The roar of internal combustion engines shattered the ancient, sacred silence of the ulin forest. It was a violent, mechanical sound that belonged to a different world, a jarring intrusion into a canopy that usually only echoed with the rustle of leaves and the territorial cries of the wild. From the deep shadows of a second-story window at Manor van der Pijl, Nala stood motionless. His eyes, cold and amber like age-old resin, tracked the convoy of three black sedans as they crawled like beetles along the unpaved access road.
Thick, suffocating plumes of dust billowed behind them, hanging in the humid air and tainting the pristine morning. It was a symbolic sight; it felt as if Western civilization was attempting to scatter its filth over the soil of Kalimantan once again, trying to re-es
