Lighting the Torch of Civilization in the Middle Ages

He “died” once in the Middle Ages. On the border of the Kingdom of Orellan, Ignis Thorne, the fourteen-year-old son of a serf, stopped breathing during a plague. When he opened his eyes again, an endless corridor had appeared in his mind. Candles burned without end, and bookshelves stretched into the distance. Behind one of the doors lay all the knowledge of a long-extinct “precursor civilization.” How to repair a waterwheel, make better steel, treat the plague, manufacture gunpowder, print books… In this dark age, when nine out of ten people were illiterate and the nobles and church clutched knowledge tightly in their hands, he started by improving a plow and repairing a mill. The villagers called him a monster, the priest called him a heretic, and the lord called him a tool. He offered no defense. Hammer blow by hammer blow, he turned scrap iron into steel and famine into a bountiful harvest. He established workshops and defeated the plague, saving a city amid mountains of corpses. He turned back the iron cavalry and ended the civil war, using firearms and drill manuals to hold off the steppe khanate. He promoted printing and opened schools, placing books once reserved for nobles into the hands of every commoner. People offered him a fortune for his blueprints. He refused to sell. People placed a crown before him. He would not wear it. People tried to make him kneel at the stake. He smiled and added another log to the fire. “I’m no prophet.” “I’m only returning to the world the fire you stole from it.” And when he finally reached the deepest part of the Ashen Corridor, he discovered: The “Lord of Silence,” who swore to keep humanity ignorant forever, The being who personally buried a civilization a thousand years ago, Had been waiting for him: the one who would kindle the flame anew.