The bridge didn't look like much.
Rotten rope. Sun-bleached planks. A chasm beneath so wide it seemed to go on forever. No sounds came from the other side. No birds. No breeze. Just the weight of silence shaped like a dare.
Sim Gwan stared at it.
Baek-Ha checked the ropes.
"If I was paranoid," she muttered, "I'd say this whole thing's a trap."
"You're not paranoid," Sim said.
She glanced at him.
He didn't smile.
Just kept staring across the abyss.
---
They didn't cross.
Not yet.
Instead, they waited by the cliff's edge. Ate dried meat. Boiled old tea.
Then, when the moon reached its highest point.
He arrived.
Not from the trees.
Not from the path.
From the sky.
He dropped like thunder and hit the ground barefoot a man draped in burned robes, skin cracked like old clay, eyes filled with storms.
Baek-Ha rose, weapon half-drawn.
Sim stood slowly.
The man looked at them.
Then exhaled and the wind shifted.
For the first time in days, Sim felt pressure.
Real pressure.
Like the air itself wanted to run.
---
"You're the Veil Root," the man said.
Sim nodded.
The man raised his hand. Lightning crackled at his fingertips not summoned, but remembered.
"I drank the storm once," he said. "Fifty years ago. Took it into my lungs and asked it who I needed to kill to be free."
Baek-Ha whispered, "You're a myth."
He grinned.
"Only because the people who saw me stopped having a will to live."
---
He sat.
Cross-legged. Right in front of the bridge.
Then looked up at Sim.
"I'll let you cross. But only if you answer me."
Sim waited.
"What will you give up to be more than strong?"
Sim blinked.
The man's eyes crackled.
"Not power. Not skill. More than strong. The kind of force that makes kings bend. That makes death wait."
Sim didn't answer right away.
Baek-Ha said, "He's already given up too much."
Sim stepped forward.
"I'll give up fear."
The man laughed. "Already done."
"Then I'll give up my need to win."
The man stopped smiling.
"You'll lose."
"I already have," Sim said. "But if I want to walk a path no one's ever survived, I can't walk like I'm afraid of dying."
The man studied him.
Then looked at Baek-Ha.
"Will you follow him when he's not human anymore?"
She didn't answer.
Not fast enough.
The man stood.
"You may pass," he said.
But Baek-Ha didn't move.
Not immediately.
She watched Sim walk toward the first plank.
Then said, "What if I don't want you to go where I can't follow?"
He stopped.
Turned.
She was shaking.
Just a little.
Enough to see.
She said, "I've killed for you. Lied for you. Bled with you. And I'd do it again. But I need to know if we're walking the same road, or if I'm just carrying your past."
Sim stepped down from the bridge.
Back to her.
Took her face in his hands.
And said:
> "You're not carrying my past.
You're the reason I want a future."
Her eyes filled.
She didn't sob.
Didn't scream.
But the tears came.
And for the first time, she let them.
He held her.
Didn't speak.
Didn't promise.
Just stayed.
Until the wind calmed.
Until her hands stopped trembling.
Until she whispered, "Don't ever become so powerful that I can't reach you."
He nodded.
And whispered back, "Pull me down if I do."
---
They crossed together.
The bridge creaked.
But held.
---
At the other side, the man who drank lightning watched them disappear into the woods.
He smiled once.
Then disappeared with a whisper of static and a smell of rain.
---
[Veil Root Path: Emotional Integration 71% – Barrier Stabilized]
[Mental Core: Bound – Qi Synchronization Strengthened]
---