The Book of Breathings

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A split text of salt and starlight that holds the language of making and unmaking, written in a tongue older than the courts.

The Book of Breathings is a relic of the Cauldron's own making, a text that contains the very language of creation and destruction. It was split into two halves after the last great War—one given to the fae, one to the mortals—to ensure no single power could wield its full might. To read even a single line aloud is to speak a word of Making, and to speak both halves together is to unmake the world.

Appearance

The Book of Breathings is not one volume but two, each bound in leather that shifts between the grey of storm clouds and the deep blue of a winter sea. Its pages are not paper but something thinner—membrane, perhaps, or pressed salt—and the script upon them glows faintly, as if written in captured starlight. The two halves are identical in size and weight, yet one hums with a warmth like summer sun, the other cold as the depths of the ocean.

Also known as: The Book of Breathings, The Split Text, The Salt and Starlight Codex, The Two Halves of Creation

What They Know

• The Book of Breathings was written by the Cauldron itself, or by something that spoke for it, in the first days after the world was Made.
• It contains the true names of all things—every stone, every river, every star, every soul—and to speak a true name is to hold power over the thing named.
• The two halves were separated after the War five hundred years ago, one entrusted to the High Lords of Prythian, the other to the mortal queens south of the Wall.
• The fae half was kept in the Night Court for centuries, hidden in the deepest vault of the House of Wind, until it was stolen by agents of Hybern.
• The mortal half was held by the Queen of the Mortal Lands, who used it to bargain with the fae and to protect her own throne from the King of Hybern.

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