Year 58 of the Firefolk Era, seven days before Frost's Descent.
The north wind had swept in from the farthest abyss, cutting faces like a knife. Plants snapped before they could wither; well water froze before night fell. All the Nine Provinces knew—the lingering cold of the eternal night had not faded, and this winter would be especially hard to endure.
In the weaving workshop on Ruin Abyss Lane, the weaver A Zhu sat beneath the window. The shuttle in her hand had been still for three days.
It was not that she refused to weave, but that—there was no thread to weave with.
Winter clothes were scarce, cotton batting was nearly gone, and coarse hemp thread could hardly ward off the bitter cold. She gazed at the old garment hanging on the wall. A Zhou had worn it as a boy. Its cuffs were worn through and its collar blackened, yet one patch remained—stitched by Granny Li years ago from scraps of a stove cloth.
"People can go without food, but not without warmth," she murmured. "But where will that warmth come from?"
Late that night, she sat alone before the loom when she suddenly saw a speck of light outside the window—
The neighbor's cooking fire had not gone out. Porridge bubbled in the pot, and rising steam struck the cold mist, condensing into tiny points of light that drifted like stardust. The threads on her loom gently caught that light, and it wound around the shuttle's tip without dispersing.
"..." She froze.
The next day, she carried a lamp to the well platform and gently set it beside the loom. The oil burned away, but the wick did not go out. Instead, it gathered the light into fine strands that hung down like silver thread.
She reached