Jun moved like a shadow under wind. With the Echo Thread still embedded in his wrist from the altar in Stonewept Hollow, each stride folded the land around him, blending breath and body into one. The Grid pulsed at his back—no longer just a passive system of detection, but a living map of resistance. A guide.
He had crossed into the Bladed Ridge, a sector of Heaven's Gate long avoided by both players and systems. Officially, it was labeled "Terrain Unstable. System Pathing Disabled." In the forums, it was known as the Cradle of the Forgotten—an area so ancient it predated Heaven's Gate's foundational servers.
But the Grid had shown him something more.
A third node.
He followed the signal up a narrow path carved by elemental erosion, where jagged rocks whispered breath patterns and wind carried fragments of chants from dead sects. His steps slowed as he reached a cavern mouth veiled in twisting mist. At the edge of the entrance, the breath flowed not outward—but inward, like the entire cave was inhaling.
He braced himself and entered.
Inside, time felt slower. Not just a latency glitch—something metaphysical. Jun's heartbeat echoed longer, his breath hung in the air like suspended ink. The cave was circular and shallow at first, lined with faint murals of beings whose forms shifted each time he looked. The figures weren't gods, nor monsters. They were cultivators, but unrecognizable—Rootless from ages before the System.
A pulse guided him deeper, down into a narrow tunnel that ended in a sealed door.
The Breath Grid flared in his vision. The node was behind this door.
He placed a palm against the metal.
A sudden rush of breath threw him backward.
The cave trembled.
Words formed—this time not in system text, but carved in real-time along the wall.
"Three may enter. One must stay."
Jun narrowed his eyes. Three?
At that moment, two figures stepped from the shadows at opposite ends of the cave. He hadn't heard them arrive. The Grid hadn't warned him. And yet, they stood there—solid. Rootless.
The first was a woman with ash-gray robes, hair braided with what looked like circuit-wire laced vines. Her eyes flickered with stored echoes.
"Name's Lys," she said, voice sharp but not unfriendly. "System tagged me an error five months ago. I've been hiding in Breath rifts since."
The second was taller, armored in mismatched plates forged from system data and hand-carved stone. His nameplate glitched wildly before stabilizing into: [NullID].
"I was part of the original alpha test," he said. "Before the interface existed. Before the System fully controlled the layers. This place... it remembers us."
Jun nodded. He could sense it now. The Vault's entrance required three Rootless cultivators—three divergences of breath. Not a puzzle, but a resonance threshold. The path would open only when breath flowed in harmony from different echoes.
They didn't speak much after that. Each moved into place instinctively—Jun to the right, Lys to the left, NullID at the center.
They inhaled.
And exhaled.
Together.
The Vault responded. Not with sound, but with weight.
The door slid open.
Inside, the air thickened with old breath—not stale, but potent. It was like entering the lungs of something ancient and living. Stone chambers branched outward in spirals, lined with floating crystals that resonated with subtle tones. At the center, a throne of cracked spirit-iron. A Root Core embedded in its back.
Lys approached it but hesitated. "This isn't just a node," she said. "It's a seed."
Jun stepped forward. The Breath Grid in his vision surged.
Then a vision consumed them.
Not memory. Not system playback.
History.
A garden above the stars. A sect with no interface. Disciples cultivating through dreams and resonance. Before the game. Before the system. Before NexSoul.
Jun's chest tightened.
They weren't anomalies.
They were descendants.
The Seed pulsed with recognition.
Each of them saw a different path open. For Jun, it was a spiral staircase descending beneath the throne. No light. Just beckoning silence.
He looked back at Lys and NullID.
"We each take our path?" he asked.
NullID nodded. "We diverged to reach this point. The Vault honors divergence."
Jun took the first step down.
Each breath echoed louder than the last.
The walls narrowed, then widened again into a chamber filled with suspended symbols—glyphs that floated like jellyfish in deep water. He reached out to touch one and felt a snap.
A memory, not his own, flooded his mind.
A cultivator in the real world, twenty years before Heaven's Gate. Alone in a field, meditating beneath failing street lamps. Cultivating a breath technique that let him see digital waves in natural light.
Then another flash.
The same man, now within a prototype neural dive system, laying the foundation of the Breath Grid through raw spiritual imprinting.
The voice came again.
"You carry his echo. He chose no system. You inherit the last breath."
Then silence.
When Jun awoke, he was standing. The glyphs had vanished.
In his hand: a crystal—not a Root Core, but something purer.
Origin Breath Shard.
It pulsed not with system energy, but with memory, blood, and will.
As he ascended, the Vault whispered one last message.
"One shall stay."
Lys was gone.
NullID nodded slowly, leaning against a wall, eyes dimming. "She gave herself. The Vault needed a final breath anchor. It's the only way to keep the path open."
Jun said nothing.
Some prices were paid in silence.
Outside the Vault, the Breath Grid flared with new clarity. A fourth node revealed itself, far across the land—beneath a city already under full system control.
His next path would lead him to the Core Server Citadel.
And it would no longer be a journey of breath alone.
The system was preparing for war.
And so was he.