Osaka stirred slowly beneath a pale morning sky, mist drifting between its steel bones. Light filtered through the curtains of Jun's apartment, cutting clean lines across the floor where he sat in silence.
He'd been awake for hours.
Not in the insomniac haze of before—not the desperate kind where thoughts buzzed like hornets and everything inside him felt too loud. This stillness was different. It was quiet, but full. A tension, like the breath right before a strike. The kind of silence that held meaning.
Minase stood behind him, her arms crossed, half-shrouded in steam from the tea kettle. Her usual sarcasm was absent. She understood what was happening, even if Jun himself didn't fully grasp it yet.
His first Root had taken form the night before—not through code or implants or system assistance, but through breath.
It wasn't something he could explain. It had no name.
But it was there.
A pulse behind the ribs. A pressure in the chest. A sensation like his entire being had stepped forward, slightly ahead of his body.
The Breath Training
"Again," Minase said simply.
Jun inhaled slowly, diaphragm expanding outward like a rising tide.
The silk cloth around his chest grew taut, a marker of consistency and control. At the peak of his breath, he paused.
Held.
Time seemed to stretch in that fragile pause.
And then—
Exhale. Steady. Controlled.
It wasn't meditation. Not in the popular sense. There was no soothing voice, no guided visualization. This was harsher. Closer to training. Closer to war.
His breaths came slower now. Deeper. More refined.
He had read old manuals—translated scrolls buried in corners of the net: "Guiding Qi through the Dragon Channels," "Stillness as Strength," "Three Breaths, Three Thousand Miles."
But reading did little.
Only repetition—deliberate and disciplined—gave results.
His pulse no longer raced. His limbs no longer shook. Something fundamental was changing, and it wasn't just mental clarity. His body was adapting.
Real-World Consequences
It began with pain.
A dull ache in his shoulders. A soreness beneath his ribs. Headaches that flared right behind his eyes when his breath held too long.
"You're unlocking systems your body never knew it had," Minase told him. "There are meridians not even mapped by modern medicine. The old cultivators called it 'bone singing.' It hurts when energy first stirs."
He didn't question it. The pain meant something was happening.
At night, he dreamed of vast white landscapes. Of breath turning into wind. Of fire moving under his skin.
And during the day, he grew sharper.
He could hear conversations outside the window more clearly.
Feel changes in the air pressure before the kettle whistled.
And when he watched old match replays from Heaven's Gate Online, he could suddenly predict movements half a second before they occurred.
Not from intuition.
From rhythm.
Breath had given him rhythm.
The Mirror Flame Wakes
Jun sat down across from his pod again. It hummed quietly, a sleeping beast.
He hadn't re-entered Heaven's Gate since the Breath Sync.
But he could feel his brother on the other side.
More than that—the flame.
Something about it had lodged itself in him.
A resonance.
"You can cultivate from this side now," Minase said, kneeling beside him. "Very few ever have. Breath is the bridge. The pod only magnifies what's already there."
Jun placed his palm on the top panel.
A faint warmth rose from the metal.
His own root pulsed once, lightly. The flicker of a mirror flame echoed in his chest.
It was weak, but it was there.
Observation and Threat
Elsewhere, far beyond Jun's cramped apartment, servers trembled.
In a private data center owned by Sol-ViCorp, three security analysts stared at their screens.
"Another Breath Sync?" one muttered.
"Same user pattern. Jun Kawamoto. Logged out, but... the neural residue is still present."
"Is that even possible without a direct uplink?"
"Technically no. But these Rootless guys are doing things the system can't account for."
They logged it.
Flagged it.
But didn't delete it.
Yet.
From Ash to Spark
Night fell again.
Jun stood on the roof of his apartment, wind tugging at his jacket.
He breathed.
Not for practice.
Not for the root.
But because it was part of him now.
He could feel the world breathing back.
Below him, Osaka moved like a river of lights and quiet ambition. So many people driven by code. System enhancements. Pings. Alerts. Metrics.
And here he was.
Breathing against it.
No System. No augmentation.
Just breath.
And in that breath, a spark.
He closed his eyes.
And the flame woke again.