“Whisper, and the parchment will listen.”
The Archive Room of Fragile Documents is the most climate-controlled, security-warded, and reverently tiptoed section of the Royal Museum. Here reside the oldest, rarest, and most delicate written works in the Realm—texts inked by candlelight, etched in bark, or composed in vanished tongues. Many are unreadable. Some are undecipherable. All are irreplaceable.
Access is granted to scholars only by royal petition, and even then, only in silk gloves and solemn silence.
📖 The Book of Seven Winds (ca. 1600–1400 BR)
“No one has ever read it the same way twice.”
A pre-Kingdom codex believed to contain layered teachings, allegories, and ritual songs of a wind-worshipping people. Its pages are stitched from woven reed paper and its script changes subtly when copied.
Key Features:
- Seven chapters named for cardinal winds and “one unspoken”
- Margins filled with contradictory annotations in multiple inks
- Map foldouts that align only under moonlight
Special Notes:
- Removed from the archives only once each decade
- Current scholars disagree on whether it is a holy text or weather manual
🧾 The Treaty of Saltvale (signed 342 BR)
“The war ended not with blood, but with brine.”
This scroll documents the end of a 14-year territorial dispute over salt plains between two ancestral provinces. Written on lambskin, sealed with river mud, and co-signed by a local owl (allegedly).
Key Features:
- Five signatures, each from a different dialect and writing system
- Salt-crusted corner believed to be ceremonial
- Attached poem titled “How to Eat Peacefully” (six stanzas)
Preservation Note:
- Stored in salt-stabilized glass to prevent flaking and recrystallization
🕯️ The Journals of Keeper Thamiel (ca. 75–60 BR)
“He catalogued not what we had—but what we’d forgotten.”
Thamiel, a solitary archivist of the Silent Century, kept extensive records of names, rituals, and objects deemed “unworthy of preservation” by his overlords. His journals are the only surviving source for dozens of lost words and customs.
Key Features:
- Entries include recipes, children’s rhymes, broom choreography
- Written in “stacked script,” meant to be read vertically
- Ink believed to be derived from fire-shaded beetles
Recent Discovery:
- A page thought blank revealed invisible ink under breathing glass
📜 The Scroll of the 9th Lantern Guard (dated 21 R)
“Only three guards survived—and they wrote this together.”
A battlefield scroll composed in haste, recounting the final defense of a mountain pass during the early days of Eyehasseen’s founding. It is both an eyewitness account and a spiritual testament.
Key Features:
- Written in alternating voices, signed with blood and wax
- Includes hand-drawn battle map with smudged retreat route
- Ends mid-sentence, with no punctuation
Emotional Significance:
- Displayed beside three rusted lanterns, lit only once per year
📄 The Codex of Whispered Law (approx. origin unknown)
“To read it is to obey it. So read carefully.”
Bound in pale leather with no title, the Codex contains laws that were never publicly declared—but somehow observed. Each page describes a single “unspoken” social contract (e.g., “Do not ask twice,” “Offer warmth before words”).
Key Features:
- Ink reacts to reader’s pulse, revealing only some laws at a time
- Table of contents is missing; page numbers are alphabetical
- Several pages deliberately torn or scorched
Scholarly Disputes:
- Some claim it was authored by a council of dreamers
- Others believe it writes itself when needed
The Archive Room of Fragile Documents is a place of reverence, not spectacle. Here, even dust is recorded. Here, history does not shout—it hums, waits, and invites only those patient enough to listen.