Recovered from a half-burned vellum found in the archives beneath the old capital. No author claimed. No author survived.
I. The First Motion
Before there was kingdom or crown, there was movement.
Not sound. Not light. Not even breath.
Only motion — a tremor in the dark, like a thought trying to wake.
The old texts call it the Flow, though that is a poor name.
It was not river, nor tide, nor spirit. It was the pattern beneath all patterns.
A whisper in the silence before language. A rhythm that taught even gods how to move.
They say when the heavens first cracked open, the Flow did not rush forth — it folded.
It curved in on itself, like water learning to remember the shape of its vessel.
From this curve came Form.
From Form came Fire.
From Fire came Shadow.
And from Shadow came Man, born already reaching toward something he could not name.
Those who first glimpsed the Flow saw not a current, but a mirror —
showing them all they were, and all they would one day destroy.
II. The Four That Walked
There were four rivers then —
not of water, but of will.
They did not run beside one another, but through one another, endlessly entwined.
And when the world took shape, the rivers took bodies. They became houses.
The First was the Crimson, who burned to conquer.
The Second was the Iron, who built to control.
The Third was the Veiled, who watched and whispered.
The Fourth was the Silver, who sought to understand.
The world remembers them differently — in banners and bloodlines —
but every record begins with this: They were born together. They will die
III. The Pact of Rivers
When men first learned to name the Flow, they tried to own it.
The Drayvanes called it flame and forged it into steel.
The Caelthorns called it law and chained it to oaths.
The Lysanders called it wind and scattered it across the sky.
But the Seravains — they did not name it at all.
Instead, they listened.
For a hundred winters, they studied the whisper between waves,
the heartbeat beneath swordplay,
the silence between two breaths.
They found beauty not in the strike, but the stillness before it.
And so the Seraphic Flow was born —
an art of motion that forgot to end.
A sword dance that mirrored the rhythm of creation itself.
They became poets of the blade, their techniques named not for what they did,
but for what they remembered:
Lunar Veil — a strike that hides within its reflection.
Silent Current — movement that cannot be seen, only felt.
Celestial Descent — a blade that falls like starlight, impossible to follow.
Riven Tide — the cut that divides what cannot be parted.
Echo Reversal — the moment where motion and stillness become one.
Each motion was both prayer and question.
Each strike was a ripple across something greater.
IV. The Seravain Creed
Few remember the original words of their vow, carved deep beneath their keep.
Most recall only the fragment:
Where water meets fire, we stand.
Where silence falls, we listen still.
But scholars now agree: there was a third line — erased, not forgotten.
Traces of it remain, etched faintly beneath centuries of repair.
It is said to read:
Where the Flow stops, we remember.
Those four words — if true — would undo every creed written since.
For how can water stop, unless the world itself forgets to move?
V. Of the Silver Stream
House Seravain's keep was built on a river that runs both ways.
Some say it flows forward during the day, and backward at night.
Others claim it never moves at all — that the current seen on its surface
is only reflection, not reality.
The Seravains themselves refuse to answer.
They simply say: "The river moves as it remembers."
Those born of their line are said to dream of water —
not drowning, but drifting.
In their dreams, the river speaks, but not in words.
It shows them echoes: blades flashing under moonlight,
walls burning red, eyes like glass reflecting stars that do not exist.
Most awaken in silence.
Some awaken hearing it still.
VI. The Forgotten Fifth
It is written that the world was shaped by four currents.
But some scholars — the heretical ones, mostly buried without names — speak of a fifth.
A river unseen.
One that does not flow, but waits.
The others call it The Stillwater, or the Mirror Below.
It is neither birth nor death, but the pause between.
A current that holds what the others leave behind —
motion that forgot where to go, and memory that refused to fade.
They say when the four rivers met at the mouth of the world,
the fifth watched from below, silent.
And when their war ended, it did not fade — it recorded.
Every battle.
Every oath.
Every lie whispered in the name of peace.
The Stillwater remembers what even the Flow cannot bear.
VII. On Kings and Shadows
Eryndor was not always a kingdom.
It was first a basin carved by flood and flame.
When the waters receded, they left veins of silver in the stone —
and those who drank from it were said to dream of light that never rose.
The first crown was forged from that same metal.
It shimmered not gold, but pale — like a moon glimpsed beneath water.
Every king since has worn it.
Every king since has heard whispers when alone.
And every record agrees: the capital is built upon layered bones.
The Drayvanes claim they were beasts.
The Caelthorns claim they were traitors.
The Lysanders will not say.
But one record — unsigned, half-mad — claims they were rivers,
buried alive so their songs could never rise again.
VIII. The Whisper Beneath the Walls
At night, the lower drains of Eryndor sing.
Those who sleep near the moat say they can hear it —
a sound like a thousand voices speaking at once,
each syllable swallowed by the next.
It is not language.
It is motion remembering itself.
Old priests claim it's the Flow, turning in its sleep.
The Lysander oracles say it's the river trying to speak again.
The Seravains, however, forbid their knights from listening too long.
One knight — unnamed in their records — did.
He cut his ear from his head the next morning and left a note beside it.
"It was not the river that spoke," it said. "It was my reflection."
IX. The Prophecy of the Current Unbroken
The text of this section is almost illegible, but fragments survive:
When the still water moves again, the drowned will breathe.
When silence speaks, the Flow will shatter.
One born of silver and shadow shall stand where rivers meet.
He will not follow the Flow.
He will become its echo.
Scholars have long argued over its meaning.
Some claim it refers to the fall of House Seravain.
Others believe it describes a knight not yet born — or one who never died.
The most extreme say it is not prophecy at all, but memory —
a thing that has already happened, waiting to happen again.
X. Reflections
One marginal note, written in finer ink, seems to address the reader directly:
Do not mistake stillness for peace.
A river that seems calm is only remembering how to drown.
When the moon turns red and the capital sleeps, listen.
Beneath the stones, something moves.
XI. The Drowned Archive
At the bottom of the royal library there is a sealed door.
No key, no guard. Only water stains creeping from beneath.
The inscription above it reads, in half-erased High Tongue:
All memory flows downward.
It is said the Seravain ancestors built the door,
and that it was not meant to keep people out,
but to keep something in.
The Caelthorns believe it holds the remnants of old magic.
The Lysanders whisper it's a mirror too deep to see through.
The Drayvanes tried once to break it open.
They drowned before the lock gave way.
XIII. Epilogue — What the River Knows
Water has no loyalty.
It mirrors everything, forgives nothing.
It carries corpses and crowns the same way — softly, patiently, without judgment.
The Seravains built their art upon it, believing it gentle.
But they forgot the oldest truth of all currents:
The deeper the water, the darker the reflection.
Somewhere beneath the capital, something stirs.
It has been waiting for centuries.
It does not remember its name.
Only the rhythm of a blade through mist.
Only the sound of steel slicing through silence.
And when it wakes, the rivers will run backward once more.
Not to begin again — but to remember.