Adam and Ernand left the merchant's camp before dawn. They walked the trade road, following a path the merchant had pointed out. The trees thinned as they climbed. The air felt cleaner. The constant hum Adam had noticed near towns and ruins softened. He welcomed the quiet.
After several hours of walk, they take a rest. Ernand take out some food he has from bag and share it to Adam. After eat the food Adam took out his journal. He kept his journal in his lap and tried to sort the last days in order. The temple voice. The pulse that had followed him. The sense that something watched from the dark. Questions multiplied. He had one clear need: find someone who lived outside the official stories. Someone who saw the edges of the world. The merchant had mentioned a hermit who fit that description. He had called the man strange, blunt, and honest.
Adam did not expect compassion. He expected answers. So, he wants to come to hermit's place.
He tries to explain to Ernand about this slowly. Ernand understand and said to Adam that he can't accompany him but the hermit's place not too far from Angkara Village. Adam and Ernand continue to walk until cross path near Angkara.
Ernand said to Adam that he needs to follow those cross path until he sees hut between two boulders. They separate ways, but before then, Ernand give Adam direction how to go back to Angkara Village and also ask Adam to use gesture to help communicate.
After half an hour walked, the hut appeared between two boulders on a low ridge. Smoke rose from a small chimney. A thin path of footprints led to the door. Adam hesitated only a moment, then knocked.
The door opened before he could call. An old man stood there. He had long gray hair and a face carved by wind. He did not look surprised. He wore patched cloth and a narrow leather strap across his chest. He measured Adam with steady eyes and then motioned inside.
"You walk far," the man said in a voice clipped and careful. His words were slower than the villager's. Adam understood more of them than before. The resonance after his prayers had sharpened a few edges of the language. He still missed grammar and idiom. He still relied on context. But Ramon's words landed.
Adam bowed his head once. "Thank you. I— I heard you know about people who come from elsewhere." He said it slowly with some gestures.
Ramon cocked his head. "Many who ask come in search of hope. Many come in search of proof. You do not look like a hopeful man." Surprisingly Ramon understood what Adam meant without any problem.
The hermit's small laugh was not unkind. He gestured for Adam to sit on a low bench beside the hearth. He stirred a pot and handed Adam a small cup of thick, bitter tea.
"Drink," Ramon said.
Adam sipped. The bitterness cleared his head.
"Name?" Ramon asked.
"Adam," he answered.
Ramon repeated it slowly, as if tasting the syllables. "Adam. You are not the first."
Adam's heart tightened. He had already found hints in the scholar records. He had heard the ruin call his name. A hermit who said it plainly felt like confirmation and a knife at once.
"You remember other things?" Ramon asked.
Adam swallowed. He thought of Jakarta, the truck, the prayer on his lips as heat swallowed sound. He kept the images intact. He did not yet believe in any explanation beyond what he had experienced.
"Yes," he said. "I remember home. My prayers. My life. I remember the accident."
Ramon nodded. He did not look surprised. "So, you know the shape of a life outside this place. That makes you dangerous to some, interesting to others."
Adam let the sentence sink in. "Dangerous?"
Ramon's eyes held his. "When a world receives what it did not grow, it asks a question. Two things follow: curiosity and fear. Both can make people cruel."
Adam closed his hand around the cup. "Why me? Why us?"
Ramon's face folded into a map of old decisions. "Because something pulls them. Not always the same reason. Not always the same force. I was taken years before you. I remember a different sky. I remember a body in a place that no longer cares for me. When I woke here, my thoughts were intact. That should have been impossible. I spent decades trying to name that impossibility."
Adam swallowed. "What did you find?"
The hermit leaned closer. He spoke slowly and chose words that matched Adam's growing comprehension. "Not rebirth. Not reincarnation. We are not made new. We are not looped souls. We are borrowed."
The word landed plain and sharp. Borrowed.
Adam felt the air shift. The concept had no softness. It implied temporariness. It implied use.
"Borrowed from where?" Adam asked.
Ramon shrugged. "From somewhere else. From a life that continued without this piece. From a world that lost a presence. From whatever force moves across the seam between places."
Adam forced himself to press on. "Who borrows? Who takes?"
Ramon's mouth tightened. "I do not know. I never found a name to fit it. The only thing I found was pattern. Arrivals often follow moments where life almost ends — a crash, a fire, a flood. People who stand on the edge. The seam opens. Some step through. Some are taken."
Adam remembered the truck, the heat, the prayer. He had felt edges there, a white brightness, then silence. He could not say whether he stepped or was taken.
Ramon tapped the table with a callused finger. "Listen to me carefully. Being borrowed does not mean you have no account with God. Your soul does not vanish. Whatever physics move between worlds, they do not erase worship, conscience, or prayer. You remain accountable. You remain you."
Adam's throat burned. He thought of his parents, of his house in Jakarta, of the words he had always said. "So, my faith… it still matters?"
Ramon's eyes did not waver. "It matters more than before. When your foundation is pulled from under you, you must have something that holds. Faith holds. Prayer keeps the line clean. You must never regard this place as proof that what you believed was false."
Adam felt relief and new weight at once.
He asked the question that had been pressing since the ruin called his name. "The voice in the temple—was it trying to call me back? Was it the one who borrowed us?"
Ramon paused. He looked away. "Sometimes voices echo in ruins because mana keeps memory. Sometimes a place records sound. Sometimes a thing with will reaches out. I cannot say which it was for you. But I know this: the voice recognized you. That recognition shows connection. Whatever called you knows you are not native to this land."
Adam tried to absorb the calm in Ramon's certainty. It steadied him.
"Can we go back?" he asked finally. "Can I return?"
Ramon's face became weathered and plain. "Possible. Not easy. Not certain. If the seam that took you opened one way, it might open back. But I have not seen a return that was simple. People find ways to stand in both places and tire. Others disappear entirely."
The hermit stood and walked to the small window. He pointed to the north. "There is a rift. A place where the sky thinned. I went once. I heard a voice. I felt a pull. It will not be your only choice. But it is a place where answers hide."
Adam looked at him. "And the word you used—borrowed. Is that your meaning or a belief?"
Ramon smiled without humor. "Both. It is a word for a fact. It is also a call to act. If you are borrowed, then this life is not yours to waste. You must decide whether to live it honestly or to wait for the one who sent you."
Apparently, Ramon can speak language that familiar with what Adam knows. It's not Bahasa Indonesia, yet Adam can fully understand what Ramon explains. So it shed some light for Adam. He felt somehow relieve but eager to find more answer.
Adam closed his eyes and prayed softly. He did not need to choose now. He only needed to keep the truth of his prayer. The voice in the ruins still stirred in the back of his mind, but Ramon's words gave him a framework.
When he left the hermit's hut the sky had turned a hard blue. He walked back to the road with a new line in his journal.
We are not reincarnated. We are borrowed. Keep faith. Find answers. Be wise.
He did not know where that wisdom would lead. He only knew the direction he must take next.