Eva's command was like a stone cast into a deep pool, its ripples spreading outward at incredible speed—from Bright Moon City's governmental center to the administrative centers of every prefecture and county, then from those centers to remote towns and villages.
The officials in every region began acting the moment they received the decree. Sites were chosen, materials gathered, laborers recruited, and everything proceeded in orderly fashion according to Eva's requirements.
Within the temples under construction, the most central place had been reserved for a towering statue.
The designs for the statues were distributed uniformly from Bright Moon City, and every one was carved by the finest craftsmen from the highest-quality stone.
Yet the instant the craftsmen unrolled the blueprints, they all froze.
The statue in the drawings had no face—or rather, no face had been drawn at all.
There was only the outline of a tall, slender figure, poised and composed, one hand behind its back and the other slightly raised, as though gazing down upon the land below, or waiting for something.
That outline had no features, no brows, no eyes, no lips. It had nothing.
The place where its face should have been was replaced by a blank expanse, like a mirror polished over and over until nothing remained upon it, empty yet seemingly capable of containing all things.
A line of small writing was attached beside the blueprint, a note personally penned by Eva.
"The statue's face must not be carved. It shall be shown with a blank face. Those who gaze upon it must not look directly at it, depict it, or make presumptuous conjectures."
The craftsmen exchanged glances, but no one dared ask further questions.
They merely followed the outline in the drawings, carving faceless statues from the finest white stone before placing them