They called it a miracle. But to Sharath, it was just logistics, metal, and discipline.
On the plains east of Riverwood, where farmers once plowed wheat and horses drank from muddy streams, now rose chimneys—twenty-two iron smokestacks piercing the sky. Beneath them, the thunder of presses echoed day and night. Conveyor belts ferried ink-stained parchment. Laborers filed through enormous gates under a stone archway etched with a single name: Scriptoria Vale.
Here, the heart of the revolution beat.
Each week, over 300,000 pages left the complex. Not just news—textbooks, trade manifests, scientific digests, illustrated children's books, satirical comics mocking nobles and praising reformers. It was the birthplace of literacy as a common right, not a luxury of the elite.
And its effects rippled.
Farmers rewrote planting cycles after reading weather almanacs. Fishermen near the Azure Coast debated tax codes. In a village schoolhouse, a girl read a book about the stars and wept—not because it was sad, but because no one had ever told her that understanding the cosmos was not forbidden.
Within weeks, entire trade routes shifted toward Scriptoria. New roads. Faster carriages. Local dialects melted under the flood of a common printed language.
In a council meeting, a noble muttered bitterly, "This isn't just a factory. It's a cathedral of the new age."
Sharath didn't disagree.