The night had settled, but Ming Yue's heart had not.
She lay awake long after the fireworks faded, her fingers brushing the rose-gold mask resting on her bedside table. Her light blue eyes remained fixed on the ceiling, where flickering shadows mimicked dancing flame.
His words echoed still: "Some stories begin before names."
And his touch—brief, charged—had burned not her skin, but her certainty.
I am not strong enough, she thought.
Not yet.
At dawn, Qi Longwei summoned her to the ancestral library.
Chandeliers shaped like phoenix wings cast feathered shadows upon gold-lined shelves. At the room's centre stood a ceremonial lectern, carved with the sigils of the Four Royal Clans.
Ming Yue entered dressed in a training robe of deep crimson. Her maroon curls, loosely braided, swayed as she bowed to her father.
"Education begins not with answers," Longwei said, "but with questions. And you, Ming Yue, have begun asking the right ones."
Three tutors entered behind him.
One bore the seal of the Fire Temple, carrying scrolls inscribed with battle chants.
One laid out rune stones glowing with elemental codes.
The third, in emerald robes embroidered with vine and flower motifs, walked with a serenity that silenced the flame.
Ming Yue's gaze lingered on her—on the glowing emerald ring pulsing gently on her hand.
The tutor met her eyes, then bowed.
"I am here to teach the language of spirit," she said. "Where fire must learn to listen."
Over the following days, Ming Yue studied fervently.
She memorized elemental theory, spiritual resonance, and bloodline history. Yet one scroll puzzled her—bound in emerald silk and held within a subtle ward.
She opened it late one evening.
Inside: drawings of vine-woven crests, lullabies etched in nature-script, and descriptions of the Sylvan Kin—a lineage older than scripture, attuned not to beasts, but to spirit and bloom.
At the top, a sketch of a woman in a peach robe… voluminous curls… emerald ring aglow.
"Mother," Ming Yue whispered.
Qian Fei stepped quietly into the candlelight, her presence calm as spring rain.
"Some power is loud," she said softly. "Mine is quiet. But no less true."
She touched her daughter's brow, fingers brushing the phoenix sigil.
"I was born of the Sylvan Kin. And you, my love, now walk with both legacies."
Ming Yue stood in the moon garden later that night, watching Qi Shen Fei coax butterflies into landing on his shoulder with playful whistles.
"Did you know?" she asked.
"About Mother?" He grinned. "Kind of. I just thought she smelled like flowers and knew everything."
"You carry it too," she murmured.
Qi Shen Fei shrugged. "If you say so. Maybe that's why animals like me better than nobles."
Ming Yue smiled.
The masked stranger had shown her what she lacked.
Her tutors were showing her what she held.
And her mother—what she might one day become.
Some power begins with flame.
Some, with forest.
But the strongest… begin with both.