The Ruin Abyss Well was no longer a well.
Ever since the vision of "kindling without bounds" had manifested, starfire had rained across the Nine Provinces. Whenever a mortal heart stirred, a lamp burned; kind thoughts became light of their own accord. The underground Lamp River grew ever mightier, threading through the earth veins of the Nine Provinces like a Milky Way coursing beneath the land. And the Ruin Abyss Well, that ancient opening once known only to the Firefolk, had now become the Eye of Heaven and Earth, quietly watching the intersection of the mortal world and the Nether Path.
That night, the once-in-a-thousand-years "Twin-Moon Eclipse" descended. The heavens grew dark as eternal night, yet lamps across the Nine Provinces lit themselves, joining into a sea of stars. At that very moment, a deep heartbeat suddenly sounded from the bottom of the Ruin Abyss Well—not a human's, not a beast's, but the heartbeat of the earth itself.
Mist surged at the well's mouth. No Bridge Shadow appeared, no Lamp River rose. Instead, a rift of light slowly opened.
It was a passage leading to the heart of the earth. Countless tiny points of light studded its walls like stars embedded in stone. Each was a remembered act of kindness, a wisp of lamplight passed down through the ages. Deep within the passage, an immense Lamp Core floated silently, formed entirely from the purest starfire. Its shape was a lotus, its flame-heart a pupil, as though it gazed upon every soul approaching it.
The source of starfire had manifested.
It was neither made by humans nor forged by gods. Rather, over hundreds and thousands of years, the kind thoughts of mortals lighting lamps, the heart flames that Lamp Guarders burned to their last embers, the gratitude of lost souls journeying