The drawer clicked open with a faint metallic sigh, like even it was too tired to argue anymore.
Inside lay the gauntlet—black, clothbound, coiled into itself like a sleeping animal. It hadn't moved, of course. It didn't need to. Its presence alone was enough to shift the air. Lightning never asks for attention. It simply assumes it.
Shin picked it up, feeling the faint pressure hum through the weave of divine energy etched into the fabric, the threads vibrating faintly beneath his fingers.
The gauntlet pulsed. Not dramatically. Not in some obvious, glowing "yes." Just a subtle flick of resonance, like a nod from a creature that didn't waste energy on human theatrics.
"…Fine," he muttered, slipping it on. "You've earned it."
It gripped his arm like it belonged there—like it always had. Pressure settled, energy aligned. The artifact rippled—not in shape, but in pressure. A soft exhale, waiting for acknowledgment. Shin paused, considering. Then gave the name with finality, as if signing a pact.
"Thunderclaw."
The artifact settled on his arm, the pulse fading like a sigh of satisfaction.
He turned, reaching for the sword leaning against the wall—curved, light, finely balanced. Unlike Lightning, it never demanded attention. It never sparked or surged. It simply existed, impossibly sharp and maddeningly quiet. A weapon of purpose, not ego.
Still, when he picked it up, he felt it shift in his grasp—just slightly. Not like it was alive, but… aware.
"You too?" Shin asked, half amused.
The blade didn't answer—but the faint static of divine presence said enough.
He gave a slight shrug. "Windpiercer."
A whisper of wind curled around the blade, as if it scoffed.
And still, it accepted the name. Proudly.
An hour later, Shin stepped off a tram three districts over, disappearing into the flow of early evening foot traffic.A slim black mask covered the lower half of his face—not to hide who he was, but to blend in. In this district, everyone wore something: smog filters, privacy visors, tinted lenses. Enough techwear to make the alleys feel like a discount cyberpunk convention.
He wore a simple faded hoodie and black glasses that shadowed most of his face. It was enough to avoid being recognized. Hopefully also enough to avoid becoming a meme.
The black market district wasn't so much hidden as it was politely ignored. Folded between half-demolished warehouses and abandoned survey offices, it had long since repurposed itself. What used to be tower administration centers were now booths and backrooms. Metal shutters had turned into awnings. Broken elevators were now stairways into things no one had licensed.
The air was thick with the scent of soldered wires, engine oil, and tower dust—plus the occasional waft of burned incense, because even smugglers were apparently into vibes.
Shin wandered without looking lost. Most of what passed for merchandise here was junk—glow stones that barely glowed, crystal eggs that were supposedly laid by "tower-born crows," which somehow looked suspiciously like hand-polished river rocks, and enough twisted scrap metal to build a god-awful art exhibit.
He paused briefly at a table where a melted goblet sat crusted in silver. It didn't hum with divine energy, but it did emit a faint buzz—altered conductivity, maybe. Or maybe radiation. Always fun to guess.
"Real artifact," the vendor grinned at him, all gums and teeth. "Pulled it from Tower Fourteen myself."
"Uh-huh," Shin said, already walking.
He wasn't here to shop.
He was here to listen.
It cost him one favor and a folded bill to meet with Riven—a contact who knew things and, more importantly, didn't waste Shin's time pretending he didn't.
They sat beneath a deactivated stairwell, surrounded by old wiring and a half-burnt sign warning about structural faults.
"You feel the shift?" Riven asked without preamble.
Shin said nothing.
"Thought so," Riven continued. "First Wave killed. Second gave power. Third? That's when we stopped pretending this wasn't just a weird year."
Indeed. Shin had pieced together some of it on his own. There had been three large-scale bursts of tower activity, each known simply as a Wave.The first had dropped like a guillotine—raw, violent, merciless. The elementals and spirits came then, burning their marks into the world like it owed them something.
But then came the Second Wave. And everything's gotten murky. Towers still rose, but something shifted—less death, more… something else. Survivors. Not many. But a few had started to appear in the background of encrypted messages and scrubbed footage, people who had cleared towers and come back changed.
It was obvious that something had changed since more towers were cleared. But suspiciously enough, they were mostly from the second wave. Even the encrypted boards and blackline message chains barely had fragments about the third wave.
Well, whatever was happening in the world, people had stopped calling it chaos.
Now, it was just normal.
"Thirty thousand, give or take. Few thousand accessed. A few hundred cleared. More appear every month. You see the one open next to a hospital last week?"
"No."
"Exactly." Riven scratched at the stubble on his jaw. "They're starting to pop up everywhere. Who knows how many there will be in the future."
Shin let that sink in. It aligned with what he'd already noticed. Distribution was tightening.
Riven scratched his jaw. "Most of them aren't hostile. Some people cleared a tower without meeting a single monster. That's why people think there are levels."
"Levels?"
He nodded. "Levels, types, whatever. Some towers are brutal. Some are gentle. And the dajins… maybe they're different species. some talk like AI chatbots. Others sound like prophets. A few don't speak at all."
"Any origin theories still making the rounds?"
Riven smirked. "Take your pick. Alien programs. Ancient fragments. Quantum gods. Earth defense system. I heard one guy swear they're memory vaults from a dead civilization."
Shin filed it away. It wasn't very useful—but the noise still mattered. Sometimes, the shape of ignorance was more valuable than truth.
Riven leaned back against the cracked stairwell.
"But it's not just where they came from. It's what they are."
"How do you mean?" Shin asked.
"There are types," he said, counting on his fingers. "Spirits, beasts, and the weird ones that talk like people. Some call 'em echoes. Though no one agrees on what that means."
"Echoes?"
"That's what people call the human-looking ones. They talk like people and look almost right, but something's always off. Extra arms, too-smooth faces, no pupils. Some look like witches out of a storybook. Others, like they got stuck halfway into a dream. But they talk. Usually."
Shin stayed silent.
"They're the easiest ones to deal with," Riven continued. "Most successful clears are Echo towers. Beasts fight. Spirits judge. But echoes? They… negotiate. Or toy with you."
Shin tilted his head, thinking.
I've only faced spirits so far. Wind. Lightning. Wait, but if echoes are common now…
"No wonder the numbers are spiking," he murmured. "They're not fighting gods. They're talking to shadows."
The conversation was over. Riven nodded once and disappeared into the alleys.
Later, deeper in the market, Shin stepped into a side corridor marked only by a red stripe painted on rusted signage. He moved past gem shards, scorched herbs, and overpriced fakes. At the end stood a rack of ancient-looking weapons—and a man.
He wore a blue mask. A red stripe stitched into the sleeve.
Shin said nothing.
Instead, he nodded subtly toward a nearby vendor leaning against crates of yellowing fruit. "That one," he said. "Who is he?"
The vendor followed his gaze. "Kairox. Top three hundred, maybe. Cleared a tower up in the Balkans. People say it was fire-based. One of the tougher ones."
"That mask doesn't really scream inconspicuous, is it?"
"Well, everyone knows him here. Masks aren't for vanity. It's protection."
"From?"
The man leaned closer. "Governments. Recruiters. Black lab projects. You clear a real tower? They watch you. Sometimes, you vanish."
Shin's eyes rested on Kairox for another moment. The man stood sharp, shoulders squared—a fighter—but also a performer.
"If that's top-tier," Shin thought, "then the world still has a long way to go."
He turned and walked away.
The sun was just starting to set by the time he made it back to his apartment.
And that's when it hit him.
The text.
He froze halfway into the stairwell, fishing his cracked phone out of his pocket, screen still faintly glowing from the note app he'd been using earlier.
[Just a reminder, dear! I'll stop by today for a quick peek at your place! Around 6:00? Hope that's okay]
The time was 5:52.
He stared at the message.
Then looked up at his door.
Then, at the message again.
"...Oh boy."
Unfortunately, Shin didn't have time to dwell on the full scale of his failure—because footsteps were already echoing down the stairwell outside.
Soft. Steady. Cheerfully ominous.
Shit.
He launched into motion, half-tripping through his front door, which slammed behind him with all the subtlety of a divine war drum.
He locked it. Bolted it. His eyes snapped to the apartment—sweeping across the battlefield formerly known as his apartment.
Boxes of unidentified relics stacked like cursed Jenga towers. An object that looked like ceremonial dagger was poking out of the rice cooker. His black infiltration clothes laid out neatly on the futon, complete with gloves and a mask. His cracked phone still open to a diagram labeled: "Divine Weapon Conduits & Other Useful Atrocities."
At least the table was almost clean—almost. If not for the glowing orb sitting right in the middle. Sigh. Of course it was glowing. Because naturally, that's what orbs do.
"F***ing hell," he swore. "Just get inside." The orb disappeared into his ring first—or at least tried to. It wobbled in midair, resisting the pull like it was offended by the lack of ceremony.
"Oh come on—" he hissed, focusing harder.
It slipped in, reluctantly. But that hesitation was all it took to remind him of the storage ring's limits. The ring could hold almost anything—technically. But expanding its capacity wasn't about space—it was about control.
Lightning's explanation made it sound so easy. But increasing the ring's inner volume was like drilling through pure vacuum using a spoon made of divine focus—tedious, inefficient, and very hard to explain to guests.
Another knock came. Lighter this time. Like Brenda was giving him a chance to pretend he wasn't home.
Too late.
Shin shoved the black outfit under the bed, kicked the relic tin behind a pile of cables, and wiped the glowing residue from his desk with the sleeve of his hoodie. He did a fast sweep of the room—one golden object suspiciously looking like a nose, a relic shard wedged into a crack in the floor, and a page of notes that definitely said something about "energy saturation limits in biological hosts."
He flipped it over, shoved it under a coaster, and took a breath.
Then opened the door.
"Evening, dear!" Brenda beamed up at him, cheeks flushed with the warmth of someone who brought sunshine whether you wanted it or not. "Hope I'm not catching you at a bad time?"
Shin stepped aside with the grace of a man who knew resistance was futile. "Of course not. Please, come in."
Brenda, mid-50s, energetic in that unstoppable-aunt way, wore a cardigan loaded with enough floral embroidery to double as camouflage in a garden. Her purse rattled with keys, coupons, and possibly a few minor gods.
"Oh, thank you, sweetheart. I know I said six, but you know how the trams are—early for once, can you imagine?"
Shin managed a smile. "Miracles happen."
She stepped in, turned a slow circle, then gave an approving nod. "Mm-hmm. Much tidier than when you first moved in. Though I still don't see any decor."
"I like clean walls," Shin said.
"I can tell. So clean they're almost tragic." She plopped down on his only chair like she owned the oxygen in the room. "No pictures, no plants, no girlfriend photos—nothing. Honestly, Shin, it's like a monk lives here."
"Monks are neat."
"Oh, Shin."
Shin shut the door behind her, and immediately felt the weight of the situation settle on his shoulders like an invisible relic. Brenda was already moving—past the couch, toward the kitchen, chatting the entire way.
"I brought you some of those honey biscuits from the corner bakery—you know the ones with the sesame on top? They remind me of the cookies my aunt used to bake when I was little. Not my real aunt, of course. We just called her that, she wasn't even related, but she once saved my cousin from a goat, so—well, long story."
A goat?
She pulled open his cabinet before he could stop her.
"Do you still not own a teapot?" she called.
"I use a kettle."
"For instant noodles?"
"Sometimes for water."
Brenda sighed, a soft, motherly sound. "You really need more grown-up things in your kitchen, Shin."
Shin ducked beside the couch as she turned, swiping a thumb-sized crystal off the windowsill and flicking it into his ring. The ring pulled it in with the sluggishness of a lazy drain. Don't be so petty, he tried to convince it in his head. It's temporary.
Behind him, Brenda gasped.
Shin froze.
"Oh!" she said brightly. "You've got incense! Is that lavender? I love lavender."
"Yeah...?" he said. Did he have incense? That seemed highly unlikely.
Wait, that golden nose thingy?
"Yes. It's very… grounding," he said, as if knowing what he was talking about.
"Well, it smells like a yoga retreat in here. Good for the soul, you know. Or chakras. Or something." She drifted back toward the main room, placing the cookie tin on his desk.
"Careful!" he said too fast, watching her hand graze the coaster that was hiding his 'theoretical resonance chain explosion' diagram.
Brenda paused, tilting her head. "Did I almost knock something over?"
"Only my thesis on controlled divine explosions." He grinned quickly and shifted between her and the desk. "Very boring. Highly flammable."
She gave him a look. "Well, that sounds perfectly safe."
He coughed. "Hazards of postgrad life."
Brenda plopped onto the bed—comfortably leaning back like she might stay for an hour.
There was a soft thunk from under the mattress. Brenda shifted and frowned. "Dear, I think your bed has indigestion."
Shin winced. "Yeah, the slats are cursed. Real estate charm, I think. Keeps the ghosts out."
Brenda nodded, as if this was a perfectly reasonable explanation. "Mmmm. You know, I was telling my niece about you again."
Of course she was.
"She's lovely. Bit intense. But so are you. I said, 'That Shin boy has nice shoulders, and he's very polite in a serial-killer-but-make-it-intellectual sort of way.'"
"That's flattering."
"She laughed! Said she's into quiet guys. I told her you're practically a walking mystery novel with no blurb."
"I'm not dating at the moment."
"Oh, I know, I know. But one coffee won't kill you. Unless she talks about astrology. Then you're on your own."
Shin stepped into the kitchenette, swiping a vial of divine sap off the counter and flicking it into the ring just as Brenda turned around.
"Stupid me." She said suddenly. Then reached into her bag and pulled out a little plastic container. "Take this with you, will you? I made lentil curry. Bit spicy, but you're young. Your stomach can handle the abuse."
Shin accepted it like a hostage transfer. "Thanks."
"I'll send you the recipe."
He nodded. This was harder than he expected.
Shin coughed. Loudly. "Want me to put the kettle on?"
She lit up. "Oh! That'd be lovely."
He could handle this, he promised to himself. He had to.
Tonight, he still planned to infiltrate a sealed government site patrolled by drones and armed agents. Compared to that, this was the easy part.
But Shin—Vessel of Lightning, Chosen of Wind, and the man who solo cleared two towers—
was starting to think the aunt was the harder mission after all.