The sun was only beginning to rise to its midday peak when Lencar left the small side street behind the restaurant, cloak wrapped securely around him. The morning still carried its usual warmth, the smell of bread from nearby stalls drifting on the wind, the sound of vendors shouting their early deals. If not for the heavy tension in his chest, today might have felt like any other.
But normalcy was an illusion now.
Mariella was already inside the restaurant, wearing his face and speaking in his tone. Rebecca believed he was still there, chopping vegetables and checking the inventory. And his trail—his real one—would vanish the moment he moved deeper into the twisting alleys of the capital.
He crossed the marketplace without drawing eyes. He kept his steps light, posture relaxed, presence faint. The disguise spell he wore was intentionally subtle—it didn't alter his appearance yet; it simply softened the aura that people subconsciously sensed from powerful mages. Anyone who passed him would assume he was a typical civilian.
It was essential that no one connected this version of him to Lencar of the restaurant.
When he finally reached a narrow turn between an abandoned tailor shop and a boarded-up pottery stall, he stepped into the shadowed alley.
The moment he entered the dimness, he lifted his hand and activated the transformation.
His facial features shifted, becoming broader, slightly older, with faint lines at the corners of the eyes. His hair darkened to a plain black, his eyes dulled to muddy brown, and his jaw took on a rougher shape. His posture straightened—not with confidence, but with the tired stiffness of a middle-class laborer. Even his breathing rhythm adjusted to match the physical impression.
A perfect stranger. Unremarkable. Unmemorable.
He checked the stability of the disguise. Satisfied, he pulled the cloak's hood low, casting deeper shadows over his now unfamiliar face.
"Good," he murmured. "No one should connect me to anything today."
He rolled his shoulders, letting the old instincts settle in.
Then he whispered the words.
"Composite Magic: Umbral Traversal."
The shadows around his feet bent. The air distorted as concealment magic thinned his presence, wind magic muffled his steps, and space magic opened narrow cracks between surfaces.
The world dimmed.
Lencar stepped forward and dissolved into the blackened outline of the alley wall.
Inside the shadows, everything was muted. Faint. Colors reduced to gray outlines, sounds reduced to distant echoes. Movement felt effortless. A single step covered the distance of a normal stride. A leap took him across rooftops without ever touching them.
He traveled through the shadow plane for ten minutes, heading toward the districts closer to the heart of the capital—closer to where the story's timeline told him the first signs would appear.
The attack wouldn't start immediately.
But it would begin soon.
He surfaced from a shadow at the corner of a quiet plaza. A few early shoppers walked between fruit stands. A mother carried her toddler. A pair of merchants argued over pricing. Everything appeared calm.
He waited.
And waited.
The minutes crawled by in silence.
Then—
At precisely the moment Lencar had anticipated—
The ground trembled.
A deep, resonant rumble surged through the streets, shaking cups off tables and rattling the loose shutters of buildings. Screams burst from civilians as the tremor intensified, strong enough to knock several people off balance. Dust drifted from rooftops, and a hanging lantern fell with a loud crash.
Lencar lifted his head.
"It's begun."
A second tremor hit almost immediately. Stronger. More deliberate. The mana pressure in the air thickened, sour and cold.
And then came the first corpse.
A decayed hand burst through the cobblestone near a fruit stall, startling the vendor so badly he dropped his basket. Another body rose behind it, limbs jerking unnaturally as necromantic mana threaded through bones and tendons.
Zombies.
As expected.
Civilians screamed and scattered.
Lencar took a single step into the shade of a nearby shop and let the darkness swallow him again. He reappeared in the path of three approaching undead, cloak flicking behind him.
His disguised face remained calm.
He drew the Demon Dweller Sword from the dimensional sheath hidden under his cloak.
The blade reacted instantly—the necromantic mana saturating the air fed into it like water into dry soil. A hum vibrated along its edge.
A zombie lunged.
Lencar stepped aside, almost lazily, and sliced once.
The corpse split cleanly down the torso, collapsing into inert pieces as the magic animating it snapped.
Two more came. He cut both down with a smooth, efficient movement.
He wasn't here to show off.
He wasn't here to compete.
These were simply obstacles.
And the real threat was deeper inside the capital.
Another tremor hit. More undead clawed their way from collapsed structures. Nearby civilians cried for help, some trapped beneath debris.
Lencar exhaled softly and moved.
He leapt into the shadow beneath a cart, emerged behind a zombie approaching a young woman, and cut it down. He surfaced again beside a fallen man pinned under rubble, lifted the debris with wind-boosted strength, and dragged him to safety.
He didn't speak.
Didn't give orders.
Didn't reveal who he was.
He simply helped—quietly, efficiently, unseen.
A cluster of zombies gathered near a collapsed bakery. Lencar appeared behind them, slashing through their torsos with a clean arc. The Demon Dweller Sword drank the necromantic mana greedily.
He felt it flow up the handle and into his arm. Not painful—just cold.
This mana signature… so that's the core of the spell driving them.
Perfect.
He tightened his grip on the sword and activated his replication magic. His grimoire materialized beside him, pages flipping rapidly as it aligned itself with the stolen magical imprint from the Demon Dweller Sword.
Lines of mana formed—
A spell structure took shape—
And then the pages settled.
Lencar raised his free hand, palm outward.
"Composite Magic: Necrotic Severance."
Black-gray mana surged forward. It wasn't necromancy—not exactly. It was a manipulated, repurposed, and refined version of the death mana he had copied.
The effect was immediate.
Every zombie within ten meters froze. Their limbs stiffened. The mana threads holding them together unraveled. Their bodies collapsed into lifeless heaps.
Not dramatic.
Not flashy.
Just efficient.
He closed the grimoire and vanished into a shadow, reappearing near the far side of the plaza where more civilians needed help.
And so the hour passed.
An hour of cutting, assisting, controlling, and eliminating small pockets of undead. He kept his distance from knights who began rushing toward the disturbance. He avoided squad captains and squad members.
He didn't want to interfere with their parts in the story.
Finally—
A massive mana surge erupted from the central district. A dark wave blasted upward, forming a pillar of corrupted energy visible even through buildings.
The true necromancer had revealed himself.
The heart of the attack had begun.
Lencar stood atop a shadowed rooftop, cloak fluttering lightly in the wind. His disguised face stared toward the origin point, where the battle was soon to intensify.
He breathed out.
"That's my cue."
He stepped backward into the rooftop's shadow.
Umbral Traversal swallowed him.
And Lencar moved—swiftly, silently—straight toward the center of the capital, where the tremors were strongest and the heart of the assault waited.