Spring passed into autumn, cold gave way to heat.
Across the Nine Provinces, change came quietly.
Since that night when "fireseeds shone like stars," countless fireseeds had lain hidden among the people, like seeds entering soil, like rain entering rivers, silent and unseen, yet taking root and sprouting deep within human hearts. At first, they were a solitary lamp, a warm hearth, a glimmer in a child's palm. But when the Myriad People's Heart Flame burned as one across the Nine Provinces, the sparks were no longer alone.
They began to flow together.
One night, on the southern Firefly Plain, the fireseeds in thousands of household hearths trembled at once, as though their hearts shared a secret understanding. In an instant, sparks drifted out through window lattices, from hearths and lamp niches, rising like fireflies and gathering in the night sky, until they formed a burning river—one that scorched no one and burned nothing, only flowed quietly, like the Milky Way suspended upside down across the night skies of the Nine Provinces.
This river had no banks, yet it had a direction; no boats, yet it carried souls.
It flowed through desolate villages, and frozen earth returned to spring;
It swept over ruined cities, and flames sprang from broken walls;
It brushed past prisons, and chains melted on their own;
It passed through academies, and damaged scrolls shone anew.
The people raised their heads, tears falling like rain. "The night watchman's fire... has returned."
In the northern Ironridge Valley, the remnants of the Fire Smith Alliance held their defensible stronghold, using a fire-suppression formation to seal away the people's flames, vainly hoping to reclaim authority over fire. Yet one night, hundreds upon thousands of fireseeds quietly rose from villagers' lapels, beneath their hearths, and under their pillows, gathering like a