According to ancient legends — now almost entirely lost, eroded by time and forgotten for centuries — there was once an age, in those unknowable epochs veiled by a mystical, impenetrable mist, black as pitch, when humankind lived well.
Well… What a beautiful, tender, simple word. How rarely we use it now when speaking of human life — though once it flickered so often in such contexts. I am not entirely sure I even know what it truly means.
They say that humankind could fly like birds; that it raised black towers, piercing the heavens and reaching toward the stars;. The earth was generous and obedient — cold and hunger did not torment mortals. Their cities dazzled with radiant brilliance, even in the depths of night.
And humankind grew proud. They sought to become equals of the gods — those very gods named in poems even more ancient. Thus the fiery spirits slipped from human control, shattered the cities of those unimaginable titans, and remade the world beyond recognition. These fires reshaped every climate and belt of the earth: they burned away glaciers and froze deserts; tectonic plates rode over one another, giving rise to astonishing landscapes scarcely fit for human life in the ages to come. Many were forced to abandon their homes and wander to lands wholly unfamiliar.
In truth, almost nothing of that era remains. Those who survived were condemned to roam these ruins, to seek shelter, and to strive to reclaim what they were no longer worthy of.
But at times, deep within the earth, diggers uncover the rusted bones of those ages — forgotten, shrouded in darkness. Objects that once held something akin to sorcery become the most coveted prize of the successful archaeologist. They drool over them with dirty, greedy hunger. Like a dog that has spotted a thick bone, still here and there smeared with remnants of flesh…
Perhaps I am not one of the great ones simply because I am not a dog.
I do not have a dog's lolling tongue, nor an eagerly wagging tail — I am unworthy, just as the ancients were. In a different way, perhaps, but still, I am simply unworthy. Maybe I lack the spark. I lack the same energy they possess, for they have passion. Where am I to seek it? Does it flee eternally, or does it merely hide at a distance, bury itself deep beneath the earth so that no one might ever find it — this passion?
Yes, I am always doing something, striving, moving forward, yet I wither within a foolish, paltry reality. No — this is not reality at all. I see my days as a book skimmed too quickly, read in a single careless moment; perhaps the ink of that book has bled and blurred. And I want none of it. I search for an escape, if such an escape even exists.
Such a successful archaeologist or archivist is always pursued by it — the curse of the Whisper of Shadows. The most ominous legends and tales are told of it: the Whisper of Shadows stalks all who dare to lay hands upon historical truth. All of them are destined for a sudden death; all are drawn into a vortex of fantastical events that inevitably lead to their demise. It seems that my own chain of such occurrences began on that very day…
But at first, that day was no different from the one before it — and how could it have been? A simple mirror of yesterday. Brushed by a light spring wind, I took a strange pleasure in gliding along this peculiar wheel of rebirths. It turned — this barely comprehensible mechanism — forcing me at times down into dark, somber depths, and then, in another instant, lifting me upward again to where the cypresses — dark green, almost black like the night itself — unfurled their mighty plumes, stretching toward the open sky.
And would you grow weary without my presence, my gentle, beloved sun, great luminary burning in soft blue? You labor endlessly and gaze upon me without cease, tenderly wrapping me in your warm rays, while I merely rest from labor, absorbing your generous excess, unwilling to think or to feel.
My tired gaze drifted inadvertently toward two sacks lying nearby, shrouded in sand and dust. The artifacts packed within them had long been forgotten by time; they bore little relation to anything truly useful or extraordinary. Yes, these objects were old and worthless: rusted daggers, dust-choked pipes, fragments of armor. The ground around me was scarred and partially excavated, descending at last into a gigantic pit — resembling a crater born of an asteroid's fall — set amid dense layers of dew-laden grass.
Yet this was no ordinary crater. It was my promising project, a dream conceived back in my university years, when I did not know that the path I had chosen would lead me straight here, to this very moment. I have never slept much, but now I am also tormented by merciless insomnia. I am utterly exhausted.
Tens of thousands of days ago, this land bore witness to a colossal battle, the traces of which — ancient scars — still echo within its depths. An army of men from the Far East advanced in an unending tide, driven by the desire to break through the defensive line of the warriors of New Milan… Yet the outcome was not as self-evident as it seemed.
The men of the East marched beneath the banner of Ishtra — the God of Wind, supreme in their faith, whose name they ceaselessly whispered in their prayers. Their shields and weapons were adorned with his symbols: twisting lines depicting the motion of the wind itself. They were countless; their numbers surpassed the defenders many times over. Their smiths had forged worthy arms and armor. Victory appeared inevitable.
And then, everything changed.
Why was the triumph of the Eastern army — propelled by the unstoppable Ishtrian cyclone — reduced to dust? I cannot answer that. The question torments me; I hunger for its answer. Was it the wrath of the true Gods, annihilating all in their path? Or the awakening of an ancient power of the land itself, long bound and at last unleashed, rejecting those whose roots were not its own?
Unlike you, I have my suspicions, for I have found what I was seeking.
I drew from the sack a weathered shard of a clay vessel, its surface webbed with cracks that testified to the artifact's many centuries of age.
This is something significant, something of truly historical magnitude. Here he is depicted… a man who came from the North. He came to these lands alone, to decide the outcome of a brutal slaughter.
Upon the shard was carved a man clad in dense musk-ox furs, finely etched into the surface. His face seemed swallowed by shadow, from which two cautious glimmers peered out, while his body itself appeared to glow. Upon his head rested tightly curled ram's horns.
This man is none other than Nord, the God-Emperor of the Saxons. He was not born into any exalted dynasty; he was merely a simple peasant. Yet there was something unmistakable about him — he was a man of indestructible will. Anyone who saw him even once believed him to be a god.
All exalted Nord. The North suddenly began erecting majestic temples of blue-veined, painted marble, ever rising skyward to glorify the God-Emperor's greatness. The musk ox became their sacred animal: its flesh was forbidden as food, and its hide and fur were barred from use for any purpose whatsoever. And I believe this was no coincidence. In this world — so often dismissed as dull and lifeless — there is still room for the supernatural, for beings such as Nord.
Yet all of this has reached us only through indirect and unreliable sources, and this artifact is but a drop in an infinite sea of contradictory evidence. Still, I am satisfied with my work, and I believe it is time to return to the city and present my modest findings to those few remaining colleagues — scholars of an age of ruin, stagnation, and decline — who are still capable of understanding me.
But on that day… something within me rose in rebellion, refused to release its grip on me, compelled me to continue — to dig the earth with greedy urgency in search of something decisive. Gritting my teeth, with my single remaining hand I seized the heavy shovel and began to drive it into the ground, wrenching free masses of damp soil and casting them aside.
The heat was oppressive, and the sun — that eye which gazes without envy even upon the greatest happiness — continued to scorch the land without mercy. Sweat ran down my brow, spilling into my eyes and blurring my sight. No — sight was no longer necessary. I had entered that river which ceaselessly pours down from the mountain, where the reckoning of time no longer matters and such a thing as fatigue does not exist. No — I myself had become that raging, furious, unstoppable river.
And as you have already guessed, I did indeed find what I was searching for.