Well, good job, me.
Shin stood quietly at the center of the tower's exit platform, electricity still pulsing faintly along his gauntlet—or well, whatever this thing was. The wind didn't move here. Time barely did either.
But he'd done it. Again, He had done the impossible—this time by somehow fooling an alien god with half-assed truths and a slippery tongue. Phew. He knew that all those hours of practicing conversation amounted to something.
What would people think if they knew you could use social skills like this? I might've just solved the antisocial issue of the century. I should get a medal for that.
Still, the celebration could wait. After all, he was now an "ambitious sage who could steer even the gods." He couldn't afford to break character now, not when the act has yet to finish.
A pulse ran through the floor. The tower—or rather Lightning- was waiting for his decision. Shin exhaled softly, half to himself: "Ok, so where do I return to?"
Yep. It was the climber's deluxe travel package. Clear a tower, and get a one-time, all-world free pass to wherever your crazy self wants to go. And, as a bonus, you can take everything the tower holds with you. Huh, truly a great deal.
His instinct said home. His body, tired and strained, longed for a bed.
But before the words could leave his lips, he realized the problem. He'd arrived in Venezuela with a legal passport. There were customs, records, entry stamps, and so on.
If he suddenly appeared in his apartment again without crossing back through the airport, it would raise questions—questions he couldn't quite answer. In the best-case scenario, he would face an immigration violation; in the worst case, it could even result in international surveillance.
He ran a hand through his hair.
Oh man. I didn't think that far ahead.
How could he make such a stupid mistake? He'd known about the teleportation reward—this should have been the first issue he thought about.
Was I really so greedy that I stopped thinking straight?
Shin didn't mind greed. No, it was perhaps more accurate to say he worshiped it. Since youth, he believed success demanded it—unless you had absurd luck. Only someone willing to chase every possible gain could overcome impossible odds. That conviction was rooted so deeply in Shin's mind that he rarely stopped to question it.
But the moment greed could cloud his own judgment? Now that was a problem—a problem he would thoroughly think about later. Of course, he didn't really have time for that right now.
His eyes swept over the vault—the scattered fragments, the humming cores, the fizzled shards that still bled faint sparks. Some looked worthless, others impossibly rare. All of them were potentially valuable. Perhaps even Irreplaceable.
Should I just leave it all? They're broken anyway— probably not worth the risk. But the thought left a bitter taste. Walking away felt wrong.
Then the voice returned—not loud, but steady, like a circuit answering a delayed signal.
"You do not need to leave them behind."
Shin turned, startled more by the timing than the message. Lightning's presence remained intangible, just a resonance vibrating faintly in the static. "That ring on your finger is not jewelry. It is a gate. A pocket of space. It is a container shaped from the folds between dimensions."
"Hmm… is that so?"
He glanced down at the silver-blue band. It looked inert, yet now he could feel it—a vast emptiness lying within. "A dimensional ring," he murmured. "That's what you meant."
"You may call it such. It can store what you deem necessary—limited only by your control, not its design."
So it wasn't just for show. This was made to carry divine tools.
He moved quickly, storing the most stable fragments—rods, cores, crystalline parts that might someday prove useful. He didn't know what any of it did, but his instincts told him some were worth keeping. When he finished, he hesitated; a single question still lingered in his thoughts.
"Lightning," he said quietly, "this teleportation… what is it, really? Some sorts of space warping? Or is it just raw speed, like transmitting movement across distance?"
The answer came after a brief, thoughtful silence.
"It is not motion. It is alignment."
"You don't cross distance. You pass through the space between forms—the seam where shape and presence blur to one."
Shin narrowed his eyes. "Another dimension?"
"Yes. One that underlies all others—the breath beneath creation, the lattice that binds all power together."
Shin realized it instantly—the realm of divine energy.
"In that case," he exhaled, "take me the long way."
"Explain."
"Don't just drop me back where I came from. Take me to the same location—but circle around the world first. The opposite path."
A pause. "…Why?"
"Curiosity," Shin said. "Just curiosity."
He really was curious about what this dimension looked like.Thinking back, he'd had several strange dreams since the day he cleared the Wind Tower. Though "dreams" might've been the wrong word— referring to them as impressions was more accurate.
A boundless darkness, yet not black. A color, with no name, if it even was a color. He never managed to see it clearly, and so he always woke up in frustration. He assumed the time he was in that dimension was too short, so his mind couldn't process what it saw quickly enough. However, if he had a little more time—even if it was just a moment more...
Another pause. Then the gauntlet pulsed.
"Very well."
The platform lit beneath his feet—not violently, but with a soft, eerie glow. Divine current climbed his legs, wound through his spine, and reached into his eyes. The world flickered—
And stopped.
It wasn't silence, nor was it light. It was something flatter, stranger, as though reality had been pressed into a single plane. For the briefest instant, Shin stood in a realm not made of space, air, or structure—but of concept. The world folded into outlines. Depth vanished. Everything pulsed with a hue the eye could see but the mind couldn't name. His vision collapsed and expanded at once.
He couldn't move. He didn't breathe.
He simply was.
And in that instant, something inside him—something deeper than thought, deeper than reason—opened like a door.
He didn't understand what he saw.
But his soul did.
And then it was gone.
He fell back into gravity. Into noise. Into time. Into the world.
Shin stepped from the seam of reality, not far from where the tower had first appeared. His boots landed gently on the dry soil. He didn't speak. He only adjusted his coat, glanced once at the sky, and walked.
—
Two days later, Shin sat quietly near the rear of the boarding-gate lounge, his elbow resting on a bolted armrest. The ring on his finger was silent, but the gauntlet around his right arm pulsed faintly—not with heat, but with presence, like a device left running in standby.
He flexed his fingers.
Now in its dormant form, the clawed black metal wrapped his forearm like a tight synthetic sleeve—matte, ridged, strangely elegant. Mostly unnoticeable… if not for the faint shimmer along its seams. It looked custom. Stylish, even. But to anyone with sharp eyes, it might raise questions.
How exactly does it do that?
What surprised him most was how airport security hadn't even blinked. He'd completely forgotten to unsummon it before walking through the metal detector. He'd braced for alarms or maybe a small scene. But he passed without incident.
He blinked. The gauntlet was cold, dense, and harder than steel, yet the machine hadn't reacted. What was this thing even made of?
It wasn't standard metal. It was way too light for that. It felt closer to divine fabric than any earthly alloy—a material designed to exist beyond human systems. Well, whatever material it used, it could bypass conventional interference. That, in itself, was useful intel.
He leaned back slightly, letting his shoulders sink against his chair.
His flight home would've landed him straight into customs. But even before stepping into the Lightning Tower, Shin had prepared a stopover as a safety precaution. It wasn't paranoia. He wasn't sure where the tower would be, so he'd made contingencies in advance.
Shin always planned ahead.
His ticket had been split deliberately—first to Portugal for a brief "vacation," then home. He didn't want to arrive straight from Venezuela in case someone would ever flag him for tower-related activity.
It also gave him time. Time to test.
Time to breathe.
And, for once, time to relax.
The flight was uneventful. Shin closed his eyes as the plane cruised above clouds and let his thoughts drift. The gauntlet rested peacefully under his sleeve. He didn't dare test its active function—not here at least. He didn't really want to test surviving a plane crash yet.
Still, something in him had already shifted. He could feel machines now. Not see or hear—feel.
Electrical signatures. Currents. The hum of the engines. Everything from the underseats' power ports to the oxygen system above him—he could sense it like a quiet pulse in his bones.
So this is what resonance with Lightning feels like.
He didn't push further. He wasn't ready.
Or more accurately, not yet.