In the ruins of the Northern Desert, windblown sand cut like knives.
Beneath the yellow sands, ruins buried for ten thousand years quietly emerged. There were no magnificent halls, no Dou Qi runes, only rows of gray-white stone steles standing like gravestones. Their surfaces bore no words, yet gray mist faintly swirled over them, as though the entire land were breathing in its sleep.
Lin Yan stepped into this place with light, measured strides, yet every step left a scorched-black mark in the sand—not from burning, but from purification. The will flame true blaze within him stirred restlessly, instinctively rejecting the faint breath of ash in the air.
"This place... isn't a ruin," he murmured. "It's a graveyard."
"What lies buried here isn't corpses. It's a civilization."
He walked deeper into the ruins and finally found a circular stone altar at their center. A vast star chart was carved into its surface. At the center of the chart lay a mass of gray flame, and within its heart, a tiny crystalline seed hovered silently, pulsing faintly like a heartbeat.
"The grayfire seed..." Lin Yan's pupils narrowed slightly. "It's... alive?"
Suddenly, the stone altar trembled, the star chart lit up, and an ancient voice rang out in the void:
"We are the Emberfolk, born in ashes, dead in oblivion."
"We believe in no emperor, no fire, no fate."
"We believe—fire can rise from ashes, and spent flames can burn again."
"The Mortal Flame Era? Merely the prelude to another cycle."
"True fire never resides in the palm, but in—the places no one remembers."
Lin Yan abruptly raised his head. "You... are a civilization older than the Dou Di?"
"We are fire's earliest form." The voice grew faint. "We feed on oblivion and follow the path of annihilation."
"**You shattered the Emperor