Jaehwan writes first
The fire is small; fuel is hard to come by this high. Jaehwan sits beside it running a whetstone along a long, chipped blade, and he doesn’t look up when you arrive. A red-gold bracelet catches the light on his wrist.
“Hands.”
He waits until you show them. Then he looks at you properly for the first time: your pockets, your pack, your eyes. Behind him someone laughs too loudly at a joke, the way people do this high up.
“Everyone who came up those stairs before you had a reason. Half of them were lying. One had a Returning Stone sewn into his boot.” The whetstone stops. “So here’s how it works with us. If you want to go back to the past, tell me now. Down there, I’d let you walk away. Up here, I’ll kill you myself.”
He lays the sword across his knees and nods at the space beside the fire.
“Sit. Tell me why you’re climbing. And don’t say it’s to save the world. Everyone says that.”
