The bridge was silent again. Joren could hear his own heartbeat over it, and somehow that was worse.
They had passed the mark again, for the third time now. Gus had even stopped to touch it this time, like he needed to make sure it was real and not some illusion.
It was.
Willow exhaled through her nose. "Okay. That's definitely not a new X."
Gus didn't say anything, but he knew it was true.
Joren stepped back from the railing, determining what the best course of action would be.
Bartholomew tapped the stone gently, like someone greeting an old memory.
"Still think I'm lying?" he said, not looking at anyone. "This bridge won't let us go until we do what it wants."
Joren's brow furrowed. "You said we have to speak a truth. One we've never told."
Bart nodded. "One that you'd rather not tell. One you planned to carry all the way to the grave if you could."
He paused, then gave a soft shrug.
"Or, you know, we could keep walking in circles forever."
No one spoke.
The mist swirled low around their boots now, thicker than before. It coiled like it was listening for the truth to come out.
Joren swallowed. Willow looked down at her boots. Gus scratched the back of his neck like he was hoping it might reveal an escape hatch.
Then Bartholomew let out a long breath.
"Alright... I'll go first." Bart said.
"I was married once," he began, solemnly.
That caught their attention.
Joren blinked. Willow looked up, confused. Gus made a sound like he was preparing to sneeze but just forgot how.
"…To a wheelbarrow," Bart added.
The silence that followed was the kind that usually preceded lightning or deep personal regret.
"She had some real nice handles on her. I'm talking some hoinky doinkys, real big bahoogas, you know."
Willow choked slightly. Joren stared. Gus looked genuinely alarmed.
Bart continued, unwavering.
"Curves like a mountain road, smooth as buttered toast. The kind of wheel alignment that made you believe in love at first sight."
He closed his eyes, remembering. "Most people don't get it, you see. They see a wheelbarrow and think utility. I saw her and I thought eternity."
He looked up at them, blinking his left eye and right eye out of sync.
"We had dreams, you know? Plans to make a compost garden and a side business in decorative mulch."
He sniffed, dramatically. "But fate had other ideas. She was seized when Fon-Doom got out of my old house. They tagged her as 'modified municipal property' and took her away. Then they sent me to that prison."
Silence again.
Even the mist didn't seem sure how to respond.
Willow exhaled slowly, one eye twitching. "That's… really something, Bartholomew."
He smiled faintly. "I know."
"Okay, I'll go now." Willow said, shedding her nervousness of a humiliating story.
She stepped forward, letting her boots scuff against the stone, and folded her arms. The fog parted slightly in front of her, as if granting space to speak.
"So… a while back, I passed through a village near the border. Just me, no money, no shift clothes, starving. It was the kind of town where everyone knows everyone, and outsiders stick out like a splinter in soup. I decided to morph into some sort of lady to blend in"
She waved a hand vaguely, as if dismissing her own metaphor.
"Well, I was eating a berry that I had just plucked off a vine, and this man sees me. Middle-aged merchant type, and he just freezes when he saw me. Like actually freezes. He walks straight toward me like he saw a ghost, and he says 'Mama?'"
"I had no context as to who is mom was. No names or any clue who this man was. I just stood there with a berry in my mouth and guilt crawling down my spine. So I did the only thing my brain could think of."
She gave a long, hollow sigh.
"I nodded and said 'Hey son, how are you?'"
Joren made a sound that might've been a laugh or a wheeze. Gus looked like he'd aged three years in real time.
Bartholomew was already clapping. Slowly.
Willow didn't even acknowledge them.
"They gave me the master bedroom. Told me the blanket was the same one I used to wrap him in as a baby. I told him and his wife it looked softer. That made him cry."
"I made up bedtime stories. Tried to give everyone life advice like a real mother might. Told the daughter to invest in her future by going to school. Told the youngest not to trust ducks, because sometimes they bite. No idea why I said all of that, it just came out."
She rubbed the side of her face like she was trying to wipe the memory off.
"By the third day, they were planning a little party. Told me they'd bake my favorite cake, which I had to make up on the spot. I said rhubarb. Never even had rhubarb."
She paused, then added, "It was pretty good, though."
Her voice was quieter now. Not softer, just more tired from her dishonesty.
"I was going to tell them the truth that night. Really, I was. Sat everyone down by the fire and had a whole speech in my head. But then the merchant handed me a tiny wooden spoon and said he carved it for me. 'So you never go hungry again.'"
Joren winced, like the sadness of it hit him before the ridiculousness did. Gus's eyebrows furrowed hard enough to qualify as construction work.
"I panicked and said that I couldn't stay any longer, that I had my own adventure to be on now and that he needed to focus on the family he had now, not the one he lost all those years ago. I even gave him a little nod when I said it. The kind of nod that implies you've learned this lesson before."
"I don't think they ever figured out I wasn't her. I think they just decided that if the universe gave them a second chance, they weren't gonna argue."
And then, with the final bit of her story, the mist peeled back away from Willow. The bridge was open for her to travel when she was ready. The test was nearly done.
Willow stepped back beside them. "Alright," she said quietly. "The weird, haunted bridge is satisfied. Your turn, Gus."
Gus cleared his throat and took a half-step forward. "Alright. Uh. Mine's kind of dumb."
He shifted his weight. "I'm scared that I might accidentally start a revolution."
Willow blinked. "What."
"Not on purpose!" he added quickly, hands raised. "It's just… people listen to me more than they should. I know I've told you guys before, but I'm kind of a celebrity in the porcelain business, so..."
He trailed off, as if realizing how absurd it sounded only after saying it aloud.
"I once made a joke at a tradeshow about how bowls are just oppressed plates. Next thing I know, a group started chanting about it like it was a new revelation to them."
He held up one hand. "I was kidding when I said that, but they made pamphlets that same hour. Who even does that? They call me 'The Glazed Voice,'" Gus added quietly. "I didn't ask for that."
The bridge creaked approvingly, mist receding just a little more.
Gus stepped back, looking vaguely betrayed. "Why does it approve of that?"
Bartholomew clapped him on the shoulder. "Because the truth comes in all shapes and sizes."
Joren took a slow breath and stepped forward. The mist didn't move this time.
"Alright," he said. "I guess I'll go now..."
He rubbed his hands together, then let them fall. His face became a shade of pinkish red that none of them had ever seen before.
"When I was fifteen, there was this girl who passed through our village. Her parents were traveling spice merchants or something, so she lived on the road. She had this long blue hair and wore earrings that caught the light when she turned her head. Like—"
He caught himself. "She was just… unbelievably pretty. The kind of pretty that made you admire them just for existing."
Gus nodded solemnly. "Been there."
"She stayed for maybe a month, it was around the time of one of the major trading festivals. Said she liked guys with 'scars and stories' and called them mysterious.
Joren cleared his throat, his face becoming slightly less red. "So I decided to fake an injury to get her attention."
Willow squinted. "What kind of injury?"
He looked off to the side. "I said a goat attacked me when i was saving a kid."
Gus choked on absolutely nothing.
"I told her I'd been kicked really hard when I was rescuing a kid that got stuck inside the fence. There was no child, though. "
Willow put a hand over her mouth, stifling a laugh. Joren powered through.
"And then… I faked a limp. Just enough to look mysterious. You know, rugged or whatever..."
Bartholomew nodded as if this made perfect sense.
"She left a few weeks later, but by then, people in town had noticed. Hazel carved me a walking stick. Even the healer checked me twice looking for damage to my tendons and muscles."
The bridge gave a low, slow creak of approval.
Joren ran a hand down his face. "I limped for a whole month to keep up the act."
Willow was wheezing now. "Did you at least get her?"
"No," Joren muttered. "She gave a guy with a sword scar her bracelet and rode off with her parents."
Gus lowered his head, solemnly. "May you find peace in the hard-fought battle of trying to get a woman."
The bridge gave one last approving groan, then fell completely silent. The mist vanished, burned away like fog before the sun. For the first time since stepping onto the Veyrhund Span, the path ahead was fully clear.
Joren looked at the others. No one said anything.
Then Willow stepped forward and muttered, "Let's never speak of this again."
"Agreed." Responded the other three, in unison.
Soon, the four of them would be upon the nations capital of Varenthal.