Text and Poetry

That day.

The priest of the Temple of Eternity, Huxter, also became a [Prophet] while sleeping in slumber.

After waking from the dream.

He stood dazed before the statue of the god.

Then, with tears streaming down his face, he knelt there.

"God!"

"Ah, I knew it, You have been watching me all along, haven't You?"

Huxter could no longer suppress the excitement in his heart.

Only he himself knew.

How long he had waited for this moment.

Throughout half his life.

He had never once ceased this longing.

Longing for the grace of the divine to descend upon him.

Once.

He believed that the Rot Spirit Flower was a reward bestowed upon him by the god, meant to enlighten him to use the Rot Spirit Insects to better serve the tribe.

However.

When Ned received the blessing of the Rot Spirit Staff.

He realized that it was not a glory meant for him.

Huxter was once deeply wounded by this.

But in his dejection, he did not harbor resentment.

Instead, he adhered strictly to his duty as a priest of the god.

Since the god had done this.

Then there must be a profound meaning behind it.

As a priest of the god.

He did not need to overthink; he only needed to fulfill his duties.

Therefore, he openly opposed Richie's decision.

Repeatedly pleading with him to grant the position of chieftain to Ned, who had received the god's blessing.

To the point where he was even willing to cede his own position as priest to him.

Compared to loyalty to the tribe.

Compared to the desire for power.

Huxter was more loyal to the god and craved the god's recognition.

And now.

He had finally obtained everything he wanted.

Staring at the tall, faceless statue of the god.

At this moment, Huxter even wanted to throw himself forward and kiss the divine statue.

But he hesitated and faltered.

As if afraid of defiling the statue himself.

In the end, this old man simply prostrated himself there, letting out an uncontrollable cry of excitement.

"Hahahaha!"

"Wuwuwu!"

This priest of the god, who was seen as lofty and untouchable in the eyes of others, knelt before the statue.

First he cried.

Then he laughed.

Then he both cried and laughed.

That day, the priest's extremely unpleasant, hoarse, and strange laughter and cries, like air wheezing through a broken bellows, echoed throughout the entire temple.

The believers who had come to worship the god were stunned by the sight.

People thought that this cold and eccentric elder.

Had been driven to madness by grief over the departure of the Chosen One, Richie.

Facing the worshippers in the temple.

Huxter quickly regained his usual authority.

To better understand the profound meaning of the grace bestowed by the gods, he gathered the [Prophets] to discuss the immensely divine vision within the dream.

The towering shadow of the majestic temple cast down from the far-off sky above—

without exception, all the Prophets had seen it.

But.

Only Huxter and one elder recalled another scene from the dream.

It was a colossal tower, shrouded in ethereal radiance.

Upon that holy tower, square and solemn yet mysterious patterns were carved.

Each one seemed to follow some strange rule, revealing a certain mysterious implication.

Led by Huxter, the people debated this from day until night.

Finally, Huxter murmured thus:

"I understand."

"Just like the patterns the oracle-bearing ants arranged on the sand."

"It is like a painting, yet different from a painting."

"Without any skill, without complex strokes, it can convey endless meaning."

"Even things that cannot be conveyed or recorded by painting can be inscribed and transmitted through it."

"The gods are telling us."

"We must use those patterns to record, for our great chosen one of the gods, the deeds he accomplished in life, and all the history that should be remembered."

And so, under the leadership of this fervent priest of the gods, the concept of [writing] was born:

By assigning meaning to simple patterns of various shapes, they became written characters.

The mysteries of all things in the world could then be embodied within those characters.

Everyone could easily grasp them, record everything without omission, and convey the profound essence of worldly matters and emotions.

In the revelation of the dream, the barbaric civilization on this island began, for the first time, to attempt creating writing with wisdom.

At first, the tribe's creation of writing remained confined to fairly simple things.

Using the patterns the ants had once arranged on the ground as a foundation, they created more simple yet pictorial characters and assigned them meaning.

Sometimes, to determine the specific form of a single character, fierce arguments would even break out among the elders and Prophets.

"The god should be written like this."

"Too complicated—it must be simple yet beautiful, like this, to reflect the god's majesty."

"How about this one? A triangle with a circle inside."

"Isn't that the character I set to represent the temple in the sky? How did it become something you created!"

In the end, under Boer's helpless mediation, the elders, who had nearly come to blows, sat back down to continue arranging the shapes of the characters.

And so, various concrete and abstract things all received corresponding character forms.

The sun, flowers, insects, the sea.

Life, death, gods, myths.

The representative characters for things familiar to the tribe were created one by one.

Once a certain number of characters existed, everyone in the tribe began learning to write.

People used twigs dipped in burnt black charcoal to arrange and combine characters on the ground, on leaves, or on the rough hemp paper that required laborious production to obtain.

But, such fragile mediums could never preserve the characters for long.

After the wind and rain had passed.

The lines upon it would change color and fall away.

Thus, people's gazes finally returned to the stone.

Although.

Carving on stone was far more difficult than writing.

It was, however, the best medium to bear the weight of time and words.

Not long after.

The tribe finally began their first application of writing.

The Artisans, on stone slabs.

For the gods.

And for the departed Chosen.

Began carving the words that recorded all of this.

The elders called such writings, which recorded the deeds of the great gods and the Chosen, poetry.

Yet.

The earliest words recorded on these stone slabs.

Could hardly be considered a complete sentence.

Still less could they be called poetry.

At best.

They were a simple patchwork of characters and words.

On those limited stone slabs.

The earliest written record read as follows:

Gods and the Chosen.

Sky and temple.

Death and the sun.

Stone and carving.

Words and poetry.

It seemed simple and crude.

But the people of that time could not have imagined.

That one day in the future.

Later generations would discover these stone slabs, inscribed with a weighty history.

Through relentless study, people would gradually perfect the words on those earliest stone tablets, which bore extremely fragmented sentences.

And over the ages, it would truly become a poem passed down through the ages.

Elegy of the Chosen

On that day, the gods.

Led the great Chosen back to the sacred land of the sky.

Even in death.

Their noble souls.

Remained like the sun.

Forever shining upon the tribe.

To commemorate this moment.

And to honor the memory of the first great Chosen.

People carved the first meaningful patterns upon the stone.

Words and poetry.

Thus came into being.