Land of Dawn

## Summary

The trio in the sculpture had covered themselves in protective robes, faces covered by masks with only a little skin under the nose being exposed. This was familiar attire— it was said that the first people that had fallen into the Darkness, the initial Chosen of the Eternal Dragon, had walked across the endless wastelands until they found a suitable place to light the flames of time. They then established order in the area, dissipating the distortion in the laws so they could build a city. This city was the final refuge for those souls that had fallen to the Darkness; anyone who couldn’t find it in time would waste away and die.

Lady Daybreak and her heavenly guardians had found the Darkness a region of chaos, a sector of sparse light that would kill anyone that fell within. They had walked for years to find the origin of the distortion, fighting endless battles against the creatures of this plane and conquering the elements. Flowsand strived on until order and light were returned to this earth, giving independence to the City of Dawn.

However, their work wasn’t done so easily. The Land of Dawn had been in a much worse state than the current Land of Dusk, so Flowsand, Io, and Nyra had soldiered on and struck down the distorting lairs one after the other, slowly returning the laws to order and bringing life to the wastelands.

It was an arduous process, and even the master sculptor who had left behind these statues didn’t know how many centuries it had taken them to clean up these laws. Nyra failed to persevere, falling to ash within a thousand years and turning into a part of the Land of Dawn. Flowsand started construction on the Lighthouse of Time not long after, but she failed to finish it and disappeared with no news. Io was the last to show himself, but he had visited this city three thousand years ago before vanishing as well.

No one knew where the Lighthouse of Time was, nor Flowsand’s whereabouts. The people here believed that she was still alive, continuing to revere her for all she had done for them.

### **Flowsand**

She had broken the balance of order and distortion, building a city that anyone within ten thousand kilometres would feel a calling from. This had started a landslide process that brought it to great heights. Wanton killing was illegal, with both an executive leader and a city council present to make decisions. There was even a home for the elderly, as well as a court and jail. The strong still ruled, but the weak at least had dignity in life and death.

Compared to the Land of Dusk, this was heaven. However, Richard was the only one who could cross the hundreds of thousands of kilometres to come all the way here, and he felt like leaving immediately. There were traces of Flowsand in every corner of this sacred city, and he found himself shivering constantly as he imagined just how she had passed thousands of years in this place alone. It would have been a miracle if she actually succeeded in building a Lighthouse of Time on her own. It would only take one more generation of Chosen to finish the task.

## Plot

Lost in thought, he walked into the Land of Dawn, feeling his entire world change in a moment. The place grew much brighter as the monotony of the sky was broken up, with what seemed like layers of clouds moving around. The terrain here also had some undulations, with a significant increase in the number of soul trees. He even saw a small hill forest in the distance.

He saw occasional flashes of presence all over the ground, the inhabitants of the Darkness that included both butchers and many other things he had never seen before. He could only sense them because he had almost entirely resolved the distortion, but one thing was certain; this was a land of life.

He tried to observe these natives on the way, but they seemed to be alarmed whenever he arrived and vanished no matter how stealthy he tried to be. He quickly gave up, deciding to focus on his goals of finding Flowsand and returning to Norland. According to the old man’s route, his journey would bring him to the City of Dawn where he could collect a key ingredient to building the Lighthouse of Time, cyanite. It was a special product of this domain, acting as proof of having gained control of it.

Richard harvested a few soul trees along his route to exchange for some cyanite, and speeding up steadily he arrived at the city in ten days. The place seemed to be able to house tens of thousands of people, and the glamorous veil of order gave off a golden radiance that almost completely suppressed the distortion in the surroundings. Even a saint would be able to live in this place without much issue, and legends would be able to thrive.

He noticed people entering and leaving the city regularly as he approached, a group of people even pushing wagons with goods into the distance. However, his attention faded the moment he arrived at the gates, focusing entirely on a set of statues erected in the plaza. It was a sculpture of three people walking through the wastelands, and even restricted to seeing their backs he felt his heart throb as he recognised them immediately.

It wasn’t long before Richard couldn’t take it anymore, buying as much cyanite as he needed before running away from the city. He hadn’t cried in forever, but tears streamed down his eyes as he deviated from his path to destroy any nodes of concentrated distortion nearby. Every time he was attacked by the natives, but he simply killed them all and moved on with his task. Every node removed was another step towards order, making it easier for him to finish the Lighthouse of Time.

Seven days later, he arrived at a magnificent tower that was hundreds of metres tall, its mere sight making it clear just why it would take over a thousand years to build. Although people lived forever in the Darkness, they did not have outstanding strength. The materials to build this tower had to be ferried from tens of thousands of kilometres away, and the trio had accomplished that block by block, brick by brick. They had laboured ceaselessly to bring it to this stage… and then she hadn’t lit it.

At this point, it was obvious that the timeflames were a construct that created a channel between the Darkness and the domain of order, allowing timeforce to flow in and destroy the local laws. Richard quickly felt his eyes starting to burn in the presence of this timeforce, the Eternal Dragon’s energy considering even him an enemy given that he had tuned himself into the locals.

A momentary switch of perspective quickly fixed that problem, and what he saw was now the golden timeflames connecting to gorgeous beams of light from the various cities. The sky was no longer grey but a burning red, with huge slits that were bathing the world in a golden radiance. The barren wastelands were being filled with radiance and warmth, about to become a land of hope filled with life. Richard heard cheers as those in every city sang and danced like lunatics, bringing out the food and wine that they had been so miserly with before. Everyone was smiling at the sight that they had been waiting for all this time.

The sky began to rupture, large chunks falling to the ground with earth-shattering rumbles. The earth split as the wastelands were cut apart, a black curtain separating the Land of Dawn from its neighbours. Someone was shouting desperately as he tried to enter the Land of Dawn, but in front of him was a widening chasm. The curtain was about to cover the place, but he suddenly leapt across with all of his strength. Unable to cross the chasm that was hundreds of metres wide, he cried out in despair as he fell into the empty space.

The Land of Dawn broke away from the Darkness, the isolating barrier quickly vanishing into the distance. The sky continued to break and fall apart, burning flames reducing all life outside the cities into ash. The light of order became an impregnable shield that protected each city as the earth started to break apart as well, revealing the void behind.

The various broken sections started to twinkle like stars in the void, turning into convergences of energy. In the distance they seemed no bigger than a finger’s width, but these nodes would birth new planes in the future that could perhaps match or even exceed Norland. Richard felt like he was seeing the birth of the myriad planes, the foundational laws of existence being exposed as they built the new planes up bit by bit.

A single sector of the Darkness had given birth to an uncountable number of planes.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Book 9, Chapter 124
2. ↑ Book 9, Chapter 123
3. ↑ Book 9, Chapter 126