City of Sin (Yanyu Jiangnan)

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.

“Flowsand…” Richard muttered, rooted in place as he stared at the stonework. It took all the effort in the world to move his eyes away, but as he saw Nyra and Io he suddenly recalled the old man who had been waiting for him in Suman’s city. His face paled instantly; had three millennia really passed while he was being teleported? What would Norland be like when he returned?

He finally forced himself to walk in, reading a tablet beside the statues that explained their origin. 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.

Richard felt something strange after reading this history, his heart thumping with enough force to crush a saint’s chest. These statues had nearly three millennia of history themselves, and the veil of order wasn’t as stable then as it was now. The sculptor that had carved them had a near-complete grasp of the laws of distortion, at least no weaker than his own right now. They seemed to be a source of order themselves, allowing this city to thrive in the thousands of years that followed. The place had a significant number of people on the streets, with shops on the roadsides and almost every building having windows and doors. He had even seen a guard patrol, indicating that there was a sense of law and order here.

……

Richard spent the following day walking around the City of Dawn, listening to the many legends about Flowsand. He gradually gained a picture of just what had happened when she had initially headed to the Darkness. 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.

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.

The tears dried up as he spent day after day finding and eliminating all the nodes along his path. While there were few left in the Land of Dawn now, his mastery of the laws of distortion made it easy for him to track them. Every node destroyed was some improvement to his own analysis of the final law, and after the fourth he decided to slow down and make bigger detours along the way.

One day, he came across an incredibly powerful node of distortion, with three villages of inhabitants and more than ten butchers guarding it. It took half a day of killing to wipe out most of his enemies, leaving only the strongest of the butchers and one skinny native who was in the distance. Panting hard, he held Moonlight and didn’t move; if he’d learnt anything about these creatures, they were impatient and would lunge forward of their own accord within minutes. It quickly followed that prediction, and he matched its speed while jumping away to give him the freedom to cut it all over. After a minute of attacking he suddenly sidestepped and brought his blade forward, cutting the thing’s body in two.

He let out a long sigh, feeling completely exhausted. There was another wound on his arm, and infected as it was by the distortion it would take a lot of food to heal. He raised his head to look at a colourful ball of light spinning in the air, a node that was invisible to the normal person that was constantly emitting the power of distortion. He plunged the injured hand straight in, scattering it into streams of coloured light that dissipated in moments.

At the same time, he finally finished his analysis of the final law of distortion, gaining a complete understanding of the Darkness. An understanding that he had just slaughtered three villages of civilians.