Year 123 of the Light-Dust Calendar, the Spring Equinox was approaching.
Across the Nine Provinces, lamplight wove a tapestry, Light Dust flowed like a river, and the pulse of the Source of Starfire had fallen into rhythm with humanity's breathing. Yet in those forgotten corners—abandoned mountain villages, lonely desert towns, submerged bridgeheads, burned academies—faint lights still hovered on the verge of extinction, memories lay like dust, and no one gathered them up.
And so, a new generation of Lamp Guarders set out.
They carried no scepters and wore no sharp blades, bearing only an old Clay Lamp Bag containing three things: a small lamp, a scroll of plain paper, and a Light-Dust Crystal Core. They walked among the people, not to preach, not to save the world, but only to tell—
To tell of forgotten kindness, of lamps never recorded, of ordinary souls who had once illuminated the darkness.
They were called—Lamp Storytellers.
Their leader was a young woman named Zhaoming, meaning "to reveal clarity through light." She had grown up in an old alley, listening to all her grandfather's stories of the Blind-Eyed Old Woman, and had once sworn before the Light-Dust Stele, "If the light is about to die, I will be its voice."
She and her companions set out on their journey, leaving footprints throughout the Nine Provinces.
They went to Lampless Town in the Northern Border—a small frontier town abandoned because of war. Broken walls littered the town, and only a collapsed lighthouse stood alone amid the wind and snow. The townspeople had long since moved away; legend said that here, "souls never return, and lamps never shine."
Zhaoming lit a clay lamp in the center of the ruins and sat cross-legged for seven days, neither eating nor speaking, save for a whisper each night:
"Let