Year 10, Day 1
The Eastern Plains – Border Camp #3 (soon to be New Circle Village)
The replay of the last five years ended.
Hyun-woo watched the final numbers settle.
Population: 13 104 (natural growth only)
Literacy: 41.7 %
Road Network: 94 % complete
Soil Fertility: 97 %
Happiness: 88 % (recovered)
Belief Strength: 178 % (highest on the continent)
Five thousand, four hundred and thirty-two refugees waited in six border camps.
They had been fed, clothed, taught basic letters, and kept alive for five years on surplus grain.
Many had children born inside the camps who had never known hunger.
It was time.
Harlan Calder stood on the newly finished stone bridge at Calder's Ford.
Behind him, the town had grown into a small city of red brick and slate roofs.
In front of him, representatives from every village, plus three elected delegates from the border camps, waited in silence.
The pressure came.
Harlan's voice rolled out like bronze bells.
"Thus commands the Faceless One, Lord of the Empty Circle and Keeper of the Long Tomorrow.
The Silent Years are ended.
Hear the Law of the Open Gate and the Wooden Circle.
1. The border camps will be dissolved.
All who have lived among us for five years and learned our signs will be granted full hearths.
Camp #3 will become the eleventh village: New Circle.
Camp #1 will become the twelfth: Westgate.
The remaining camps will be folded into existing villages.
2. From this day forward, every soul who swears the Oath of the Empty Circle is a citizen of Valdria.
Race, tongue, and birthplace mean nothing.
Only the Oath matters.
3. Every citizen, from the day they turn twelve winters, will receive a Wooden Circle.
A small tablet of oak, one hand wide, carved with the Empty Circle on the front and their name on the back.
This tablet is proof of citizenship.
It grants the right to own land, to speak in the village assembly, and to call upon the protection of the Faceless One.
4. Any person who loses or destroys their Wooden Circle may earn a new one only by performing one year of service to the commonwealth—building roads, digging wells, or teaching children.
5. The surplus hoarded these ten years will now flow.
Trade caravans will roll out in all directions.
Our grain, our bronze, our cloth, and our knowledge are ready to be shared—for a price.
6. And finally: every teaching house will now take apprentices from the former camps.
The children of refugees will sit beside the children of the first ten villages.
The circle widens, but it remains unbroken.
The Faceless One has spoken.
Go.
Build the eleventh village before the first snow."
Harlan finished and, for the first time in ten years, smiled in public.
Because he already knew what came next.
The next morning, five thousand people walked out of the camps carrying everything they owned.
They were met by wagons loaded with tools, seed grain, and—most precious of all—blank oak tablets and bronze carving tools.
Elyse, now seventeen, stood at the head of the column to New Circle.
In her hands she carried the first finished Wooden Circle.
Front: the Empty Circle.
Back: the name "Kael" — a boy born in the camp, now twelve, whose parents had died of fever two winters ago.
She pressed it into his hands.
"This is yours now," she said.
"You belong."
Kael stared at the tablet for a long time.
Then he did something no one expected.
He knelt, pressed the wood to his forehead, and wept.
By the end of the first week, five thousand Wooden Circles had been carved and distributed.
By the end of the first month, the sign of the Empty Circle appeared on doorposts from the oldest house in Calder's Ford to the newest hut in New Circle.
Global voice chat, for once, was almost reverent.
#023:
"He just added 5k population with zero loyalty loss.
I… don't know how to counter that."
#189 (island guy, crying):
"One of the boats he promised just reached my shore.
They brought Wooden Circles for my last eleven believers.
I'm never forgetting this."
#008 (KaiserDrache):
"Whatever. More mouths to feed when I conquer him."
Hyun-woo watched the counters bloom like spring.
Population: 18 536 (+41 % in one turn)
Happiness: 93 %
Belief Strength: 214 %
New Resource: "Citizenship Loyalty" – unbreakable
A single private notification appeared, visible only to him.
[First True Nation Founded
You are no longer playing a tribe.
You are playing a civilization.]
He closed his eyes that did not exist.
Turn 3 locked.
The world fast-forwarded again.
And somewhere on the new border of New Circle village, a boy named Kael hung his Wooden Circle around his neck on a leather cord and whispered to the sky:
"Thank you for letting me in."