The Library of Zosimos

When the great seas were pulled away, back to the borderlands where they had dwelled in the long Histories Before, the bones of those ancient times were laid bare for the new people to explore. They found marvels that resided beyond the bounds of their imagination, relics that had been thought to be confabulated myths of simpler creatures confirmed as solid fact, passed amongst the children so that they might know a part of the guardians that came long before them. They could only guess at the names of the relic’s creators, the long-drowned titles who, though indecipherable, still echoed across the fields of barnacled metal skeletons.

But one amongst them spoke their names. In that child’s hands flowed a knowledge that was impossible: the perfect pronunciation of their entire life, from birth to after-death, from triumph to desolation, from love to hate, from eye to eye, from soul to soul. The force of such knowledge collapsed them, but they rose again with wisdom beyond their time and place. The child led the processions to places of power from before, where they taught the others how to make marvels anew, how to turn the bones of the past into the foundations of a future.

So it was the child came to be known by the title Alchemist, and after their majority and storied death did another come, so it came to be known that in every generation an Alchemist was born. They announced themselves with a surety that was unmistakable, whispering a secret name, which was their own name, to a learned few of whom only their chance birth could lead them to.

That name was Zosimos.

At the deepest, barren depths of their new land, at the center of a great salt plain that had once been rolling desert, a great temple was discovered. Here all number of relics were laid as offerings to the Alchemist, for it was known that each could contain a new secret, a new piece of beauty to be shared, a new piece of warning to be sounded, a new piece of hope for the unseen waters ahead. Over many faces did the Alchemist build their Library, and there was the Tapestry of Fate worked over and trimmed, the Alchemist ever watchful of the strands that could lead the people back into the despair that had once consumed them all.

Those who brought offerings were allowed to glimpse one strand of the fates they delivered, one crystalline piece of the long Histories Before, of a being and its way that was alien to the forms that now walked the new earth and made lives of different threadings. It was an honor few survived. For The Alchemist was not blessed, but cursed, their faces made to bear the burdens of holy mechanisms mortals were never meant to know.