第 003 Episode| New Marks on the Slab

Kaiyuan Year 1010 · Jan 1 · 03:11 · Southernmost coastal cliff of the Badlands · Jiangbao Fortress

When Atherone lit the third lamp, the sea wind slammed against the stone wall again.

Jiangbao Fortress had been swaying for centuries. Not really swaying — when the sea wind drove the rock face down into the foundations, the whole structure took on that faint low-frequency tremor you half-suspected was a hallucination of your own. Live here long enough and you got used to it, used to it until you couldn't fall asleep without it.

He set the oil lamp at the edge of the stone table and pulled back the wool cloth draped over the main slab.

The slab was a long bar of black rock, taller than he was, wider than his outstretched arms. Its surface carried the chronicle of the war of the three peoples — humans, Orcs, elves — five hundred years of them slaughtering one another across the Frozen Reach. The latter part — why the three peoples finally crossed the sea and withdrew to their own continents, why they left the Frozen Reach to the ice, the name of that thing that made the dead stand back up out of the heaped corpses on the battlefield — all of it was there on the slab, but every generation of guardians obeyed the same rule: read it, and never speak it aloud. So when Atherone trained as a boy, his master told him that the names carved into the lower half of this slab were to be recognized with the eyes, and never spoken with the mouth.

This history could not be found in any library across all of Saint Dora, the Badlands, or the Dawn Continent. In every record still in existence, the war of the three peoples survived only as a handful of names dropped into fragments of old ballads, the years not even lining up.

Only this slab kept it whole.

---

He stripped the wool cloth all the way off, took up the damp rag, and prepared for the daily ritual of wiping it down.

Then he stopped.

At the lower right corner of the slab, there was something.

It wasn't dust. He'd been wiping dust for 32 years; he could tell it blind. It was a carving. Shallow, the edges sharp, as though something extremely fine had cut into the rock.

And it was new.

Atherone's left hand still hovered five centimeters from the slab. He held it at that distance for maybe eight seconds. Then he crouched, brought the oil lamp close, and lowered his face until it was less than a palm's width from the stone.

The carving was short. Just one string of symbols.

L.K.S._Core

---

Atherone knew every stroke of this string of symbols.

Not because he had seen it before — in these 32 years he had seen nothing called L.K.S._Core, and the journals left by all twelve preceding generations of guardians never mentioned it. He wasn't even sure what language it was. Most of what was happening in the world had nothing to do with him; he didn't even know the name of the current mayor of Saint Tranya, let alone that eight months ago someone in a lab called QuarktoLabs had fixed this string as a private signature.

He knew this string of symbols because there was a passage in the core prophecy of the Order of Light and Shadow, called the Mark of the Revelator.

"When the millennial bearing turns to its end, the mark of the Revelator shall surface from the cosmos.
The slab kept by the prophecy's guardian shall split open the mark of its own accord.
This is the proof of the Revelator's coming.
This is the beginning of the cataclysm of the end."

The prophecy never wrote what the mark looked like. The prophecy only said it would surface of its own accord.

For 32 years Atherone had wiped this slab every day, and every day as he wiped it he wondered: will it be today. Will it be today. His master had wondered it a whole lifetime, and his master's master before him, and so on back through all twelve generations. Twelve hundred years, thirteen generations of guardians, each taking turns to carve onto the slab the history they had seen with their own eyes, until the carving stopped at the twelfth generation. Atherone was the thirteenth. He had held the post 32 years, and in that time no new word had ever appeared on the slab.

Eventually he grew tired of wondering. He decided the prophecy was probably written for some generation among the five hundred yet to come, not for his. Later he stopped thinking even that. He just wiped.

---

He crouched there.

His right hand rested on his knee, his left still hovering five centimeters from the slab. The lamp flame jumped once at the breath he let out.

He found that his hand was shaking.

Not from cold. Jiangbao Fortress wasn't actually cold inside — a warm ocean current ran past these cliffs and held the annual mean temperature steady at 12 degrees. It was something else. Something that had appeared for the first time in this fifty-six-year-old left hand, a hand that had gripped a great many things.

"It's really come," he said softly.

His voice was so small the lamp flame didn't react.

"It's really come," he said again.

This time he heard himself.

---

Atherone stood. His knee gave a short crack. He walked to the other side of the stone table and drew from the bottom drawer a scroll sealed with wax, a red thread wound around its outside — that thread had been tied on by a guardian twelve generations back. He had read about the day it was tied, in the records of his master's master's master: "This scroll is to be opened only when the mark appears; until that moment, no one may look."

Every New Year's Eve, the twelve guardians before him had taken this scroll out for a single glance, confirmed the wax seal was intact, the red thread still there, and put it back. For 32 years Atherone had done the same thing 32 times.

Today he was going to open it.

He peeled off the wax seal and untied the red thread. The scroll sprang open on its own, before his hands could spread it.

Inside were only a few lines.

They had been inked by some still earlier generation of guardian; the color had faded to nearly grey-white, but the words were still clear:

On the night the mark surfaces, go to the third stone door in the lowest level of Jiangbao Fortress.
Take the mirror from the stone niche, and turn it northeast as the bearing carved on its back directs.
The far side is the Temple of Celebrían. The guardian "Rion" will surely come.
Beyond this, say nothing to anyone.

Atherone rolled the scroll back up. His hand was still shaking.

Outside, the sea wind slammed against the stone wall again. Jiangbao Fortress trembled faintly.

Celebrían.

He had never heard the name of this place. Not in these 32 years, and not in any of the records left by the twelve guardians before him. So the Order of Light and Shadow was more than just Jiangbao Fortress — for the first time, he knew it.

The name Rion, too. How the mirror was to be used, why northeast, why the third stone door, why someone he had never heard of would come from across an entire continent — the scroll didn't say. The scroll wrote only what to do, not why.

Atherone blew out the lamp and started down toward the lowest level of Jiangbao Fortress.

The mirror at the bottom — in these 32 years he had never seen anyone light it. He had been through every record left by the twelve guardians before him, and not one line said how this mirror was used, why it existed, why it had been set there. Tonight it would be used.

---

【Ch. 003 End · Jiangbao Fortress】