Year 64 of the Firefolk Era, the night of Spring Equinox.
Beside the Ruin Abyss well, A Man, a Night Watcher, patrolled the forest with his lamp. Its oil was nearly spent.
Only one drop of Heart Flame Paste remained in the lamp's belly. Its flame was faint, like a dying breath. He stroked the lamp and sighed. "You've burned for three years, lit ninety-nine midnight watches, and seen seven Night Watchers off. Now... it's time you rested too."
He crouched and gently poured the last drop of oil onto the roots of the oldest tree at the heart of the Charcoal-Pencil Forest.
The oil fell, but the light did not go out—
The lamp flame suddenly leaped and became a firefly, its whole body clear and luminous, its wings like gauze woven from light, hovering quietly above his palm.
A Man froze.
The firefly did not fly away. It merely trembled gently, as though waiting for him.
"Where do you want to go?" he asked.
Its wings fluttered lightly, scattering points of light. A line of faintly glowing words appeared on the ground:
"Light does not die. It only takes another path."
As the words faded, the firefly rose, like a star leaving his palm, and flew toward the night sky.
It neither hurried nor fretted, flying low all the way, skimming the treetops, circling the well railing, passing through the narrow passage of Ruin Abyss Lane,
flying toward the city gates, toward the open fields, toward every corner of the Nine Provinces.
Its first stop: the Northern Border Snowfield.
A shepherd boy keeping watch through the night had frozen stiff before an ice cavern. The Charcoal-Pencil Forest was about to go dark. The firefly arrived and circled a tree three times. **The lamp flame kindled on its own,