In the West, the guardians of light are creatures of motion. Helios drives his chariot across the heavens, his horses burning with the fire of dawn. Apollo follows in his golden wake, carrying music and reason through the turning of the hours. Even Lucifer, the light-bearer, once rose radiant before his fall, his brilliance too proud to fade. To the Western mind, light is born through movement—its power measured by how far it travels, how fiercely it burns.
But in the East, there is a light that does not move.
Far in the northern reaches, beyond where day and night have meaning, there dwells a being older than memory itself—the Candle Dragon, Zhu Long.
His body coils across the horizon, immense and silent, his scales glowing faintly like embers in the dark. When his eyes open, the world awakens to daylight. When they close, night descends and the stars emerge from hiding. His breath stirs the winds; his stillness governs the rhythm of time.
Once, a mortal sage set out to find him. The journey lasted a thousand days across frozen plains and shadowed valleys, until at last the sage reached the edge of the world. There, he saw the dragon lying against the sky, so vast that clouds drifted between his scales and mountains curved along his spine.
The sage knelt and called out, "Great One, you who rule the light and the dark—how do you endure eternity?"
Zhu Long opened his eyes. The dawn flared, washing the world in gold. He did not speak; his silence was older than language. In that moment, the sage understood: to sustain the world is not to live freely, but to exist without end—to breathe so that others may live, to guard the rhythm of creation without ever resting within it.
The Candle Dragon remains at the edge of the world, eyes opening and closing in endless rhythm. With each breath, the seasons turn. With each blink, another day begins and ends. And somewhere, beneath the sky's quiet pulse, eternity sighs.