Serpentines
The Serpentines were a people-group hailing from the steppes of center-eastern Tosthekes, now extincted by an eradication campaign by the Old Central Empire.
a serpentine mural depicting festivities
The Serpentine language remains a subject of scholarly panic, due to its importance to the influence of the Leviathan curse.
Early attestment
Evidence of Serpentine writings dates back to soon after the spread of the proto-Uotiman script, and bears close visual resemblance in glyphs, although inspection of the novel orthography shows an existing familiarity with the system, implying an earlier adoption than recorded.
The oldest known association of the language with serpents originates from an essay on the politics of the nearby central-basin city-states, speaking contemporarily of the neighboring factions of the region in the early Old First Century. A legible fragment reads:
"...who trace like snakes their words across the ledgers"
This would seem to imply that the characteristic linear styling of the modern script had already taken shape by some point between the collapse of the Uotiman dynasty and the following city-state arrangement among the basin's affairs.
The stylistic development of the language might well have stemmed from the repurposing of the basin's typical reed stylus from a clay-impression device to one of ink-based writing, incentivizing a cursive approach to the calligraphy.
Cultural symbology
Another theory, however, recognizes a parallel between the new style of penmanship and the already-existing prevalence of snakes as a motif in the cultural iconography. By the time of the early surviving writings within this neo-Serpentine style, a motif of inking important passages in circles with ends linking back to beginnings was already taking hold: A motif that brings with it the imagery of the self-eating snake.
Serpentines were known from early in their history for being possessors of mystic knowledge. An association likely borne out of their cultural knowledge surrounding the venoms of various snakes, and the antidotes derived therein. This highly regional medicinal knowledge could have been seen by foreigners as unprecedented workings of miracles.
It is not impossible to see the connection between the cyclical motif and the many snakes of the homeland that favored it so. The toxin and the cure come from the same fangs. The beginning and the end, what started it shall end it in kind.
Indeed what little of the Serpentine mythology not eradicated with the erasure of the language's understanding--surviving only from translated accounts from neighboring tongues--frequently recurrs in an identical, cyclical manner within the narrative. One reportedly ubiquitous story tells of a mythic hero and his 3 restless days of 14 great deeds, and his ending, later slain out of mercy by his own mother.
Like the aforementioned tale, these stories were told through the folk music tradition, with a large amount of their narratives having their determination of cause and effect based in rhyme, rendering these narratives nearly impossible to discern with their lexical context having been destroyed.
Similarly, according to the account that presevered the above epic, it was only one of a vast canon of folk ballads that utilized a similarly symmetric lyrical structure. While sometimes the middle-facing verses of these stories would take a looser approach to reflecting one another, the verses towards the beginning and ends would almost unwaveringly be structured parallel. The ending stanza being a beat-for-beat rewording of the beginning verse's melody and line structure. The Three-day Hero's introduction centers around his mother, just as his farewell does.
Domestic practices
(Author note here: This section's content is new enough that I
haven't yet written together the details of how an in-universe source
would know any of this, so the tone is going to be a little overly
omniscient for now.)
As well as their stories, the prevalence of cyclicality appeared in the everyday actions of the Serpentines. Most predominantly among these influences is a commonly repeated addage: "Every defeat is born from a victory" would be a rough translation. This was an addage meant to warn against arrogance and haste.
A more surface-level reading could take the saying as warning that we are most vulnerable during the overconfidence ilicited by a success. However, one may also read it as an insistence on intentionality: that every step after a supposed accomplishment is just as important as the achievement itself. In a more abstracted sense, it could also mean that it is impossible to experience loss without something to be lost in the first place. Something regarding counting your blessings.
When taken at its most mythic scale, it implies that while we are always defined by the cycles we exist in, the speed of our rotations around those cycles can be modulated. If we are due a defeat in turn after every victory, we can take losses of less importance to hurry our way back to being on the upswing of the circle.
It would seem that the ramifications of this philosophy gave rise to a rather ubiquitous domestic ritual seen in innumerable parts of one's daily life: a focus on seeking out those 'little defeats' and submitting oneself to them as a good-luck charm, intentionally choosing to eschew certain extraneous comforts in order to consolidate your good fortune to the ventures that most require it.
Commonly, this could manifest as a sort of small 'sacrifice' like cutting away and then burning excess clippings of nail or hair. Other sacrifices of one's possesions rather than one's own person could be something as small as tossing away a button off a garment, to something larger such as taking the day prior to an important occasion to clear out unneeded items and lighten your 'karmic load' of sorts.
As another instance, children could be convinced by their parents to clean up their toys and other belongings by appealing to the idea that an inconvenience as small as an item being behind a cabinet door counts towards future good luck. A different approach to thinking about the same action, more popular as a self-reminder among the adults, would profer that leaving items outside of their dedicated locations breeds indecision.