In the one hundred and sixtieth year of the Lightdust Era, just after the Spring Equinox, the Nine Provinces welcomed the third year of the Speech Lamp Festival. The light of lantern language in Sunken Ship Bay now flowed as steadily as a river of stars, and the Lamp Speech Hall beneath Old Book Cliff had grown from a solitary pavilion into Heartfire Academies throughout the Nine Provinces. People no longer treated lamplight merely as a symbol of remembrance. They had truly learned to—convey words through light and carry emotions through fire.
Zhaoming was now past sixty, her temples white as snow, yet her eyes remained as clear as a newly kindled wick. She no longer traveled far, but sat quietly in the Lamp Speech Hall, taking disciples and teaching them, nurturing a new generation of Light Speakers. Yet she gave these disciples a new name—
Heartfire Messengers.
"Light Speakers convey voices, while Heartfire Messengers convey feelings," Zhaoming said on the first day of lessons. "What you must deliver is not merely words, but love left unspoken, guilt pent up for years, forgotten promises, and—the possibility of reconciliation."
Her first disciples came from all across the Nine Provinces:
- A mute boy from the Northern Border, who had lost his family to war and had not spoken for ten years;
- A remorseful merchant from the Western Desert, who had once destroyed a village for profit and now wanted only to atone;
- A withdrawn fisherwoman from the Southern Sea, who had closed off her heart after her lover died in a shipwreck;
- And an orphan from the former site of the Heart Lantern Tower, who had grown up before its stele, yet did not know whose descendant he was.
The first lesson Zhaoming taught them was not Lighting