Year thirteen of the Firefolk Era, Grain Rain.
Spring rain pattered down upon the Nine Provinces, nourishing all things without a sound. The Starfire Envoy A He arrived at the Children's School in Gray Ridge Village and saw a group of children gathered around the stove, listening to the blind girl A Mian tell the story of the "Lamp Guarders." When she reached the part where Little Bean leaped into the fissure and Mute Uncle became snow to guard the lamp, the children closed their eyes in rapt attention, tear tracks still wet on their faces.
Deep into the night, the rain stopped.
As she kept watch, A He suddenly saw the lamplight inside the Children's School sway without a breeze. A tiny clay lamp had lit itself—the flame was faint, yet it clearly revealed the figure of a child curled up in a dream. The child's name was A Ya, and she was only seven. Her parents had died in the cold waves of the old world, and the villagers had raised her since infancy. Usually quiet and reserved, she loved only to gather fragments of broken lamps, string them into wind chimes, and hang them beneath the eaves.
But at that moment, she was Lighting the Lamp in her dream.
Her little hands trembled slightly beneath the bedding. A speck of crimson light shone through her fingertips as she gently reached into empty air, as though lighting something. The flame swayed with her movements and actually formed a phantom lamp in the air—a lamp that had never existed, its body like a bud just opening, its wick beating like a heart.
A He held her breath and probed it with her Heart Flame. She sensed an utterly pure "will to burn"—not anger, not sorrow, not fixation, but **an