The city was suffocating under Helios's rule.
Banners bearing the golden sun emblem hung from every tower and archway, fluttering arrogantly in the smoky breeze. Patrols of Helios's elite guards, clad in shimmering bronze armor, prowled the streets, their eyes scanning every passerby for signs of rebellion.
The air itself seemed heavier, saturated with a stifling energy that oppressed Lee Sung's senses.
From the crumbling shadows of a forgotten alleyway, Lee Sung watched a group of citizens hurriedly avert their gazes as a patrol passed. Fear had been embedded into the bones of the people — and for good reason. Whispers of sudden arrests, public executions, and enforced "oaths of loyalty" poisoned every conversation. Even speaking out against the regime was enough to disappear into Helios's dungeons.
But beneath that fear, Lee Sung sensed something else: a quiet simmer of rage.
And that was something he could work with.
He pulled his cloak tighter around him and slipped deeper into the alleyways, weaving through the maze-like slums of lower Tenebrous. Here, among the desperate and the forgotten, he would plant the seeds of rebellion.
He had no army. No allies left.
Only the memory of Akane, the journal she had entrusted to him, and the shadows at his command.
And that was enough.
---
The meeting place was an abandoned shrine on the city's outskirts, overgrown with ivy and half-swallowed by rubble. A handful of figures waited in the dark, their faces tense with suspicion. Farmers, scholars, even a few former guards who had managed to escape Helios's purges — the desperate, the vengeful, the brave.
Lee Sung stepped forward into the firelight, letting his hood fall back.
A murmur rippled through the crowd. His face was becoming known: the shadow-wielder, the rogue survivor of the second test.
"I'm not here to make promises," Lee Sung began, his voice low but steady. "I'm here because the gods have turned this world into a game. And Helios thinks he's already won."
He let the words hang for a moment, then added:
"He hasn't."
The crowd listened intently as Lee Sung outlined a daring plan — not to storm Helios's palace head-on, but to strike at his foundation: the hidden facilities, the prisons, the factories forging weapons for his army. Cut out the roots, and the tyrant's golden empire would collapse.
But as he spoke, an older man — a wiry scholar named Niles — raised a trembling hand.
"There's something you need to know," Niles rasped. "About the Sigils of Warding."
Lee Sung narrowed his eyes. "Explain."
Niles stepped forward, unfurling a battered parchment across the shrine's altar. Drawn crudely in charcoal was a complex symbol: a spiral pattern encircled by interlocking triangles, all pointed inward. Lee Sung felt a faint tingling at the edges of his senses just looking at it.
"The Sigils were deployed two nights ago," Niles explained grimly. "Hidden on rooftops, carved into doorframes, painted beneath market stalls. They create zones where magic weakens — especially summoning, shadow manipulation, and spiritual communication."
Lee Sung clenched his fists. That explained why his shadows had been sluggish near the market yesterday, why he'd felt his connection to them dim.
"How wide is their range?" he asked.
"About fifty meters for the larger ones. Ten for the smaller," Niles said. "But in the city center? They've overlapped the sigils. Layered them. Entire districts are blanketed."
A heavy silence fell. Lee Sung could feel the fear bleeding into the room.
Helios wasn't just hunting rebels — he was cutting the legs out from under anyone who could resist him.
Lee Sung stared at the crude drawing. Already, he was thinking. Calculating.
"We'll need to destroy the sigils if we're going to have any hope," he said slowly. "Or find a way to disable them."
Another voice — a young woman, a former city guard — spoke up. "We've identified the scribes. They're a group called the Scorchwrights. Helios imported them from another realm — all fire mages loyal to him. They maintain the sigils in secret."
A plan began to form in Lee Sung's mind, sharp and merciless.
Find the Scorchwrights. Break their control.
Without them, the sigils would fade.
Without the sigils, the city's magic would return.
Without magic suppression, rebellion could ignite.
---
Later that night, Lee Sung perched atop a ruined clocktower, surveying the glimmering lights of the city.
He reached out to the shadows, feeling the invisible resistance in the air — a dragging, suffocating weight that made his summons slow and unstable.
In the distance, he spotted a faint glow on a rooftop: a Scorchwright working silently, painting a fresh sigil in molten gold ink.
Lee Sung's hand tightened around the hilt of his dagger.
The first strike would happen tonight.
He would not let Helios tighten the noose any further.
He would reclaim the city — one shadow, one whispered revolt at a time.
And when the tyrant's walls finally fell, when the people of Tenebrous rose up, they would remember Akane's sacrifice.
They would remember the boy who fought the sun with shadows.