Of the Book of Time and Why the Circle Is Not Eternal
Before anyone learned to count days, before the word yesterday became a crutch for memory and tomorrow began to feed both fear and hope, there already existed something older than all names: succession. It was not yet a road nor a line; it was movement that needed no destination in order to endure. Only when life appeared as a witness did time become perceptible, for then it gained memory and weight. From that moment onward, it was no longer mere change—it became history.
People prefer to believe that time flows, because flow promises a goal: an outlet, an ending, rest, or reward. Yet the time that remembers the world is not a river. It is a circle. It returns, reflects upon itself, repeats in ever greater and ever finer rings, and each repetition carries the echo of the one before it. What seems a first step is often a return wearing a different face.
And precisely because time is a circle, it grants humanity its oldest comfort: if everything returns, then nothing is truly lost. If the circle closes, harm will be balanced, loss will cease to be loss, and death will become a gate rather than an abyss. Such was the promise—sweeter than truth—that sustained entire ages.
Yet the circle, though it may endure longer than the memory of nations, is not eternal by nature. It is eternal only so long as the world is able to sustain it—through rhythm, belief, gesture, habit. And habits, even the most ancient ones, bear a weakness within them: when they persist without questions, they begin to persist without understanding.
Of the Old Order, Which Loved Peace More Than Truth
In ancient tales it is said that the gods descended from on high. But the word descended is already a human consolation, as though all that matters must come from above and from afar. The truth is simpler and far less comforting: those later called gods distinguished themselves from the motion itself because they were the first to listen to its rhythm. Some heard harmony and declared it law; others heard opportunity and claimed power. And though they were born of the same silence, a difference arose then—quiet, yet impossible to erase.
The Old Order was not evil. That would be too simple. Evil is often only the name we give to fear that refuses to admit it trembles for itself. The Old Order was, above all, cautious. It knew that a world torn by conflicting desires could shatter—and once shattered, there would be nothing left to return to. So it chose peace. It chose endurance, even when the price of endurance was silence over questions that did not fit the ritual.
And when peace becomes the highest good, truth inevitably becomes an obstacle. For truth, when it is true, does not care whether it soothes anyone. It is not consolation. It is light cast upon things that would prefer to remain in shadow, so as not to awaken anyone. And this is why the Old Order loved peace more than truth: peace can be repeated, while truth sometimes reshapes the entire world.
Within that order, everything rested upon what returned. Ritual replaced understanding; sign replaced presence. The circle did not need to be comprehended—only fed, with words, gestures, observance. And because for many generations nothing openly contradicted this path, people came to believe it was no longer an agreement, but a law of nature.
Of the Forces of the World and the Price of Bonds
Not everything in the world is born of will. Many things are born of proportion. When succession assumed rhythm, Arta arose—not a god nor a judge, but a measure of events, the order of consequence, the manner in which something may endure. And where rhythm grew densest, Atar appeared—a fire that was not flame meant to burn, but a bridge between the unmanifest and what was beginning to take form.
Only afterward came names, oaths, and sides. Those who wished to guard proportion called themselves the Devas. Those who sought to bend it toward outcome took the name Daeva. This was not yet a division of good and evil. It was a division of intent: to endure or to direct. And when intent fractures, bonds fracture as well.
Bonds are the quietest force in the world. People believe strength lies in stone, in fire, in the sword, or in the spell. Yet strength lies in what binds: in memory passed from mouth to mouth, in trust that allows one to place a hand upon another's shoulder without fear, in law born from the dread of loss and from the desire that loss not return endlessly.
But every bond bears a price. The more tightly the world binds itself into unity, the more it fears rupture. The more a community trusts a single rhythm, the more it comes to hate any sound that does not fit the song. Thus what was meant to protect begins to suffocate. What was meant to unite begins to exclude. What was meant to grant meaning begins to demand obedience.
And when a whisper appears in the world suggesting that consequence may be delayed, the whisper does not arrive as a shout. It comes first as counsel, almost thoughtless: do it now, and the result will come later. From that moment on, the memory of the world begins to ripen in silence, and people call it fate—though it is nothing more than the continuity of consequence.
Of the Ages That Die in Silence
An age does not begin with a date. It begins with a condition of the world. When memory is fresh, the age is bright. When memory fades, the age darkens—not for lack of light, but for excess of forgetting. And there are times when ages do not end in fire or war, but in silence: in the small absence of an answer where an answer had always been.
The first fractures carry no drama. The heart longs for grand signs, so that it may recognize them easily and recount them even more easily. Yet when the world breaks, it breaks discreetly: a prayer hangs in the air without echo, a ritual yields no result, a return is delayed by a single day, then another—always just enough to be explained away as error in the rite or weakness of the people.
Priests call it a trial. Scholars call it a mistake. Guardians call it negligence. And as long as a culprit can be named, peace can be preserved. For peace, even when built upon error, is dearer to the Old Order than truth, which would require admitting that the law once believed to be stone is, in fact, only an agreement with the world.
Yet silence bears an edge of its own. When silence endures too long, it becomes presence. People look upon the same signs that were once certain and suddenly see that a sign is only a drawing—and a drawing holds no power if it is not filled with living memory. Thus ages die: not with a roar, but with the single realization that what should have been necessary now seems… unnecessary.
Of Why the Absence of Return Is a Sign, Not a Curse
It was then, in a time unmarked by distinction, that a man was born. There was no prophecy, no star pointing to his fate. He entered the world as thousands before him had, in a land far from great disputes and temples. He grew among people who believed in the cycle, though they remembered its beginning less and less. He learned labor, words, and silence. And nothing in him suggested that his existence was bound to the fate of the world.
He was not a chosen one. Nor was he a rebel seeking war with gods. He was ordinary—to the point where ordinariness becomes dangerous to any system. For he could not consent to falsehood, even when it was convenient. When something failed, he did not immediately seek guilt or divine anger. He asked: why was it once different? When told this is how it must be, he searched for memory that contradicted it. He did not desire change. He desired logic. He desired a thing to be true, even if truth were to steal peace.
And here lies the turn that no trumpet announces. The world does not fracture when someone shouts. The world fractures when someone stops repeating. A new motion is born not of power nor of spell, but of silence—in which one person refuses to complete a lie. He does not say it must be a punishment, nor it is our fault, nor this is how it has always been. He leaves a gap. And gaps, once they appear in law, begin to work like a fissure in ice: thin and almost invisible at first, yet in time admitting the entire current.
The absence of return—that one certainty upon which everything rested—was declared a curse. So spoke those who feared most. A curse is a convenient word, for it removes responsibility: if it is a curse, it need not be understood—only countered. Yet the absence of return was a sign. And a sign does not always threaten. Sometimes it merely means that the circle is no longer closed, and that the world, which once breathed through habit, must now learn to breathe consciously.
The Guardians of the Old Order lifted their heads. They proclaimed that the world had strayed from its path, that freedom without boundaries was a threat, that what was known and certain must be restored. And some truth lay with them, for chaos is not the mother of maturity—it is only the dust of collapse. Yet one among them understood more than the rest: he saw that the cycle had not been destroyed. It had been opened. And he knew that if people learned to live with uncertainty, order would never again close upon itself as before. So he resolved to fight not with the sword, but with belief and memory.
And the man from whom it all began still did not understand that he had begun anything at all. He saw only that the world was growing less faithful to the promises it had been given. He thought himself failing. He did not know that it was precisely his stubborn, quiet honesty—unadorned by great words—that had made change possible.
For this tale does not begin with miracles. It begins with small inconsistencies: with silence at a roadside shrine, with an echo that does not return, with a sign that suddenly looks like nothing more than a drawing. It begins with an age dying without fanfare, and with something being born in its place that offers no comfort. It offers responsibility without cosmic guarantee.
And thus this story begins—not with the salvation of the world, but with its maturation. Not with a chosen one, but with a time in which even the gods were no longer certain that everything must return to where it once belonged.