The Depth Weave was unlike any zone Jun had ever encountered in Heaven's Gate Online. A no-man's-land beneath the surface of the now-broken Nexus Prime, the area was cloaked in an oppressive silence that devoured ambient sound. Buildings half-swallowed by the digital ground rose like skeletal hands clawing at a sky full of corrupted clouds. The data here was fractured, as if reality itself had glitched so deeply that it had rewritten its own foundations.
Jun stood at the lip of the broken city, his feet mere inches from a vast drop into what had once been a metro line—now a deep ravine of half-rendered terrain and cascading script errors. Above him, no interface hovered. No quest prompts. No map markers. Just the weight of the Breathless Path guiding him forward.
His robes—stitched together from fragments of system-neutral gear—fluttered lightly, their weave infused with subtle Breath channels he had etched manually. The seams still hurt his hands; cultivating without the System meant even crafting your armor drew blood.
He stepped forward, each motion deliberate. The soil beneath him shimmered faintly where his foot pressed into it, leaving behind a quiet glow. It wasn't magic. It was the raw imprint of Breath—a subtle art lost to all but the Rootless. Without a system interface to auto-correct balance, to optimize muscle memory or calibrate joint movement, every action had to be mastered physically. Organically.
Deeper into the Depth Weave, Jun began seeing signs of others. Not people—but remnants. Frozen animations, soft loops of old death scenes. Corpses of players and Admin avatars alike lay in bizarre, looping stutters. One Admin-class body hung suspended in midair, its glowing armor flickering on and off, its sword permanently caught in the middle of a swing. There were no system logs to explain what had happened. Just emptiness and stillness.
Jun knelt beside a broken shard of a player core—a prismatic fragment used in System-based revivals. This one had long since bled out of charge. But the way it was cracked... it wasn't combat damage. It was forceful detachment.
He sighed. "They tried to bypass the Firewall," he muttered. "And they failed."
The tunnel ahead shimmered.
A glowing red veil stretched across the entrance like a curtain made of living code. It pulsed with heat and malice, its texture shifting in fractal patterns. Jun felt it before he saw it—a low, static buzz in his teeth, the taste of scorched data on his tongue.
[WARNING: Unauthorized Access Detected] [Firewall Protocol: Breath Signature Mismatch]
Jun had no system signature. That was the point.
He closed his eyes. The Iron Rain technique pulsed gently in his lungs, regulating his flow of Breath. No Qi circuits, no interface bindings. He had spent weeks aligning his physical breathing with the chaotic rhythm of his internal flow.
He placed a hand on the Firewall. Pain flared. The heat was real. Even through the neural filter of the VR rig, it felt like his skin was blistering.
He exhaled.
A silent breath—not outward, but inward. A collapse of his focus into his own center. He didn't resist the heat. He became part of it. The technique: Mirror Flow Exhale. One of the first true Rootless methods he'd unlocked.
The Firewall parted like fog. Not cracked, not broken—acknowledged. Jun walked through.
The air shifted. Instantly.
Beyond the Firewall lay the Core Echo Garden. It was not a garden in the traditional sense, but a digital sanctum designed as a failed dev test area. Script-lotus blossoms floated midair in clusters. Pools of glowing data formed patterns in the ground—runes too old to be part of the modern codebase.
At the center stood an altar. Atop it, suspended in pale violet light, was a new shard.
[Manual Node Detected] [Echo Bloom Initiation Form Available]
Description: A foundational technique of the Breathless Path. Allows passive absorption of ambient Breath. Unavailable to System Users. Requires Internal Node Attunement.
Slot Assigned: 5/12
Jun approached reverently. As his fingers brushed the shard, a tremor of energy flowed through him. Not pain, not warmth—recognition. The shard responded not to his intent, but his breath. It synchronized with his rhythm.
Suddenly, knowledge surged into him. Not data. Not files. But impressions. Movements. The silent techniques of a lost era: shifting between realities, weaving paths across glitched terrain, rewriting small portions of the Breath Grid.
He staggered.
And that's when he heard it.
Footsteps.
He turned sharply, instinctively lowering his center of gravity, channeling his breath.
From the mist walked a figure clad in synth-wool robes the color of deep dusk. His hair was silver-white, slicked back. Mirrored eyewear covered his face, reflecting Jun's tense stance.
"Jun, isn't it?" the man said. "You're earlier than I expected."
Jun didn't answer. He was already trying to scan the figure's breath pattern—but it felt like nothing. Not hidden. Absent.
The man chuckled. "Relax. I'm not here to purge you."
Jun narrowed his eyes. "You're Rootless?"
The man inclined his head. "Name's Elias Grimm. You may have heard of me. Or not. Your generation has a short memory."
Jun's mind raced. Elias Grimm. He'd seen that name before in Mira's briefing. A former NexSoul developer turned rogue. Vanished after the Breath Grid system had been launched.
"What are you doing here?" Jun asked.
"What are you doing here?" Elias countered. He waved around the surreal garden. "This place wasn't meant for anyone anymore. It's an echo. A data scar."
"I'm walking the Breathless Path."
Elias smiled faintly. "Then you're braver than most. Or more foolish."
Jun stiffened. "Which are you?"
Elias took a step forward, and the air between them pulsed. A sigil ignited behind him—a Rootless-tier technique, but warped. The runes spiraled inward instead of out, and his breath... it felt hungry.
"We took different branches," Elias said. "I walk the Devourer's Arc. The System corrupted it before I did. You're still on the True Breath Flow."
Jun gritted his teeth. "And you're trying to bring the system down from the inside? Or just feeding off it?"
Elias gave him a measured look. "The System can't be destroyed. But it can be... rewritten. Re-architected. With Rootless techniques like these, the rules are bendable. And those who know the Breath Grid's language can hijack it."
"You're not trying to master the Dao. You're trying to control the code."
"Isn't that the same thing in a digital world?" Elias asked, almost amused. "What is cultivation but the rewriting of your existence at a higher syntax?"
Jun didn't answer. His breath stayed calm, but his spine was rigid.
"I'm not here to fight you," Elias said. "Not yet. But there are others coming. Rootless, yes. But twisted. Hacked. Some don't even breathe anymore. Just... loop."
Jun felt a cold chill crawl up his neck. Mira had warned him. There were Rootless who had walked the path not for enlightenment but for domination. And some had succeeded.
"Why show yourself to me?" Jun asked.
"Because I need a partner. Or a backup. Or maybe a mirror. The war is coming, and I don't want to be the only one left when the Breath Grid collapses."
A moment passed.
Jun lowered his hands. "Then help me train. Share your techniques. We survive together."
Elias's smile faded. "It doesn't work that way. The Breathless Path must be earned. What I give, I corrupt. What you take, you must forge."
"Then don't give. Challenge me."
Elias paused. Then nodded once. "Next time we meet, consider this pact formed."
He turned, the mist swallowing him.
Jun stood alone again, the Echo Bloom pulsing faintly in his core.
And somewhere far above, the System shuddered.