At sixteen thousand deep-water lengths below the volcano bowl lip, the liquid aether ceased to be uniform in color.
It had transformed into a huge, suspended galaxy of baby light. A glowing nursery where eighty-four thousand dormant stars drifted through the ultramarine deep like glowing pearls of liquid fire. These were not the burning sun-hot furnaces of the old sky. They were the pure, spiritual seeds of stars, each no larger than an apricot, glowing with soft, rainbow-bright hues of amber, rose, violet, and sapphire. They turned upon their axes with silent, rhythmic perfection, each humming with the delicate, bell-like hum of a newborn world awaiting its hour of ascension into the upper heavens.
According to the ancient sky-high scrolls preserved in the bronze archives of the First Heaven, Sovereign Tai Xuan had gathered these sky embers from the ruins of the Nine Palaces during the final hours of the Great Flooding. When the cosmic vaults cracked and the ancient rain began to drown the continents, the sovereign had wrapped each spark in a membrane of dried stellar dew, sealing its radiant core against the drowning waters. For three full epochs, these eighty-four thousand embers had slept within the deep water tanks of the Ark, waiting for a map maker whose feet knew the ancient channels to sound the path of their release.
