Year fourteen of the Firefolk Era, Beginning of Summer.
Morning came to the Gray Ridge Village Children's School with the thin mist still lingering. Beneath the eaves, wind chimes made of broken lamps rang softly, like whispers of starfire. A Ya sat on the threshold, her fingertips gently toying with a battered clay lamp—the lamp Little Bean had once used. Cracks webbed its body, and its wick had been cold for years.
Yet today, the lamp's body had grown faintly warm.
The blind girl A Mian played her zither and sang the old tune of the "Lamp Guarder." When she reached "A lamp no bigger than a bean lights the long night through," A Ya suddenly looked up, her lips stirring as though she wanted to say something. She had been silent since childhood, never speaking a word, and everyone in the village believed she had been born mute. Yet now, a faint, trembling note rose from her throat, like a flame first kindled—soft, but clear.
She opened her mouth and finally uttered two words:
"Light lamps."
Her voice was barely audible, yet seemed to carry the weight of a thousand mountains. In an instant, every wind chime beneath the eaves trembled, and a crimson-gold flame sprang unbidden from the clay lamp's ruined wick. Its heart was like a bud, slowly unfurling.
A Ya had spoken.
Stranger still, as her words fell, the ground shuddered faintly, and a low hum rose from deep within the earth's veins, as though someone were answering. Su Li urgently summoned a Mechanism Envoy to examine the veins and discovered that the Ruins-Return Fire Vein fluctuated with A Ya's words—her voice could resonate with the fire vein.
"She isn't speaking," Su Li said, watching the flowing fire patterns in the mechanism mirror. "She's—talking to fire."