The Order of Light and Shadow

The Order of Light and Shadow is an ancient guardian organisation, keeping watch over certain records and seals that are not to be disturbed lightly. Its branches are scattered across the world, independent of one another and unaware of one another—a guardian at one branch may go an entire lifetime without learning that other branches exist.

Its members are ordinary people, hereditary, with no extended lifespan. Generation hands to generation the historical record on the slab and the knowledge of the prophecy; when they speak of "waiting a thousand years," they mean the waiting accumulated in relay across more than ten generations.

Jiangbao Fortress, on the coastal cliffs at the far south of the Badlands, is one of these posts. The sea wind slams into the rock face year after year, and where it reaches the foundations it sends up a low-frequency vibration; live there long enough and you need that vibration to fall asleep. Inside the fortress it is not cold, a warm ocean current passes the cliff, and the annual mean holds steady at 12 degrees. The most important thing in the fortress is that main stone slab: a long black rock, taller than a man, wider than a man's outstretched arms, its face carved with the chronicle of the War of the Three Races, and the rule for those few names on its lower half is to recognise them with the eyes and never say them with the mouth.

Locked beside the slab is a wax-sealed scroll with a red thread wound round it, tied there by a guardian twelve generations back. Each generation of guardians takes it out once a year on the last night of the year, confirms the wax seal is intact and the red thread is intact, then puts it back in the drawer.

One passage in the prophecy reads:

When the thousand-year bearing turns to its end, the Mark of the Revelator shall surface from within the firmament. The slab kept by the guardians of prophecy shall split open that mark of its own accord. This is the proof of the Revelator's descent. This is the beginning of the final calamity.

Before dawn on 1 January, Kaiyuan Year 1010, Atherone, thirteenth-generation guardian, lifted the wool cloth for his daily routine wipe-down and found a new string of carving in the lower right corner of the slab, its edges sharp, as though cut into the rock with an extremely fine tool. What it read was L.K.S._Core. He brought the oil lamp closer and watched his own fifty-six-year-old left hand shake.