Chapter 9 : Surrender
1372 Words
“Final sacrifice? What do you mean, De’ Alya? If you’re the last one, then that means someone else must have been sacrificed before you?” Pak Dirga asked.
Alya’s body trembled as she spoke to the only two people she trusted in that moment. She was the youngest of six siblings from the Harsawi Manjay lineage. She had three older brothers and two older sisters, and all of them were already dead.
“Deceased…” she whispered. “You mean… all my siblings were sacrifices?” Aditia asked carefully.
“Yes…” Alya’s voice cracked. “They became offerings to the same entity you drove away last night. We were the exchange… for the wealth my father possessed.”
Her tears finally broke free, falling without restraint.
Silence lingered like something heavy in the air.
Pak Dirga’s expression darkened. “I don’t understand this, De’ Alya. Rich people usually accumulate wealth for their descendants… but why is this family sacrificing their descendants for wealth? Tell me everything from the beginning.”
Alya inhaled shakily before continuing.
When she was five years old, she was taken by that entity for the first time. But her mother intervened—chasing it, confronting it, even challenging it directly. Her mother also practiced dark knowledge, just like her father. In the end, she managed to strike a deal, replacing Alya with herself.
Before she was taken, her mother whispered something to her. Something Alya only fully understood when she turned seventeen.
A long, cold silence followed.
It felt like the past itself was breathing in the room.
“What did your mother say?” Aditia asked.
Alya lowered her gaze. “She only said two words… ‘Papa’s cabinet.’ That’s all.”
After that, she was hidden away by her grandmother deep on a remote island. They lived alone. Her grandmother—also a practitioner of dark arts from her mother’s side—shielded her from the entity’s pursuit.
Until the grandmother died a tragic death when Alya was seventeen.
Alya always believed her father had found them… and killed her grandmother.
After that, she was brought back to Jakarta.
Her father acted as if nothing had ever happened. He even told her to continue her studies, behaving like a normal family existed between them. Alya was terrified, but she had no one else to turn to. So she obeyed.
But her grandmother had left her two things: a ring and a piece of brass metal. That was why her arrows were tipped with brass instead of steel or copper.
“That ring… it was first given to you on a necklace, right?” Aditia asked.
Alya looked up in shock. “Yes… how do you know that?”
A faint unease passed through the room.
“I saw you in a dream,” Aditia said quietly. “Before I rushed to the prison cell that night. That’s where I first saw an image of Begu Ganjang.”
“DON’T SAY THAT NAME!” Alya trembled instantly, her fear resurfacing like a wound reopening.
The room felt colder.
“Sorry,” Aditia said quickly, holding her hand gently.
Then he added, “Now I understand why your arrows are different. I thought it was just your athletic style.”
Alya shook her head. “No. I trained in archery because it’s the only weapon that can reach it. That thing is too tall… too far from human reach. My arrows were the only things that could injure it.”
She paused.
“I even hit its head before… and that’s when it retreated.”
“You’re incredible,” Pak Dirga said sincerely.
A quiet pride flickered in Aditia’s eyes. Not loud. Just steady.
Since childhood, Alya had observed everything after returning to her father’s house. She started connecting the pieces—the deaths of her siblings, her hidden existence, the secrets behind it all.
And then she found it.
A cabinet in her father’s room.
The same cabinet her mother once told her about when she was five.
Inside it, everything was revealed.
Documents. Records. Truths that should never have been read.
Her father was not fifty years old.
He was 105 years old.
And he still looked young.
A silence like disbelief settled in the room.
From those documents, Alya discovered her father’s entire history—his previous marriages, his children before her siblings, all of them dead under mysterious circumstances. No autopsies were ever conducted. Everything was erased too cleanly.
“He knew…” Alya whispered. “He knew who was killing them.”
A heavy anger rose in the room.
“Disgusting…” Pak Dirga clenched his fists.
Alya continued.
Her father was born in 1914. In 2019, he was 105 years old. Her mother was his third wife, and she was his fifteenth child from a different mother line. Fourteen of her siblings had died.
Some from suffocation.
Some labeled as suicide.
Some drowned.
Some disappeared.
Some sudden heart attacks.
All of them were written off as natural deaths.
But none of it was natural.
Her father wasn’t protecting her.
He was harvesting his own bloodline.
Silence returned again, deeper this time.
“Why didn’t you ever tell anyone?” Aditia asked softly.
Alya gave a bitter smile. “Who would believe me? They’d just think I’m a rich girl who lost her mind. And you—did you tell anyone you can fight those things with just a small keris?”
A faint tension passed between them.
“I didn’t tell anyone either,” Aditia replied. “Except Pak Dirga. Even my mother and Dita don’t know.”
Alya looked at him quietly, as if weighing his truth.
They moved forward.
Carefully.
Like walking through something fragile.
“I have no plan,” Alya finally said. “I just want to survive until the limit my grandmother mentioned.”
“Limit?” Aditia repeated.
“If I survive until I’m forty,” she said slowly, “it will stop chasing me. My grandmother said that at forty, a human is like being reborn again. That’s when life reaches its peak.”
A pause.
“So I will endure until then. I believe I will make it. I want to be the last sacrifice in my family.”
“Meaning if it fails to take you by forty… the deal ends?” Pak Dirga asked.
“I don’t know,” Alya admitted. “I only know it will stop hunting me.”
A heavy breath escaped the room.
“According to my father’s journal,” Aditia said quietly, “if a demon fails to collect its sacrifice, the pact-maker becomes the next target.”
A silence followed.
“Then… my father will be next?” Alya asked.
“Most likely.”
Alya lowered her head.
Strangely… she still thought about her father’s survival.
Even after everything.
Aditia clenched his jaw.
“Those who worship demons can extend their lifespan,” Pak Dirga said slowly. “Not immortal… but unnaturally prolonged.”
A bitter laugh escaped Aditia. “He’s basically living off his own children’s deaths.”
The air grew heavier.
Then came the accident.
Alya explained everything.
That night. The chase. The invisible force on her neck. The loss of control. The moment the car moved on its own. The crash. The truth that she never intended to kill anyone.
“I never meant it,” she whispered. “But I was there… so I deserved to be held responsible.”
A long silence followed.
“It wasn’t you,” Pak Dirga finally said. “There’s no proof.”
Alya smiled weakly through tears.
“I just wanted to disappear for a while,” she admitted. “Because if it fails to take me… my father will come after me again.”
The room grew still.
Warm. Fragile.
Almost human again.
“You’re not alone now,” Aditia said, holding her hand tighter.
Alya’s expression softened slightly.
Just a little.
Like dawn trying to enter a storm.
And then—
The door opened.
A man stood there.
Her father.
The devil worshipper.
“Are you awake now, my daughter? I will take you home.”
“Papa!!!” Alya screamed.
- Writer
