Year 8, Month 4
Riverwatch Teaching House
The room smelled of chalk dust, fresh reeds, and warm bodies.
Thirty-two children sat on low benches, legs swinging, eyes fixed on the clay tablet at the front.
The teacher was Elyse, now fifteen winters old, hair tied back with a strip of blue cloth, voice steady even when her hands still shook from nerves.
She had been chosen because she learned fastest.
Because she never forgot a sign.
Because when the other children stumbled over the new symbols, she could draw them clean in the dirt with a stick.
Today was different.
Today the lesson was not numbers or measures.
Today she held a fresh wax tablet and a bronze stylus.
"Today," she said, "we will write the name of the one who gave us this room."
A hush fell.
Even the youngest understood the weight.
Elyse pressed the stylus into the soft wax.
First line: a perfect circle, empty in the center.
Second line: two vertical strokes on either side, like pillars.
Third line: a horizontal bar across the middle, binding the circle.
The sign for the Faceless One.
Below it, she wrote the sounds she had been taught to match the Voice she had never heard.
V — A — L — D — R — I — A
She turned the tablet so every child could see.
"This is his name," she said.
"The one who saw hunger before we felt it.
The one who closed the gates so we would live.
The one who made us carry bricks so we would never again sleep under rain."
A boy in the back row, Torin from Copperrise, raised a dusty hand.
"Will he ever speak to us the way he speaks to Speaker Harlan?"
Elyse hesitated.
She had asked Harlan the same question a year ago.
Harlan had only shaken his head and said, "The Faceless One speaks when the world needs changing.
Until then, we are his voice."
She gave the children the same answer.
Silence.
Then a small girl in the front (Mira, seven winters exactly) stood up, walked to the tablet, and carefully copied the sign onto her own scrap of wax.
One by one, thirty-one more children did the same.
By the time the sun reached the western window, every child in Riverwatch could write the name Valdria.
By the end of the month, every child in every teaching house across the ten villages could do the same.
By the end of the year, the sign began to appear everywhere.
Carved above doorways.
Scratched into copper ingots.
Painted in ochre on granary walls.
Parents who had grumbled about closed borders and long hours found the circle-and-pillars scratched into their children's clay practice tablets and suddenly had no words.
High above, Hyun-woo watched the belief counter do something he had never seen before.
Belief Strength: 116 % → 124 % → 137 % → 149 % (overflow accelerating)
A new line appeared, glowing gold.
[Milestone Reached: First Generation Internalizes Divine Identity
Permanent Effect: +25 % learning speed (stacks with previous bonuses)
New Title Unlocked for Citizens: "Children of the Empty Circle"
Global announcement delayed by player request]
He had not requested delay.
The system had simply… decided.
Global voice chat caught fire anyway.
#008 (KaiserDrache):
"My scouts just saw a village where EVERY KID can write.
They're eight years old.
WHAT THE FUCK"
#004 (weeb):
"My literacy is 4 %.
His is heading for 40 %.
I'm actually crying."
#189 (island guy, voice hoarse):
"...one of my last believers taught himself the circle sign from a driftwood plank that washed ashore.
He carved it into his chest before he died.
Valdria… thank you."
Hyun-woo stared at the numbers.
Then he did something he had never done before.
He opened a private message to Player #189.
[Hold on.
Boats are coming.
Turn 4.]
He didn't know if the system would allow it.
It did.
Somewhere on a distant, storm-lashed island, a man with eleven believers left wept into the sand.
Back in Riverwatch, Elyse stood on the teaching-house steps at sunset.
Thirty-two children filed out, each pressing a small wax tablet into her hands as they passed.
Every tablet bore the same sign.
She looked up at the empty sky.
"I don't know if you can hear me," she whispered.
"But we are learning.
We are ready for whatever you say next."
High above, Hyun-woo felt something tighten in the place where a heart should have been.
Turn 3 was coming.
And for the first time, he was not the only one counting the days.