In Ash Kiln Village, dawn came as it always had.
Wisps of cooking smoke rose from the chimneys of thatched cottages, curling and swirling into the pale golden morning light. Roosters crowed, dogs barked, children played, women called their children home to eat, and old oxen plodded along the field ridges—everything was as usual, as though the "Sequence-Burning War" that had shaken the Nine Provinces was merely a legend, as though the beginning of the "mortal flame era" was no more than an ordinary turning of heaven and earth.
Yet those who paid close attention noticed—strange phenomena kept appearing.
The water in the old well at the village entrance was no longer murky. Instead, it shimmered with a faint crimson-gold sheen, even glowing softly at night, like stars sunk to the bottom. At some unknown point, intricate flame patterns had appeared on the stone mortar beside the well. They were not carved by human hands, but seemed to have grown naturally. Whenever the moon was full, those patterns pulsed gently like a heartbeat.
Before the Trial Stele, although the Flame Blade once embedded at its base had become a new stele in the Northern Desert, wisps of warm, gentle crimson-gold mist seeped from the cracks across its surface, like breaths, like whispers. At night, children who sat quietly before the stele would dream of a boundless sea of fire. Within that sea stood a hazy figure with his back turned, as though waiting for someone.
"Grandpa, I dreamed of a sea of fire..." a seven-year-old girl told her grandfather upon waking. "That person said... 'The time is almost here.'"
The old village physician's hand trembled at her words. His medicine bowl fell to the ground and shattered.
He stared at the girl's palm—there, a feeble flame was quietly kindling, crimson-gold