Year 5, Day 1
The Eastern Plains
Harlan Calder was inspecting the new brick-lined well in Calder's Ford when the pressure returned.
He had been waiting for it, of course.
Every five years, like the turning of seasons.
Yet when the presence settled behind his eyes, it still stole his breath.
The crowd that had begun to gather instinctively knelt.
Harlan's voice rang out across the town square, clear and cold as winter iron.
"Thus commands the Faceless One.
For the next five years:
1. No new fields will be broken.
The land must drink from clover and bean-root before it gives again.
2. No village will accept more than fifty outsiders in total.
Those who come will be fed and sheltered in the border camps, but the hearths of our homes belong first to our children.
3. In every settlement, one in every twenty able workers will leave plough and forge to become builders of stone and road.
Crushed-gravel roads will bind all ten villages into one body.
Wells will be lined.
Granaries raised higher.
Bridges thrown across every stream.
4. The surplus of grain, copper, timber, and cloth will be stored, not sold.
Foreign merchants will be met with courtesy and salt, but no trade.
5. And in the new stone houses now rising in each village, the children—every child aged seven winters and above—will sit for three hours each day.
They will learn letters.
They will learn numbers.
They will learn to measure the world so that one day they may command it better than we ever could.
These are the Silent Years.
Work without complaint.
Store without waste.
Teach without delay.
The Faceless One watches.
He is pleased with what we have become.
He asks only that we become more.
Thus I have spoken."
Harlan staggered when the words ended.
The silence that followed was heavier than any shout.
No one cheered.
They had expected celebration—new lands, new hearths, open gates.
Instead they received closed borders and longer working days.
A murmur ripened into anger.
In Oakrest, loggers muttered that pulling men from the forests would slow timber for years.
In Copperrise, miners kicked at the dust because fewer hands meant fewer ingots.
In Riverwatch, mothers clutched babies and whispered that the border camps were already full of thin faces who would stay thin for five more years.
Elyse, now twelve, stood outside the half-finished stone building that was to become Riverwatch's teaching house.
She had carried bricks for two seasons to help build it.
Now she stared at the empty doorway and felt the first sour twist of confusion.
Rowan Calder, fourteen, helped his father steady Harlan when the Speaker nearly fell.
"Why now?" Rowan asked quietly.
"We have food. We have strong houses. Why close the gates?"
Harlan had no answer from the Voice—only the lingering taste of certainty.
"Because the Faceless One sees farther than we do," he said at last.
But his voice cracked on the words.
Global voice chat lost its collective mind.
#008 (KaiserDrache):
"HE JUST TOLD HIS PEOPLE TO STOP GROWING LMAO
I'm at 41k pop and rising. Enjoy your little book club, nerd."
#004 (weeb):
"My refugees are literally dying outside his border while he builds schools.
This guy is lawful-evil aligned, calling it now."
#023:
"Manpower stretched, growth capped, happiness tanking…
But soil health +30 %, education starting Turn 2, infrastructure leapfrogging everyone.
I hate him. I respect him."
#077:
"Achievement unlocked: First player to make his citizens mad while simultaneously making them unstoppable in 15 turns."
Hyun-woo watched the counters dip and hold.
Happiness: 89 % → 72 % (acceptable)
Loyalty: 128 % → 116 % (still unbreakable)
Manpower Strain: –18 %
Education Level: 0.3 % → projected 28 % by Turn 4
Soil Fertility: 64 % → 89 % (perfect)
Infrastructure Index: 34 → target 78 by Turn 3 end
The anger would fade.
The roads would be finished.
The children would read.
The soil would be richer than any neighbor's.
And when the storms came—famine, plague, or KaiserDrache's legions—his people would stand on stone roads, behind brick walls, with full bellies and sharp minds.
He closed the decree window.
Turn 2 locked.
Five more years began to race past.
Children walked to empty stone buildings that suddenly had a purpose.
Men grumbled as they laid gravel instead of swinging axes.
Women counted fewer new faces at the well, but more sacks in the granary.
And on the border, in a camp of tents and quiet desperation, a boy with eleven believers on a faraway island pressed his forehead to the dirt and prayed to the only god who had ever chosen books over bodies.