The Scattering at Babel
Chronicle Entry — Secret Annex
Recorded by Brother Wyn of Caermynach, Anno Domini 922
Event dated to the deep past, preserved by merchant reckoning
Location remembered as the plain of Shinar
Men remember the breaking of the world more clearly than its making. What shatters leaves sharper marks than what is set in place.
This account is preserved among families who have carried their memory across long distances. I received it during my travels with merchants who trace their descent westward to the first scattering. They have kept it by recitation and record, father to son, without interruption. I record it as it was given to me.
The Towers of Babel
Seven towers were raised on the plain of Shinar, set according to measurements taught by Zeus, guardian of the Eastern Veil, who walked openly among men in those early centuries. He instructed them in stone, bronze, and proportion, and set over the work Tafod Ddu, chief craftsman of his age, whose devices were already known across the eastern lands. The wheel is attributed to him in later telling, though his skill was wider than any single invention.
Zeus did not hear the Song of the Stars as it was given in full. None of the guardians could. What reached him came in fragments, carried upward when the ground moved and broke. When the earth split or fire rose from below, sound travelled through the deep places and brought part of what lay beyond the world.
Zeus sought a means to gather what arrived only in pieces. He believed that if sound could be carried and held, then what was scattered might be drawn together. Tafod Ddu was charged with this task. Under Zeus’s direction, he worked to give form to an instrument large enough to receive what the ground itself could not sustain.
The towers were intended to speak across distance and depth alike. Bronze was chosen for its carrying quality, stone for its steadiness. The design sought to hold vibration within a single channel, so that sound would not be lost as it rose. Tafod Ddu shaped the plates and chambers with care, and those who worked beneath him recorded that the structures gave back a faint response even before they were complete.
The Strike
The towers were completed over seven years. When the final bronze plate was fixed, Zeus ascended the highest tower and struck it with lightning drawn from his own hand. The sound that followed broke the structure that had been raised to contain it.
Bronze carried the weight beyond its design, forcing the air to vibrate around it until the ground gave beneath those who stood upon it. Men fell where they stood, hands pressed to their ears, and when they rose again they found that speech no longer held its former shape. Words arrived altered or incomplete, and meaning no longer passed easily between those who shared the same ground.
The towers remained standing only briefly. Bronze cracked first, then stone followed, splitting along lines unseen until that moment. Before the sun crossed the sky, all seven towers collapsed inward and were lost. Those who remained gathered what they could and left the plain, not because panic alone drove them, but because the work that had joined them could no longer be spoken of without effort.
Speech failed unevenly among those who survived. For some it vanished entirely. For others it thinned to whispers, and terror travelled west with them as surely as memory did. Groups that set out together separated over time, not always by choice, but because understanding now required labour where once it had been given freely.
The journey west took generations. Children were born who never saw the ruins of Shinar and grew old before the western lands were reached. Camps formed and dissolved along the way, and paths shifted to follow those whose words could still be shared. What could not be said was carried instead through habit and repeated action.
In the western reaches they encountered Arawn, guardian of the Western Veil, who taught them a tongue capable of holding many speakers within it. This language allowed difference to remain without breaking what had been regained. Through it, speech took on weight again, and hearing became possible among those who stood together.
Stone in those lands carried sound cleanly, and it was there that the Cymroth first raised their fortifications. These were built to protect what had been recovered, not to reach beyond it. Knowledge of resonance and proportion remained close to the ground, and memory settled alongside stone.
Final Entry
I showed this account to the eldest of the three Merchants when he returned in the spring. He read it once, then again, slower. When he finished, he laid the parchment face down on the table.
For a time he sat with his hands folded.
At last he said, “If this is found, it will not be forgiven.”
“I know.”
He did not argue. He only looked at the walls, the door, the shuttered window, as if measuring how far words might travel.
When he rose to leave, I asked him whether the old guardian ever believed the work was finished. Whether he thought the world, once gathered, would remain so.
He paused.
“Nothing that is bound stays bound.”
He left before first light, as is his custom, leaving payment and a small bronze mirror worn thin at the edges. It throws the room back at me unevenly.
When I hold it to the light, I see angles that do not sit together. I think of towers broken and of men walking west with no shared name for what they carried.
