Chapter 2: The River and the Pendant
They say the river sings, if you listen closely enough. Not with words—but with memories.
And for Li Tianhe, the river was the first voice he ever remembered.
He was a small boy in a small village near Jiangnan, nestled at the edge of the southern waters. No golden palaces. No marble halls. Just the scent of earth after rain, the rustling of bamboo leaves in the wind, and the river—always the river.
The villagers said the day he was born, the sky didn't thunder. It didn't rain. It simply... paused.
The clouds held their breath. The wind stopped. And the animals—birds, dogs, even the restless river frogs—all went quiet, as if something ancient had awakened.
Some called it an omen.
Others whispered that the boy was marked by heaven—or cursed by something deeper.
But Nyi Raraswati didn't care what they said.
She held her newborn son close, wrapped him in sun-dried cotton, and pressed her lips to his forehead.
"Tianhe," she whispered. "Heavenly River. May you always flow forward."
Tianhe didn't remember that day, of course. But the stories, retold a hundred times over cups of herbal tea and late-night fires, wrapped around him like a second skin.
"Did the birds really stop singing, Ma?" he would ask.
Raraswati would smile, eyes glinting like moonlight on still water.
"Even the earth listened, my son. Even the sky listened."
Nyi Raraswati was unlike any other woman in the village.
She wasn't from Jiangnan—or anywhere nearby. Her accent was soft but strange, like leaves brushing stone. She wore robes with patterns no one had seen before—golden threads woven into symbols that shimmered when the sun touched them.
Most mysterious of all was the wooden pendant she always wore, shaped like a rounded leaf and carved with ancient symbols:
ᮕᮛᮠᮡᮀ
Parahyang.
No one knew what it meant. Not the old monks at the village shrine, not the wandering scholars who sometimes passed through.
But Tianhe did.
Because one night, when the stars hung low and bright, and the frogs chirped as if telling secrets, she told him.
"Parahyang is my home," she said, sitting cross-legged by the fire, her face glowing in the amber light. "A place where the balance of all things is guarded. A kingdom hidden from maps, older than empires, where heaven and earth still speak."
Tianhe, barely seven, blinked. "But where is it, Ma?"
Raraswati only touched the pendant and said, "Closer than you think."
He didn't understand then.
But he remembered.
Tianhe's childhood was quiet—though never boring.
While the other boys fished or ran wild in the fields, he spent hours watching the river's flow. He'd drop leaves into the current and whisper to them, pretending they were tiny boats on great missions.
He talked to frogs. Asked the sky questions. Once, he even tried to ride a buffalo, which ended exactly how you'd expect: face-first in the mud.
But mostly, he listened.
To the river. To his mother's stories. And to something deeper he couldn't name.
Raraswati taught him many things.
How to boil herbs when he felt cold in his bones. How to trace patterns in the sand that looked like writing but weren't. How to breathe with his belly and make his pulse slow down.
She never raised her voice. But when she looked at him with those faraway eyes, Tianhe always knew—something more lay beneath her silence.
"What are these words, Ma?" he asked once, pointing to the carvings on the pendant.
"They are Sundanese," she replied softly. "The old script from my people. From Pajajaran."
"Like the stories?"
"Yes. The stories are real, Tianhe. Just hidden."
He wanted to believe her.
So he did.
He believed in kingdoms hidden in clouds, in rivers that remembered names, and in mothers who carried whole histories in their eyes.
It wasn't until years later that Tianhe realized how different his life had been.
Not worse. Not better. Just... different.
Other boys had fathers who came home drunk, or who taught them how to throw spears. Tianhe had a father-shaped silence. Just a name in the air: Li Cheng. A soldier. A general. A man who stood against greed and died for it.
No grave. No last words. Just stories passed from neighbor to neighbor, until they reached Tianhe like drifting petals.
"He was brave," Raraswati would say, folding laundry. "And kind. He believed in protecting those without power."
"Why did he die, Ma?"
She never answered that part.
Only once, she said, "Because this world fears those who speak truth with a sword."
The pendant never left her neck.
And Tianhe was never allowed to touch it. Not until one day, when he was ten.
Raraswati had fallen ill. Fever burned her skin, and her breathing was shallow. The village healer came, tried old tricks, whispered prayers. Nothing worked.
That night, as rain poured outside and thunder rolled like drums of war, Tianhe sat beside her.
"Ma, don't go. Please don't go."
She opened her eyes.
Weak. But clear.
With trembling fingers, she lifted the pendant from her neck and placed it in his palm.
"This... is your key. To everything. To who you are."
Tianhe stared at the wood, warm despite the cold room.
"Protect it," she whispered.
Then she closed her eyes and slept for three days.
When she woke, the fever was gone.
But Tianhe had changed.
He began to dream of places he had never seen—forests where the trees whispered his name, temples built on clouds, and rivers that shimmered with light.
He would wake up at dawn with his hands glowing faint blue, like moonlight on water.
"Am I cursed, Ma?" he asked once.
She only smiled. "No. You're awakening."
So he trained.
Not like the others. Not with swords or spears.
He trained in silence, in breath, in memory.
He read every scroll he could find. Studied the stars. Meditated beneath the old banyan tree where his father had once prayed before battle.
And slowly, Tianhe felt something grow inside him.
A river.
Deep, patient, and powerful.
Waiting.
That was before the summons came.
Before the academy.
Before the palace.
Before betrayal.
But Tianhe still remembered that river.
And the pendant.
Because no matter what would come, no matter how far he ran, how many names he lost or enemies he gained...
But Li Tianhe would never forget where he began.
And a mother who believed him.
That river still flowed.
And it still sang.
If you listened close enough.