Year Eleven of the Firefolk Era, Cold Clothes Festival.
Across the Nine Provinces, frost-laden winds began to rise, and every household lit a "Kin-Remembrance Lamp" outside its door, sending longing through fire and love through light. Apart from the Everlasting Light Festival, this was the warmest festival—not to commemorate heroes or praise great deeds, but for those who had once held our hands, soothed us to sleep, and tucked our blankets around us on cold nights.
That night, Starfire Envoy Qing Ci reached the outskirts of Gray Ridge Village and saw lamplight flickering before a family's window. Within the flame, a kindly face appeared—it was an old woman from the village who had died three years before. A child knelt before the lamp and whispered, "Grandma, I've learned to make ginger soup. Have a sip." As the child spoke, a bowl of hot soup was slowly poured into the fire.
The firelight suddenly brightened, and the face gave a faint smile, like wind brushing the surface of water, then vanished.
Qing Ci stood stunned in the snow, her heart jolting.
It had not been her imagination. The next day, at Boat Isle Harbor, A He also saw a fisherwoman keeping vigil over a lamp. The figure of her husband, who had died in battle, appeared within it. The fisherwoman gently stroked the flame, her tears falling like stars. "When you left, you said that as long as the lamp never went out, you would still be here. I believed you, and I waited." The flame danced softly, as though answering.
On the third day, while Su Li was restoring the inscriptions on a Fire Vein stele at Ironridge Pass, she suddenly felt warmth behind her. Turning, she saw a lone, ownerless lamp kindle itself. Within it appeared a white-haired elder