In each village, they were met with curiosity, then joy. In the Dust Flats, a group of farmers gave them a basket of fresh fruit—“the first good harvest in years,” they said. In the Sky Villages, floating settlements built on repurposed starships, children followed them, begging to hear stories of the battle with the Colossus.
But their final stop was Luminara—the village where Confucius had been born, where his mother had died. It was still in ruins, but peasants had begun rebuilding, their huts smaller than before, but sturdier, their walls etched with the Nine Li Scripts instead of Lord Vex Ji’s symbols.
A woman approached them, her hair streaked with gray, her face familiar. “You’re the boy who ran,” she said, her voice trembling. “The one with the scrolls.”
Confucius nodded. “I’m Confucius. This is Lila.”
“I’m Mei,” the woman said. “I was your mother’s friend. She talked about you. How you’d be the one to fix things.”
He pulled the six scrolls from his satchel, spreading them on a flat stone. “She was the brave one. She gave me these. They’re yours now. All of yours.”
Mei knelt, running her fingers over the words. “We heard rumors. About Y-Zone Prime. About the Colossus. We didn’t dare hope.”
“Hope is the first step,” Confucius said, smiling.
That night, they built a fire in the center of the village, and Confucius read from the scrolls, his voice carrying over the flames. And soon the peasants were reading along, their voices rising in a chorus.
As the fire died down, Confucius walked to the edge of the village, where his mother’s hut had stood. He pulled the quantum bow from his back, nocked an arrow, and fired it into the sky. It sailed upward, trailing blue light—the same color as the scrolls’ vortex—before exploding into a shower of sparks.
For you, he thought. For Taren. For all of us.
Lila appeared beside him, her bow in hand. “What’s next?”
He looked at the horizon, where the pink nebula sky blazed like a promise. “We keep going. There are more villages. More scrolls to share. More stories to tell.”
She smiled. “Then let’s go.”
They walked into the dawn, their bows slung across their backs, the scrolls safe in their satchels. Behind them, Luminara’s peasants began rebuilding, their laughter mixing with the sound of hammering—a new world, being built one stone, one word, one arrow at a time.