was tied back in the older style, looped and knotted like the officials from the inner court. His boots were quiet on the gravel. Too quiet. Someone trained not to be heard.
I stood up.
We stared at each other for a moment, unsure who should speak first.
He studied me with a kind of stillness that felt… practiced. Like he wasn't reading me, but the resonance of me, the air around me, the place I was seated, the dust patterns on the stone. Everything except my words.
Then he said:
"The flame in your hand… was not fire."
I blinked. "You saw that?"
He nodded once.
"Forgive the intrusion. I was dispatched to observe from the East Garden. Standard survey of energy distribution across the training wards. You lit up half the quadrant like a signal flare."
I looked down at my palms. Nothing there now. Just skin. Normal.
"You sure it wasn't just a light trick?"
He raised an eyebrow. "Do you know what resonance light is?"
I shook my head.
He took a step closer, folding his hands behind his back. There was something careful about his posture, like he was trying not to spook me, or maybe not to break something delicate in the air between us.
"When resonance occurs between soul, breath, and memory," he began, "a spark emerges. Not from effort. But from alignment. Most practitioners can't even fake it. And you..."
He paused, eyes narrowing slightly.
"You weren't trying."
I stayed quiet.
My mother had always warned me: when power shows up without permission, the world doesn't ask if you want it, it asks if you can survive what comes next.
"May I ask your name?" the man said finally.
I hesitated, just a second too long. Then answered, "Li Tianhe."
His eyes flickered.
Not in recognition of me, but of the name.
"Your mother," he said. "Was she Sundanese?"
"…Yes."
He didn't look surprised. Just… confirmed.
Then he turned, motioning me to follow. "Walk with me."
We walked along the outer garden path, past low stone lanterns and the edge of the koi pond no one maintained anymore.
"Do you know," he said slowly, "what the ancient Pajajaran mystics called that kind of flame?"
I looked at him sideways. "No."
"They called it *Langit Nadi*. Sky Pulse. But in Imperial records, the term was translated less poetically. They called it *Sky Resonance*."
That word again.
Resonance.
He continued. "It's rare. Mostly forgotten. Most who showed signs of it centuries ago either disappeared or were silenced. Not because they were dangerous. But because they couldn't be controlled."
I felt a chill, even though the wind had stilled.
He looked at me. "The fact that it emerged in a student, unsummoned, untrained is… significant."
I tried to sound steady. "What do you want from me?"
He stopped walking.
"I want nothing. Not yet. But others will."
He turned fully to face me, eyes sharp now.
"They'll want to test you. Use you. Classify you."
He stepped closer.
"Your advantage lies in the fact that they don't understand what this is. But you might know."
"Me?" I asked. "I don't understand anything."
He gave the smallest smile. "But you will. Because it's not something you learn. It's something you remember."
There it was again. That damn word.
Memory.
He reached into his sleeve and handed me something small—folded parchment, sealed in red wax. The symbol wasn't imperial. It was older. A circle with four open petals. I recognized it from one of my mother's old songbooks.
"What is this?"
"A name," he said. "And a place. When you're ready."
Then, as suddenly as he appeared, he bowed his head, just slightly, and walked away, boots silent as smoke.
---
I sat down again after he left, the parchment heavy in my hand.
Sky Pulse. Sky Resonance. Langit Nadi.
What was it that I was really remembering?
And how many others had remembered before me?
Because if this thing was real, if my mother's stories weren't just stories, then maybe I wasn't just someone who "learned strangely."
Maybe I was a key.
Or a warning.
Or both.
And in either case, I knew one thing for certain:
The academy would never look at me the same way again.
---
"What will happens now?" I asked.
The official looked conflicted. He probably had a scroll of protocols screaming at him to report me.
But he didn't.
"Nothing. For now," he said. "But if it happens again, don't hide it."
"Why?"
"Because if you're what I think you are…" He glanced back toward the central tower. "Then you're not just a student here."
"You're a key to something we lost."
And just like that, he turned and walked off.
---
The flames didn't return the next morning.
But a part of me stayed in that courtyard.
Wondering if maybe everything I thought I was learning… was actually something I was remembering.
And if so…
Who was I before I forgot?
---