The Omen of the Nameless Bird

Prologue 2 · The Breaking of Reason's Dawn

The Sacred Code: Chronicle of the Early Prophets

2.1After the clearing, and before the prophet, there were years that no one wrote down.

2.2In those years the sailors of Miletus saw a bird upon the sea at daybreak.

2.3It did not settle on the mast, nor skim the wave; it appeared only in the instant the light first moved, and went out with the light.

2.4The sailors handed down a saying: whoever sees this bird will die of his own choosing, and not by another hand.

2.5The poets painted it on wine cups, on gravestones, on prison walls, for a thousand years.

2.6No one knew its name. They called it only "that bird."

2.7It waited a long while, for someone who could afford to die.