The night Lan Gu was born, the rain never fell. Thunder rolled across the valley, but the clouds held their water as if Heaven itself were waiting. When the baby finally cried, nine faint lights blinked through the storm. The elders murmured that Heaven had marked him; his mother only held him tighter, unsure whether to feel blessed or afraid.
By the time Lan Gu could walk, he spent more hours staring upward than most farmers did tending their fields. Above Star-Hollow Village stretched the same pattern every soul knew: nine distant stars, dim beads of light that marked the beginning of every life's road. All cultivators started from the Ninth Star, weakest and farthest from Heaven's heart. With training, a star would draw nearer Eighth, Seventh, Sixth until, in legend, only the First remained, blazing beside the sun.
Children repeated the rhyme without understanding it. To them the Nine Stars were bedtime comfort, proof that Heaven watched over the world.
To Lan Gu, they were questions.
If the stars moved, who moved them?If one could reach Heaven, what waited there?
He asked his mother once. She laughed softly and brushed his hair. "When your own star begins to fall, you'll understand, Gu'er."
When Lan Gu was seven, the sky answered in a way no one expected.
He was helping his father carry water from the terrace pond when the air thickened, warm and heavy. The oxen stopped mid-stride and knelt; even the wind stilled. From far beyond the eastern ridge came a single, drawn-out sound half thunder, half song.
Then came light.
A column of radiance burst through the clouds and speared the heavens, flooding the valley in silver. Every shadow vanished. The villagers gasped and fell to their knees.
"Someone has broken through to the Eighth Star!" shouted the old headman, voice shaking. "He stands one step from the heavens themselves!"
Lan Gu froze. He had never seen light so pure. Inside the glare he thought he glimpsed a shape a figure, impossibly distant, wreathed in flame and starlight, ascending.
The glow lasted only a moment before fading into drizzle. The adults stayed bowed, murmuring prayers. They feared the power that could call down Heaven's gaze; too much brilliance often invited calamity.
But Lan Gu couldn't look away from the fading sky.
"How high must one climb," he whispered, "for the heavens to answer?"
His father laughed uneasily. "Higher than we'll ever go. Be content with the Ninth Star, son. The First Star has shone for only twelve people since the dawn of history."
Lan Gu nodded, but the words didn't stay. The image of that beam carved itself behind his eyes the road of light between earth and sky.
That night, he lay awake listening to rain on the roof. Each drop felt like a heartbeat from the world above. When he closed his eyes, he saw his own nine faint stars spinning slowly inside his mind. For the first time, one trembled, as if answering the memory of that pillar.
He reached out to it in his thoughts. The air around him quivered, and a faint spark answered at his fingertips before fading.
Lan Gu smiled.
Someday, he promised himself, I'll see that light again. And when I do, I'll follow it.
Outside, the clouds drifted apart, revealing the nine watchful stars. One flickered twice, then stilled perhaps coincidence, perhaps omen. In the quiet house of Star Hollow, a child fell asleep dreaming of the road that would one day defy the sky.