In a forsaken village between the jaws of two large hills, there lived a voiceless child. Not a single word ever escaped their lips from the day they were born. It did not make them invisible, however it made them observant. When others bellowed and muttered, struggled and laughed, this child heard. They observed the weight of words, how they had the power to stir up people’s hearts like pebbles cast into still water. They believed words were more powerful than anyone ever stopped to consider.
One autumn evening, as the sun melted behind the hills, the child wandered into the forest, following the flight of paper on the breeze. The paper was written with radiance script not with ink, but with light and it curled to an old, crooked figure crouched at the foot of a gnarled oak. The figure’s beard was the colour of frost, and on their lap lay a lantern. But not with flame did the lantern burn: instead, it burned with words, spinning, whispering, gleaming. “You’ve found the Lantern of Language,” the old one said, smiling through weathered eyes. “Only those who understand the weight of silence can wield it.”
They handed on the lantern. With the touch of the child, a softness of air enveloped them, and then they felt the words within not spoken, but crafted in mind, shivering with intent. The lantern blazed back, its light pounding. Out of its light came one sentence: “Speak with care, for every word becomes a world.”
And from that day on, the child was a Wordsmith.
They returned to the village, and even though still unable to speak out loud, they wrote words by the light of the lantern on leaves, on stones, in the air itself. When the crops withered on a field, the Wordsmith wrote upon a seed the word “renewal,” and overnight it sprouted into gold wheat. When a child wailed in a nightmare, the Wordsmith wrote “peace” on their bed, and the dreams went quiet like stars.
But not everyone understood the power that had been discovered. A proud merchant, greedy for control, demanded the lantern be given up. “With it, I’ll make myself king,” the merchant boasted. The Wordsmith, silent but resolute, refused.
Enraged, the merchant used it at night and howled his commands into it. “Gold!” “Obedience!” “Fear!” The lantern, dizzied by selfish intent, broke with a thunderous shatter. Darkness spilled out, too many words all at once, twisted and uncircumscribed. Disorder grasped the village: suspicion bloomed, grain shriveled under half articulated curses, and dreams turned as jagged as fractured glass.