The world, which only a moment ago was filled with the hissing and thundering of Rangda's bone blades and lethal speed, suddenly transformed into a stage of blinding light.
To the spectators in the stands, they saw only a miracle where the heavy clouds parted as if by divine intervention.
Meanwhile, Jaka, Danu, and Anindya stood frozen.
Their pale, sweat-soaked faces were instantly illuminated by the golden rays piercing through the gaps in the arena's roof.
Anindya was stunned, her lips trembling with tears still wet on her cheeks, yet a faint smile of relief began to emerge.
"The sky..." she whispered in disbelief.
"The sky... is opening itself up?"
However, in the midst of this mystical euphoria, Ranti moved differently.
She did not gaze at the light with awe.
Ranti did not believe in mere 'luck.' She knew this was no ordinary natural phenomenon.
In this world, every miracle always had a sender.
"Something is happening, but from where?" she muttered in her heart.
Her eyes were wild, moving with a sharp gaze, scouring every inch of the roaring spectator stands.
And there, in one of the highest corners of the arena, behind the shadows of a cracked stone pillar, she found it.
A figure stood there, wearing a white Srikandi mask.
The figure was calm, almost motionless amidst the panic of the other spectators.
One hand was stretched forward, fingers moving delicately, as if controlling invisible threads that guided the fall of the sunlight directly onto the monster.
Ranti smiled faintly.
It was a smile hard to interpret; a mixture of immense relief and deepening curiosity.
"So it's you..." she thought to herself.
Ranti then stood tall.
Her body leaned forward, gripping the wooden railing of the stands.
She knew this moment would not last long.
Miracles like this always demanded a price and had a time limit.
Her voice then erupted, thundering through the arena's roar, breaking everyone's trance.
"BANDUNG!!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING! FINISH IT NOW!!!"
The shout echoed, piercing directly into the heart of every spectator and, most importantly, into Bandung's nearly fading consciousness.
Suddenly, the roar of the crowd broke out again.
The voices of thousands united, becoming a wave of energy that seemed to physically push Bandung's broken body to rise once more.
The scream also jolted Bandung from the sensation of a "warm wash" enveloping his body.
He looked up, seeing Rangda, who usually appeared as an unbeatable nightmare, now whimpering and blistering under the sunlight.
The sunlight widened, every touch making Rangda shriek louder.
The dark purple aura being pumped into Rangda's heart from behind the arena's shadows now swirled wildly, trying to resist the brilliance, but the golden light was too strong.
It sliced, burned, and destroyed the dark magic, layer by layer.
Bandung pulled his small dagger from the ground, then gripped it tight once more.
His fighting spirit had returned.
His knees creaked as he forced his joints to stand upright.
Blood still seeped from his blistered thighs and shoulders, but his gaze was now as sharp as a garuda bird.
He no longer saw Rangda as a terrifying demon; he saw it as a dying prey.
Rangda realized the threat.
The creature roared, a scream filled with ancient terror and intimidation.
Its blistered eyes could no longer see clearly, causing the beast to swing both its bone blades blindly.
Every slash slammed into the stone floor, shattering it into sharp fragments, creating a rain of gravel around them.
Bandung began to charge.
He no longer dodged in the usual way.
He lunged forward, aided by a surge of adrenaline, straight into the storm of slashes.
SRAK!
The first bone blade flew past, slicing Bandung's cheek until blood splattered, but he did not blink.
The second blade struck his shoulder, hitting his shoulder blade until it made a loud CRACK sound, yet Bandung used the momentum of the blow to spin his body in the air.
He made no effort to back away.
Instead, Bandung slammed his wrist toward the base of Rangda's bone blade.
With a savage growl, he used his body weight to lock the monster's arm.
Bandung screamed as Rangda's razor-sharp claws pierced his left arm, tearing flesh down to the bone.
However, instead of letting go, Bandung gripped the arm even tighter.
With one brutal wrench that drained all the remaining strength in his waist, Bandung twisted Rangda's wrist.
KRAAAK!
The monster's bone joint shifted.
The bone blade that had been held so firmly, as if fused with its hand, finally cracked.
Bandung gave no pause; he slammed his knee toward Rangda's elbow, then forcefully ripped the staggering bone blade until it tore free from the monster's joint.
Rangda shrieked, a high-pitched sound that could tear the sky apart.
It tried to claw Bandung's face with its other hand.
Bandung raised the bone blade he had just seized to parry the attack.
CLANG!
The collision was so violent that the bone blade in Bandung's hand and the claws on Rangda's hand shattered together, breaking into thousands of sharp shards.
In the chaos of the flying bone fragments, Bandung saw one of Rangda's largest claws flying through the air.
He caught the claw with his blood-soaked right hand.
"AARRRGHHH!!!"
Bandung let out a scream of defiance against death, against the very end that had just greeted him a few minutes ago.
He lunged under Rangda's belly, stabbing his small dagger deep into the creature's solar plexus.
Rangda roared, clawing at Bandung's back, tearing his muscles until black and red blood mixed, hissing, burning, and evaporating.
The pain felt increasingly agonizing, trying to pull Bandung's consciousness into the darkness, but he refused to fall.
He gripped the wound in Rangda's belly with one hand, using the monster's body as a ladder.
He leapt, stepping onto Rangda's thigh which was slick with blood, then climbed onto the shoulders of the creature that was now emitting thick white smoke.
Rangda struggled violently, trying to hurl Bandung onto the stone floor, but Bandung's left hand, despite being severely injured, gripped the monster's black mane firmly.
The world seemed to move in slow motion.
The arena suddenly became as silent as a grave.
Thousands of eyes held their breath, fixed on the figure of the young man now perched atop the demon's shoulders.
In his right hand, Bandung gripped Rangda's large, sharp claw, which shimmered under the sunlight.
"DIE...!!!"
Bandung no longer used his dagger.
He drove it claw directly into the wounded gap in Rangda's forehead with every ounce of strength he had left.
The entire weight of his soul, all his fury, and every spark of his agony were poured into that single strike.
CRAAASSHHH!!!
The claw lunged forward, tearing through the blistered skin, piercing the forehead until it reached the skull and sank deep into Rangda's brain.
The monster's breath, a sound that once echoed with the growls of a thousand souls, stopped instantly.
It left behind a suffocating silence beneath the scorching sun that was no longer a friend to the darkness.
At that exact moment, the world seemed to stop.
Suddenly, Bandung's hearing went dead.
The cheers of thousands of spectators vanished.
The wind stopped blowing.
The sunlight froze in place.
There was no sound.
There was no movement.
Then, in a single blink, Bandung found himself no longer in the middle of the dusty, blood-soaked arena.
He was in a void of pitch-black emptiness.
There was no floor to stand on, no sky to shelter him.
There was only an endless darkness that felt cold, hollow, and lonely.
Bandung looked around, searching for a crack or a way out of this abyss.
His breath, which had been ragged just a moment ago, was now silent.
Panic and fear began to gnaw at his exhausted mind until he heard a very soft voice behind him.
"Thank you..."
Bandung turned quickly.
In the middle of the darkness, a few steps in front of him, sat a woman on her knees.
She wore a traditional wrapped cloth he had never seen before.
It was the attire of the common folk from a land far across the sea, the land of Bali.
Her long black hair flowed down, her face was beautiful and elegant, yet her eyes radiated a weariness she had held for centuries.
Bandung froze. "Who... who are you? Where is Rangda?"
The woman lifted her face.
She looked at Bandung with a faint smile while tears began to well up and fall down her pale cheeks.
"You do not need to know my name. Only know that I am someone from a land far away, a place that is not part of your soil."
Her voice trembled, carrying a vibration of sorrow deep enough to crush anyone's heart.
"I was brought here by force. I am part of a hunted people, the remnants of those who tried to flee from the accusations of the past. Thank you... thank you for freeing me from this evil seal."
Bandung stepped forward, his blood-stained hand reaching out but hesitating.
"A seal? So that monster..."
"I never wanted to hurt anyone," the woman interrupted softly.
Her voice was now broken by sobs.
"I only wanted to protect my family. I miss them... I miss them so much. But we were caught that night. I was forced to watch... I was forced to watch as my children were slaughtered one by one in front of me."
Bandung winced.
The pain in his shoulder was nothing compared to the agony radiating from the woman's story.
It was a pain she had to carry and endure alone for so long in this darkness.
"They kidnapped us," she continued with a cold tone full of vengeance and grief.
"Then one of their high-ranking officials came. He forced me, bewitching my soul until I no longer recognized myself. I became nothing but a vessel for a bloodlust that was not mine."
The woman began to fade.
Her body slowly turned into tiny specs of light that drifted like fireflies in the dark.
She cried, not because she feared death, but because of an overwhelming sense of relief.
After hundreds, perhaps thousands of full moons had passed, her burden was finally lifted.
"Be careful, Bandung Bondowoso," she whispered.
Her voice began to drift away, pulled by the cracking emptiness. "Be careful of... K..."
Shwooooooosh!
Bandung's consciousness was yanked back into reality.
BRAKK!WAAAAAAAAAA!
The roar of the arena slammed back into his ears.
Rangda, beneath his feet, was still twitching and trembling violently before its bone blade fell, clattering against the hot arena stones.
The creature's body began to disintegrate.
It did not rot, but crumbled into dust that was instantly blown away by the wind, vanishing into space as if returning to nothingness.
Rangda was gone.
Truly gone without leaving a trace, as if the creature were merely an illusion from a very, very long nightmare.
All the black clouds had vanished as well; the sky was blue and bright once more.
Bandung remained there, kneeling alone in the middle of the now-empty arena floor.
He stayed silent amidst the deafening thunder of the victory cheers.
The gray dust of Rangda's remains briefly clung to his fingers, feeling cold before finally disappearing with the breeze.
Bandung collapsed onto the floor.
His body was covered in burns and gashes.
His breath was heavy, sounding like metal grinding together.
He still gripped his dagger, staring at the spot where Rangda had stood just moments ago.
Who? K... who?
The name hung in his head, leaving a bitter taste more piercing than the wound on his shoulder.
This victory felt strange.
He had just freed someone from an endless nightmare, and he realized that Rangda was not the true enemy.
She was just another victim of a far darker system.
"But what? Who? Why would they go that far?"
The thoughts spun in circles, clashing with the pain that was now attacking him as his adrenaline and fighting spirit began to fade.
The crowd's roar exploded like a storm.
Thousands of people stood, chanting his name with pure adoration.
In the stands, Anindya cried while laughing, Danu shouted until his voice was gone, and Jaka covered his face, trying to regulate a breath tight with emotion.
Meanwhile, Ranti looked back at the corner of the pillar where the figure in the Srikandi mask had stood.
But the spot was empty, as if it had never been occupied in the first place.
There was only a gust of wind playing with the dust there.
Dara had vanished as silently as she had arrived, leaving Ranti with a million questions about a destiny that had just shifted course.
Bandung tried to move.
He thrust his dagger into the stone floor as a brace, trying to force his trembling legs to stand tall before the eyes of thousands.
He wanted to show them he was still standing.
He wanted to see his friends' faces and tell them everything was fine.
However, Bandung's vision blurred.
The warm gold of the sun turned into a blinding white, swallowing the entire arena.
The sound of the crowd's cheers drifted away, fading until only a long ringing remained in his ears.
His knees gave out.
Bandung's body slammed forward.
Just as his face nearly hit the floor, he caught a glimpse of three figures running frantically through the guard barricades.
Jaka, Anin, and Danu.
He could see the movement of Anin's lips screaming his name, Danu's face full of fear, and Jaka breathless as he struggled to reach him.
Bandung tried to manage a faint smile, but his consciousness pulled him away faster.
The sunlight slowly faded into absolute darkness.
He collapsed in the middle of the arena, which remained cheering even as they watched their hero fall.
He tumbled before thousands of eyes that celebrated the death of a victim whose story was never told or understood.