Eleven forty-five at night.
Tadano sat on his bed, fully dressed in dark traveling clothes, his sword strapped across his back. Across their small shared room, Vivi was doing what she always did before anything important—pacing like a caged animal, flames dancing nervously between her fingers.
"Stop that," Tadano whispered. "You'll set something on fire."
"I'm nervous!"
"I know. That's why you need to stop."
She clenched her fists, extinguishing the flames, and dropped onto her own bed with a frustrated huff. "How are you so calm?"
"I'm not calm. I'm terrified." He checked his pack for the third time. Water, food, rope, the stolen map, a fire-starting kit, basic medical supplies. Everything they'd need to survive on the surface. Hopefully. "I'm just better at hiding it."
"Show-off," Vivi muttered, but there was affection in her voice.
The past six hours had been the longest of Tadano's life. They'd gone through the motions of a normal evening—eating dinner in the communal hall, nodding to neighbors, pretending everything was fine. Vivi had nearly blown their cover twice, once by laughing too loudly at nothing and once by staring at people like she was memorizing their faces.
Because she probably was. They might never see any of these people again.
Master Renjiro had stopped them after dinner. For one heart-stopping moment, Tadano thought he knew. But the old swordmaster had only clasped their shoulders and told them he was proud of them. That they'd grown into fine young warriors. That their parents would have been honored.
Tadano hadn't trusted himself to speak. He'd just nodded and walked away before the guilt could choke him.
Now, watching the time tick toward midnight on the small clock Vivi had stolen from the Council archives (along with the map), Tadano wondered if they were making the biggest mistake of their lives.
"Hey." Vivi's voice was softer now. "You okay?"
"Ask me again when we're not committing treason."
"It's not treason if the government is living in a hole."
"Pretty sure it's still treason."
She grinned, and some of his tension eased. Whatever happened, at least they were doing this together.
Eleven fifty-three.
Vivi stood, shouldering her pack with practiced ease. She'd trained for this, Tadano realized. All those extra runs through the tunnels she'd claimed were "just exercise." All those times she'd disappeared for hours and come back exhausted. She'd been preparing, conditioning herself for this exact moment.
Meanwhile, he'd been clueless.
"You're thinking too loud," Vivi said, moving to the door. "I can practically hear your brain spinning."
"Just wondering how many other secrets you've been keeping."
"Only the important ones." She pressed her ear against the door, listening. "Hallway's clear. Ready?"
No. "Yes."
She cracked the door open, peered out, then slipped into the corridor like smoke. Tadano followed, his hand instinctively finding the hilt of his sword. The tunnels were quieter at night, most people already asleep in their quarters. Only a few night workers moved through the passages, and Vivi led them along routes that avoided even those.
They descended deeper, following passages that grew progressively less maintained. The runic lighting became sparse, then sporadic, then absent entirely. Vivi produced a small light-stone from her pocket, holding it up to guide their way.
"How many times have you been down here?" Tadano whispered.
"Lost count after fifty."
"Fifty?"
"Give or take." She turned a sharp corner into a tunnel so narrow they had to turn sideways. "I may have been slightly obsessed with planning this."
"Slightly."
"Okay, very obsessed. Sue me."
The passage opened into a small chamber that smelled of dust and old metal. Ancient mining equipment littered the floor—pickaxes, carts with rusted wheels, coils of rope that looked like they'd crumble at a touch. And there, on the far wall, partially hidden behind a collapsed support beam, was a circular opening about two feet in diameter.
"The ventilation shaft," Vivi announced proudly. "Leads straight up for about forty meters, then angles northwest for another sixty before it reaches the barrier point."
Tadano approached the opening, peering into the darkness beyond. Cool air whispered out, carrying scents he'd never smelled before. Earth, yes, but also something else. Something fresh and wild and utterly alien.
"How do we climb it?" he asked.
"Very carefully." Vivi pulled out two sets of climbing spikes and harnesses from her pack. "I stole these from the maintenance crew. We spike our way up the vertical section, then crawl through the horizontal bit. Should take about twenty minutes if we don't stop."
"And if someone finds us in there?"
"Then we're stuck in a metal tube with nowhere to go and we die horribly." She said it so cheerfully that Tadano couldn't tell if she was joking. "So let's not get found."
He took the offered harness and spikes, strapping them on with hands that were steadier than he expected. Maybe he was getting used to the terror. Or maybe he was just too far committed to back out now.
Vivi checked her pocket watch—another stolen item, apparently his sister was an accomplished thief—and nodded. "Eleven fifty-eight. Shift change starts in two minutes. That's when we go."
They stood side by side, staring into the dark mouth of the ventilation shaft. Tadano could feel his heart hammering against his ribs. This was it. Once they entered that shaft, there was no turning back. They'd either reach the surface or die trying.
"Tadano?" Vivi's voice was quiet, almost tentative. "Thank you. For coming with me. I know you think this is crazy."
"It is crazy."
"But you're doing it anyway."
He looked at his sister—wild-haired, fire-souled, absolutely insane Vivi—and felt something fierce and protective surge in his chest. "Someone has to keep you from burning down the entire surface world."
She laughed, quick and bright, then sobered. "Whatever happens up there... we face it together. Deal?"
"Deal."
Midnight.
Somewhere in the distance, they heard the low horn that signaled the guard shift change. Voices echoed through the tunnels as the day watch headed to their quarters and the night watch took their positions. In that brief window of chaos and distraction, two sixteen-year-old twins slipped into a forgotten ventilation shaft and began to climb toward a world they'd never seen.
The shaft was cramped and cold, the metal walls slick with condensation. Tadano went first, driving his spikes into the walls and pulling himself upward with muscles that burned from the effort. Below him, Vivi's light-stone provided just enough illumination to see by, casting strange shadows that danced with every movement.
Up. Hand over hand. Spike, pull, spike, pull. The rhythm became meditative, pushing away thought and fear until there was only the climb. Only the ache in his arms and the cold metal under his hands and the slowly growing scent of that alien freshness from above.
They didn't speak. Couldn't risk it, not with sound carrying through the metal like a drum. But Tadano could hear Vivi breathing below him, steady and determined, and that was enough.
Twenty minutes, she'd said. It felt like hours.
Finally, the shaft leveled out. Tadano pulled himself into the horizontal section and lay gasping on the cold metal floor, his arms trembling. A moment later, Vivi joined him, extinguishing her light-stone to conserve it.
Darkness pressed in, absolute and suffocating.
"You good?" Vivi whispered.
"Fantastic," Tadano wheezed. "Never better."
"Liar. Come on, we're only halfway there."
The horizontal section was easier on their arms but murder on their backs and knees. They crawled through the narrow space, packs scraping against metal, breathing air that grew progressively cooler and fresher as they went. Tadano's shoulders screamed in protest. His knees would be bruised for weeks. He didn't care.
Because ahead, so faint he almost thought he was imagining it, he could see light.
Not the blue glow of runes or the yellow warmth of light-stones. This was different. Pale and silver and beautiful in a way that made his chest ache.
"Vivi," he breathed. "Is that—"
"Moonlight," she whispered back, and her voice cracked on the word. "That's moonlight, Tadano."
They crawled faster, no longer caring about the noise or the pain. The light grew brighter, and now Tadano could see the end of the shaft—a grate covered with earth and roots, and beyond it, that impossible silver glow.
They'd reached the barrier point.
Vivi pulled herself up beside him, and in the dim light filtering through the grate, Tadano saw tears streaming down her face. She was grinning through them, laughing silently, pressing her hands against the earth-covered grate like she could push through to the other side through sheer will alone.
"Two meters of earth," she said, her voice shaking with emotion. "That's all that's between us and the surface. Two meters."
Tadano reached up and touched the grate. It was cold, and when he pushed, it didn't budge. But beyond it, he could feel air moving. Real air. Surface air.
"How do we do this quietly?" he asked.
"We don't." Vivi was already pulling off her gloves, flexing her fingers. Small flames sparked to life, growing brighter. "I heat the earth until it's brittle. You break through. And we move fast before anyone notices."
"And if there are Dark patrols on the surface?"
"Then we fight."
She said it with such absolute conviction that Tadano almost believed they could win. Almost.
"Alright," he said, drawing his sword. The blade whispered against its sheath, the sound impossibly loud in the confined space. "Do it."
Vivi pressed both hands against the grate, and her flames exploded to life.
The temperature in the shaft spiked instantly. Tadano felt sweat break out across his skin as Vivi poured heat into the earth above them. He could see it through the grate—the soil beginning to glow, first red, then orange, then nearly white-hot. Steam hissed as moisture evaporated. Roots crackled and burned.
"Now!" Vivi gasped, pulling her hands back. "Before it cools!"
Tadano drove his sword upward with all his strength.
The superheated earth shattered like glass.
The earth gave way in chunks of cooling clay and ash. Tadano pulled himself up through the opening, his hands finding purchase on grass—actual grass—and hauled himself onto the surface for the first time in his life.
For a moment, he couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't do anything but stare.
The sky.
The sky was enormous.
Sixteen years of living under stone ceilings, of carved chambers and narrow tunnels, had not prepared him for the sheer infinite vastness of open air. The sky stretched above him in every direction, a dome of deep blue-black scattered with more stars than he'd ever imagined could exist. They weren't the tiny pinpricks he'd seen in old books—they were brilliant, shimmering, alive. Some clustered together in rivers of light, others stood alone like diamonds on velvet.
"Tadano." Vivi's voice came from below, strained. "A little help?"
He blinked, shook himself, and reached down to pull her up. She emerged from the hole covered in ash and dirt, her hair wild, her face streaked with soot. And she was crying again, staring up at the stars with her mouth open and tears streaming down her cheeks.
"It's so big," she whispered. "I didn't know it would be so big."
They sat there on the mountain grass, shoulder to shoulder, and just looked up. Neither spoke. There were no words for this. The elders had told them about the sky, about stars and moons and the vastness of space. But hearing about it and seeing it were two completely different things.
A cool breeze washed over them—real wind, not the recycled air currents of the underground—and Tadano gasped. It carried scents of pine and earth and something sweet he couldn't identify. The air tasted different up here. Cleaner. Wilder.
"We should move," he said eventually, though every part of him wanted to just stay here and stare at the stars forever. "Find cover. The Dark patrols—"
"Look around, Tadano." Vivi gestured at the landscape with a sweep of her arm. "Where are they?"
He did look, really look, for the first time. They were on a mountainside, just as Vivi had planned. Below them, a forest stretched out in rolling waves of dark treetops that swayed gently in the breeze. In the distance, he could see the silhouettes of more mountains, their peaks touching that impossible sky.
And it was quiet. Not the oppressive silence of the underground, but a living quiet filled with sounds he'd never heard before. Insects chirping. Leaves rustling. Something small moving through the brush nearby.
No patrols. No soldiers. No sign of the Darks at all.
"The elders said the surface was constantly patrolled," Tadano said slowly. "That the Darks were everywhere. That anyone caught outside would be—"
"Maybe they lied." Vivi stood, brushing ash from her clothes. "Or maybe they were wrong. Or maybe—" She spun in a slow circle, her arms spread wide, her face tilted up to the stars. "Maybe things changed and they just didn't know because they never came up here to check!"
"Vivi, we should be careful—"
"I'm done being careful!" She laughed, the sound bright and free and utterly reckless. "We made it, Tadano! We're on the surface! We're free!"
She was right. Against all odds, against every warning and every rule, they'd actually done it. They'd escaped.
Tadano allowed himself a small smile. Then a larger one. Then he was laughing too, the sound strange and unfamiliar in the open air. Vivi grabbed his hands and pulled him to his feet, and they spun together like children, laughing and crying and drunk on freedom and starlight.
When they finally stopped, dizzy and breathless, the horizon was beginning to change. The deep blue-black was giving way to something lighter. Purple, then pink, then shades of orange that made Vivi's fire magic look dull by comparison.
"Tadano," Vivi breathed. "Is that—"
"The sun," he whispered. "That's the sun rising."
They watched in silence as the world transformed. The darkness receded, chased away by light that grew brighter and warmer with every passing moment. The forest below them emerged from shadow, revealing a thousand shades of green Tadano had never known existed. The mountains in the distance turned from black silhouettes to purple peaks to golden giants touched by the first rays of light.
And then the sun itself appeared, a brilliant point of light that grew into a blazing disk of gold and fire. Tadano had to squint against it, had to shield his eyes, but he couldn't look away. This was the sun. The actual sun. Not a light-stone or a runic lamp, but the real thing, the star their planet orbited, the source of all light and life.
It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.
"I'm never going back," Vivi said quietly. "Whatever happens, whatever we find down there, I'm never going back underground."
Tadano nodded. He understood. After seeing this—after feeling real wind and seeing real stars and watching the actual sun rise—how could anyone choose to live in darkness again?
As the sun climbed higher, painting the world in shades of gold and amber, Tadano noticed something in the distance. Down in the valley, where the forest thinned, there were structures. Buildings. And smoke rising from chimneys.
"Vivi." He pointed. "Is that—"
"A town!" She was already pulling out the stolen map, unfolding it with shaking hands. "Look, it's marked here. Settlement Seven-Delta. The elders said it was destroyed in the invasion, but—" She lowered the map, staring at the distant buildings. "But it's there. It's whole. There are people living there."
As if to confirm her words, a bell rang out from the town—clear and bright in the morning air. A call to wake. A new day beginning.
"The elders were wrong," Tadano said slowly. "About the patrols. About the town. Maybe about everything."
"Or maybe," Vivi said, her eyes gleaming with that familiar wild excitement, "they've been lying to keep everyone underground. Keep everyone controllable."
Before Tadano could process that disturbing thought, Vivi was already shouldering her pack and starting down the mountainside toward the forest.
"Wait," he called, hurrying after her. "We should observe first. Make a plan. We don't know if it's safe—"
"It's morning!" Vivi called back, not slowing down. "The sun is up! There's a town full of people down there! What's not safe?"
"Literally everything! We don't know anything about surface life! We don't have identification! We don't even know if they'll help us or turn us in to—"
"Then we'll find out!" She turned, walking backwards down the slope with the kind of reckless confidence that had gotten them both in trouble their entire lives. "Come on, brother. We didn't escape the underground just to hide in the forest. We came up here to live."
She was right, as much as Tadano hated to admit it. They hadn't come this far just to cower in the shadows. But that didn't make approaching a town full of strangers any less terrifying.
The descent was steep and treacherous. Loose rocks shifted under their feet, and more than once Tadano had to grab a tree trunk to keep from sliding. But Vivi navigated it all with the sure-footedness of someone who'd been preparing for this for two years, and Tadano followed in her wake.
The forest was unlike anything he'd imagined. The trees were massive, their trunks wider than he was tall, their branches forming a canopy overhead that filtered the sunlight into dancing patterns of gold and green. Moss grew thick on everything. Flowers he had no names for bloomed in brilliant colors. And the sounds—birds singing, insects buzzing, something larger moving through the underbrush in the distance.
It was overwhelming. Beautiful. Terrifying.
Perfect.
"Hey Tadano?" Vivi's voice drifted back to him. "Do you think they'll have real food in that town? Like, food that doesn't taste like mushrooms and cave moss?"
Despite everything—the danger, the uncertainty, the complete insanity of what they were doing—Tadano laughed. "Probably."
"Good. Because if I never eat another mushroom again, it'll be too soon."
They walked through the forest as the sun climbed higher, warming their skin, chasing away the last chill of the underground. Birds called to each other in the canopy above. A small creature that looked like a rabbit but wasn't quite darted across their path. Everything was alive and moving and real in a way the underground had never been.
The town grew closer, the buildings becoming more distinct. Tadano could see people now—tiny figures moving through the streets, going about their morning routines. Opening shops. Carrying baskets. Living normal lives.
Lives that had apparently continued just fine despite the Darks' conquest.
"Something's wrong," Tadano said as they reached the forest's edge, crouching behind a thick bush to observe. "The elders said the Darks ruled with an iron fist. That everyone lived in fear. That any resistance was crushed immediately."
"And yet." Vivi pointed at a group of children running down the street, laughing and chasing each other. "Those kids don't look very oppressed."
She wasn't wrong. The town looked... peaceful. Almost idyllic. Stone buildings with neat thatched roofs. Clean streets. People greeting each other with smiles. If there were Dark overlords here, they were doing a terrible job of being oppressive.
"Maybe it's a trap," Tadano suggested. "To lure out anyone from the underground."
"For sixteen years? That's a really dedicated trap." Vivi stood up, dusting off her pants. "Only one way to find out. Come on."
"Vivi, wait—"
But she was already walking out of the forest toward the town, her chin up, her stride confident. Tadano cursed under his breath and hurried after her, one hand on his sword hilt.
As they approached the first buildings, a woman hanging laundry spotted them. She paused, looking them up and down—taking in their dirt-stained clothes, their worn packs, Tadano's sword and Vivi's still-singed hair.
Tadano tensed, ready for her to scream or run or call for guards.
Instead, she smiled.
"Travelers?" she called out in a friendly tone. "You look like you've had a rough journey. There's an inn two streets over if you need rest. Tell Marta that Keiko sent you—she'll give you a fair price."
Then she went back to hanging her laundry, as casual as if strangers emerged from the forest every day.
Tadano and Vivi stood frozen in the middle of the street.
"Did that just happen?" Vivi whispered.
"I think so."
"She wasn't scared at all."
"No."
"She was... nice."
"Yes."
Vivi turned to look at him, and in her eyes, Tadano saw his own confusion reflected back. The elders had painted a picture of a conquered world living in fear and oppression. But this town—these people—they seemed...
Happy.
"What's going on, Tadano?" Vivi asked quietly.
"I don't know," he admitted. "But I think we need to find out."
Together, the twins walked deeper into the town, into the sunlight, into a world that was nothing like they'd been told.
And somewhere far below, in the darkness of the underground, a Council chamber erupted into chaos as someone discovered that two very important teenagers were missing.