Seven days after Lampheart Moon's Source Return, the new branches of the Root of Light Language had grown over ten feet tall. Its silver leaves shone like mirrors, reflecting the stars and moon, while its roots sank deep into the earth veins, and light veins flowed like rivers through the Nine Provinces, ceaselessly, day and night. In the Southern Sea valley, the morning mist had yet to disperse. Patterns of light crept over blades of grass like vines, as though the entire land were whispering.
Xiaoman stood beneath the tree, holding a black stone recovered from the bottom of the Eternal Night Abyss—a fragment of the broken stele at the burial site of Shouyi, the first Lamp Guarder. After a thousand years of wind and snow, its surface had long since become indistinct. Only a single crack remained, shaped like a lamp flame.
"It's time to raise a stele," he said. "Not to commemorate me, but to remember this road home."
Yue Yi and Yunqi came upon hearing the news, followed by seven apprentices, each carrying an ancient lamp. They placed the black stone beside the Root of Light Language and began inscribing it, using heart flame as their guide and Light Glyphs as their ink.
Xiaoman composed the inscription himself, every word seemingly forged in heart flame:
As the final stroke fell, the stele suddenly shuddered. Silver light burst from the crack and spread across its surface like blood vessels, giving rise on its own to intricate light vein patterns that resonated from afar with the light veins within the earth. In that instant, Lamp Arrays throughout the Nine Provinces trembled together, their flames bowing slightly toward the Southern Sea as though paying their respects.
Stranger still, from that day onward, the principal steles of every Guardian Lamp Shop,