On the thirty-seventh day after the hundredth year of the Light Language Era, a strange phenomenon appeared on Lampheart Plain in the far north.
That night was the eve of the Homecoming Ritual. Light Language envoys from across the Nine Provinces gathered around the moon-shaped lamp array, quietly awaiting the rise of Lampheart Moon. Yet the heavens remained still, and the earth's veins stirred not at all. Only the distant Eternal Night Abyss—that ancient ice crevasse even Lampheart Moon's light could not penetrate—gave off a thread of faint light.
Exceedingly thin, exceedingly weak, yet steady as a heartbeat.
It held neither the heat of a Heart Flame lamp nor the radiance of a Light Language stele. Instead, it resembled a dying lamp that refused to go out, stubbornly breathing amid boundless darkness.
"That is... impossible." Yunqi, the elderly Light Language envoy, frowned. "The Eternal Night Abyss is where the first Lamp Guarders' bones lie buried. For a thousand years, not even light dust has been able to linger there."
But Yue Yi smiled. "That is precisely why someone should go."
She brought no lamp array, carried no token, and set out alone through the snow. After three days and three nights crossing ice storms and crevasses, she finally found the source of that faint light at the bottom of the Eternal Night Abyss.
—a child of about six, curled beside a fallen stone stele, clutching a battered clay lamp. Its oil was nearly spent and its wick trembled, yet it never went out. With his small, frozen hands, the child wiped its shade over and over, saying softly:
"Grandma said the lamp mustn't go out.
If it does, Grandpa won't be able to find his way home."
Yunqi later recalled, "That was no lamp. It was a longing made tangible.