"The moon was as blood, and the sun was as ashes. The seas boiled, and the living envied the dead. All was shattered, and all but memory lost, and one memory above all others, of him who brought the Shadow and the Breaking of the World. And him they named Dragon."
—from Aleth nin Taerin alta Camora,
The Breaking of the World.
As with all the books in the series, the final entry begins commences with an Epigraph. These are short quotations extracted from ancient texts. Of course, these ancient texts only exist within the world, history and mythological construct of the series. There is no actual text known to us to which this text can be attributed. (Except, of course, for this novel, but it has a long way to go before it become ancient.) Nevertheless, the inclusion of these ancient works of literature created entirely from the mind of a novelist could—conceivably—one day become considered genuine works of an ancient civilization. This is the way these things tend to work. For instance, an absurdly unrealistic parable about a man being swallowed by a whale and living to tell the tale has been accepted as literally true by billions of people over the course of several millennia. If such a patiently ridiculous story could be treated as spiritual canon, who is to say that one day people won’t be excavating ancient ruins in search of the actual text referenced here: Aleth nin Taerin alta Camora, The Breaking of the World?
The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.
The opening paragraph of that Chapter 1 of each novel in the series is the for the most part displayed in here in this opening paragraph of Chapter 1 of this entry. The primary differentiation is where the wind rises; in this case, obviously, in the Mountains of Mist, but that is not always the case. This commencement of first chapter (not including the Prologue) is one of main ritualistic replications that soar from volume to volume, unifying the individual entries into the collective of the series. Long before the midway point, these recurrences being to become a thing of comfort to readers in for the long haul and a very long haul it is. These books tend to run generally in the neighborhood 850 pages in paperback form with some a little more and others a little less. In other words, there is a lot to keep track of and, by definition, a lot to lose track of. The recurrence of familiarity is therefore quite comforting, especially when one hits the wall of those books generally considered to be less successful. In this case, however, the opening lines contains a bit more irony than usual: as it turns out there really are endings to The Wheel of Time, after all.
He just had not had the leisure to have a real look at much of the world. That will be new, he thought.
The “he” is Rand, the book’s hero. And these are almost the final words of the book. About as close as you can get, but why spoil everything, right? A few words come after, but basically this is the meat of the matter: after more than a dozen books and hundreds of thousands of words, everything comes to a close with this image of Rand, alone, in contemplation. If there were not about 900 pages of action preceding this silent solitary moment, it might be an ending capable of spurring outrage, but almost surely each reader who has made the way through the series to this point can appreciate the feeling conveyed here through the narrator’s penetration into the mind of the man at the center of it all. For in a way, each reader is kind of like Rand; a heroic victor in the not-inconsiderable quest to make it from the opening page of the first book in The Wheel of Time to this final page. In fact, maybe a lot of them are even considering taking a look around at the world they live in themselves.
