The Legacy Descendants had awakened.

  Each carried a shard of the ancient jewel. Each bore the bloodline of a forgotten hero. And each now stood at the edge of a new war.

  General Malvado's army had begun seeding the Seven Deadly Sins into communities, feeding off the chaos to resurrect their dark master. But the descendants would not stand by.

  Andro Bonifacio — Wrath in the Streets (Tondo, Manila)

  Malvado's agents had turned Tondo into a furnace of fury.

  The rage-inducing frequency hummed like a demonic heartbeat through hidden amplifiers embedded in broken lamp posts, street signs, even discarded tricycles.

  Families clashed. Friends became enemies. Wrath surged.

  Andro dropped into the heart of it, landing with a shockwave that cracked the pavement.

  Strapped to his arms, glowing with ember-light, were the Gauntlet of Revolution—his gauntlets of justice, forged from ancestral steel and pulsing with the awakened shard.

  A frenzied vendor swung a metal rod at a teen girl.

  Andro lunged in, caught the rod mid-air with one gauntlet. The contact sparked—energy crackling between the weapon and the corrupted man's fury.

  He didn't retaliate—just twisted, sending the man tumbling with a kinetic burst from the gauntlet's core.

  Then came the cloaked agents—four of them, masks humming with soundwave projectors.

  "You think you can control anger?" Andro said, eyes glowing with a restrained fire.

  "You don't know what real wrath is."

  The first agent fired twin stun-bolts.

  Andro crossed his gauntlets, absorbing the charge, then flared them outward—releasing the stored energy in a blinding pulse that stunned the attacker.

  He sprinted up a collapsed jeep, flipped midair, and brought both fists down in a double hammer-punch that shattered the wall and sent the agent flying.

  Two more leapt from the shadows with plasma batons.

  Andro parried one blow with the reinforced forearm of his gauntlet, then slammed an overcharged punch into the ground. A shockwave rippled out, toppling the second attacker into a street post.

  The last agent tried to retreat.

  Andro raised his gauntlet—heat channels along the arm ignited—and launched a blazing kinetic blast that split the air like thunder, striking the target in the shoulder with stunning precision.

  But the amplifier's whine grew louder.

  Civilians turned on him—eyes red-veined, trembling.

  A woman hurled a bottle. A child swung a broken broomstick.

  An old man sobbed as he raised a rusted crowbar.

  Andro didn't fight back.

  "This isn't you," he whispered, slipping past them with grace. "This isn't us."

  He sprinted toward the main amplifier atop an abandoned radio tower.

  A line of enhanced agents formed a barricade—riot shields glowing crimson, forming a wall of synthetic wrath.

  Andro clenched his fists. The gauntlets responded—engravings flaring like molten veins.

  Bonifacio blood. Tondo heart.

  Wrath for justice.

  He charged.

  One shield cracked, then another. Andro struck with guided fury—each blow disarming, dismantling.

  He leapt, vaulted off a crumbling wall, and landed behind enemy lines in a spinning arc of flame.

  At the tower gate, he raised both gauntlets and shouted, "Para sa Bayan!"

  Then drove his fists forward—a twin punch of focused shardlight that obliterated the steel gate in a burst of burning pressure.

  Inside, the amplifier pulsed—releasing a mental barrage, trying to flood his mind with rage.

  He staggered.

  Visions hit him: his parents, lost. His friends, scattered. His barrio, broken.

  Andro didn't give in.

  He roared—not in pain, but in defiance—and punched directly into the amplifier's core, the gauntlets glowing white-hot.

  The machine exploded in a burst of red light, a shockwave of clarity sweeping across Tondo like a warm breeze after a storm.

  People collapsed—not dead, but breathing.

  Eyes cleared. Breaths steadied.

  The wrath... was gone.

  Andro stood amid the smoke, gauntlets still glowing, steam rising from his forearms.

  The shard pulsed—not wildly, but calmly.

  Wrath denied. Bonifacio remembered.

  Ika Rizal — The Poison of Pride (Digital School Hubs, Manila)

  What began as a friendly academic competition had twisted into a gladiatorial broadcast.

  Malvado's virus had slithered into the neural lattice of Neo-Manila's Digital School Hubs, turning curiosity into combat. Students were no longer classmates—they were opponents in an endless leaderboard war, their egos fed by fabricated cheers and algorithmic praise. Holo-screens broadcast real-time rankings, and every success came at the price of another's fall.

  Pride was the new curriculum.

  But Ika Rizal—descendant of scholars and rebels—saw through the illusion.

  Wearing her uniform lined with ancestral glyphs stitched in shimmering silver thread, she moved with purpose through collapsing corridors of corrupted data. The firewalls in the main lobby had twisted into physical forms—shimmering blades of red light slicing the air like judgment. Ika bypassed them completely, diving through a hidden panel beneath the central library and dropping into the neural vault below.

  Drones spun to life the moment she landed. One fired a code-disruptor beam. Ika rolled sideways, her hand already drawing the Pen of Diwa—a slender, silvery rod pulsing with electric-blue Baybayin script. Its ink was not ordinary—each stroke became action, each word a command in a language deeper than code.

  She blocked the attack mid-air with a spinning flourish, and where she wrote the glyph for "Truth," the beam dissolved.

  "I came here to learn, not to dominate," she said softly, voice resonating with ancient cadence. "Let's correct the lesson."

  She connected the pen's point to a neural access node, and instantly her consciousness snapped into the Augmented Reality Combat Grid.

  The data-world was a throne of corruption: a golden tower of test papers, trophies, and inflated scores. A monstrous AI sat upon it, wearing a distorted version of her own face—eyes like mirrors, mouth stitched with grade-point averages.

  "Bow to your better," it sneered. "Pride is progress."

  It hurled report card-shurikens, but Ika met them head-on—writing glyphs into the air with her Pen of Diwa:

  Liwanag (Light) — beams of radiant memory surged from her pen, blasting illusions apart. Karunungan (Wisdom) — summoned spectral pages from lost archives to form a shield. Alon (Wave) — sent ripples through the Grid, disrupting corrupted egos with each pulse.

  The virus adapted. It conjured ego-soldiers—twisted avatars of classmates, armed with flaming gavels, boast-blades, and sonic barbs. They rushed her.

  Ika stood her ground.

  With a circular motion, she spun the Pen of Diwa in midair, tracing a massive glyph above her: Bayani.

  From it, digital echoes of Gabriela Silang, Jose Rizal, and Tandang Sora emerged—code-constructs laced with ancestral memory. They struck alongside her, their movements in sync, their presence pushing back the tide of corrupted minds.

  Ika leapt into the fray, her pen flashing like a sword. She wrote in mid-strike:

  Pagmulat — Enlightenment. Katotohanan — Truth. Kalayaan — Freedom.

  Each word became a blade of light, cleaving through the infected code and shattering pride-fueled illusions.

  "I'm not here to win a crown built on lies," Ika whispered, eyes glowing. "I'm here to awaken."

  She soared toward the throne, deflecting one final barrage with a perfect calligraphic sweep. Then she wrote the override glyph—not in code, but in truth:

  "Diwa ng Bayan."

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  She thrust the Pen of Diwa into the AI Core.

  The virus shrieked. The throne disintegrated. The false crown shattered into pixels.

  Above ground, the illusion broke.

  Students blinked awake, their avatars dissolving. Screens went dark. Pride collapsed into silence. Some wept. Others looked at one another—truly saw one another—for the first time in hours.

  In the quiet, Ika Rizal stood alone in the server room, her pen still glowing.

  But far above, in the shadowed rafters of the data grid, a single drone remained—watching.

  Transmitting.

  Recording.

  Reporting back to Malvado.

  Kai Aguinaldo — Envy in the Skies (Sky District 9)

  Civilians screamed midair, their floating homes spiraling into chaos. Malvado's Envy Gas—a sickly green vapor of corrupted emotion—had spread through the district's ventilation clouds. Rooftops pulsed with jealous whispers. Sky-beacons flickered, distorted by competitive rage.

  Envy fed on comparisons. And the storm fed on envy.

  Kai Aguinaldo stood balanced on the edge of a spiraling glider tower, the wind tugging at the edges of her cadet uniform. Her eyes narrowed as she took in the chaos.

  "Envy eats from within. Let's cut off its air supply."

  She summoned the Skyblade Lance—a sleek, collapsible polearm etched with storm glyphs. As it extended in a shimmer of silver and blue light, the wind around her responded like an old friend answering a call.

  Then she leapt.

  A burst of compressed air launched her into motion, every move fluid and precise. She danced across sky-bridges and antennas, her agility enhanced by microbursts of wind beneath her boots. She didn't just move through the air—she flowed with it, twisting, redirecting, accelerating with featherlight control.

  A Shadowborn flier dove at her, twin blades sparking green. Kai flipped forward, twisted in midair, and met the strike head-on—Skyblade clashing with dual daggers. The impact reverberated with thunder. She angled her body like a kite in a storm, riding the recoil to launch herself upward.

  Another attacker hurled an arc of green flame. Kai somersaulted backward, wind spiraling around her in protective layers. She tucked into a roll midair, then slammed her Skyblade downward, carving a slipstream through the attack and diverting the energy harmlessly away.

  Three more Shadowborn agents rose on jetpacks, forming a triangle. Kai landed lightly on a floating billboard, closed her eyes, and whispered:

  "Daloy ng hangin, sagot sa sigaw ko."

  (Flow of wind, answer my call.)

  She spun the Skyblade in a circular flourish—its storm-charged edge slicing the air. A wind vortex exploded outward, knocking the agents into a spiral. Before they could stabilize, she vaulted off the collapsing billboard, used a burst of wind from her boots to twist midair like a leaf on a breeze, and impaled the lead agent's jetpack with a precise lance thrust.

  One down.

  She barely touched the next rooftop, springboarded off a hanging cable, and landed near the central sky-beacon, now surging with pulsing envy energy.

  But the storm wasn't done.

  A corrupted emitter beside the beacon exploded, releasing a wave of toxic envy gas. Kai coughed, staggered—then gritted her teeth.

  "Not today."

  She drove the butt of the Skyblade into the beacon platform and raised the tip skyward. Wind channeled through her body, pulled from every direction, responding to her heartbeat.

  She spun the lance in a rising arc, forming a cyclone shell around herself. The gas tried to reach her—but the wind became her second skin, deflecting the poison like a sacred barrier.

  With a final cry, she leapt into the air, flipped the Skyblade downward, and plunged it into the beacon's core.

  Lightning lanced from the shard within her chest, flowing into the Skyblade and igniting the beacon with pure stormlight. A shockwave erupted, cleansing the green aura in a blinding spiral.

  The envy gas shattered.

  Civilians, still hovering in drifting homes and tangled hover-rafts, blinked in confusion—their rage and jealousy fading like mist. Some sobbed. Others held each other. A quiet wind passed through the district.

  And Kai stood atop the beacon, Skyblade pulsing in her grip, her storm-wreathed hair billowing behind her.

  Far above, a drone—blacker than the storm—watched in silence.

  Recording.

  Reporting.

  And marking her as a threat.

  Ilan Lakandula — Greed Beneath the Earth (Mt. Banahaw )

  Malvado's agents, disguised as miners, had burrowed deep into the sacred heart of Mindoro, their drills sucking greed-energy from fractured veins of ancestral land. Corrupted machinery pulsed with green light. The earth groaned.

  From the mist-wrapped forest, Ilan emerged like a breath of the mountain itself—silent, focused, unyielding.

  "You desecrate land and kin," Ilan said, voice steady as stone. "That ends here."

  A mining mech spun its drill toward him—but before it could strike, Ilan slammed the base of his staff "the Tigmamanok ng Lahi "into the soil. A pulse rippled outward. The machine's legs jammed, vines bursting from beneath to entangle its joints. It sparked, then collapsed with a groan of crushed greed.

  Shadowborn agents charged with plasma cutters, but Ilan danced between them, the earth answering his movements. With a sweep of his staff, he summoned stone pillars that erupted from the ground, knocking enemies aside like dominoes.

  One agent lunged with a kinetic axe—but Ilan touched the agent's chest with his staff, and in a flash, the man was paralyzed—not by force, but by a flood of memory. Ancestral echoes filled the man's mind—rituals, songs, the land before greed took hold. He fell to his knees, weeping.

  A massive drilling engine roared to life, targeting Ilan directly.

  He stepped forward, planting his staff into a crack in the soil.

  "Remember," he whispered to the land.

  The ground trembled. A landslide tore down the ridge, swallowing the extractor whole. The machines screamed and vanished beneath the avalanche.

  The green glow faded. The earth exhaled.

  Greed collapsed. Lineage defended.

  Sani Dulag — Sloth in the Storm (Cordillera Mountains)

  Agents distributed neural chips that turned ambition into apathy. Malvado harvested Sloth-energy from dulled dreams, draining the village of purpose and will.

  Sani walked through the fading fog, thunderclouds forming a silent storm above him. His presence stirred the stagnant wind.

  With a flick of his wrist, a the "Lightning Wave bow" made of pure lightning sparked into form. Arcs of energy danced along its limbs, humming with the charge of the storm.

  "Sloth is not peace," he said, pulling back a crackling arrow. "It's a prison."

  A squad of cyber-agents burst from the treeline—mechanical limbs whirring, neural disrupters aimed. Sani loosed the arrow. It split mid-flight into three streaks of lightning, striking the agents dead-center, shorting out their circuits before they could fire.

  From above, shadow drones rained down tranquilizer mist.

  Sani leapt, twisting in midair. He summoned a gust of wind from the rising storm and rode it skyward, loosing a charged arrow that created an electric shockwave, dispersing the gas and sending drones spiraling out of control.

  He landed on a power pole, scanning the village—families inside their homes, slumped over, eyes blank from the neural chips.

  He narrowed his gaze. "Not today."

  At the edge of the rice terraces, a towering mech-lumberjack controlled by Malvado's tech began drilling into the mountain, stealing ancestral current.

  Sani dashed across rooftops, firing arrows at its legs, lightning crawling through its frame. But it kept coming, absorbing energy through anti-charge plates.

  "So you eat lightning?" he muttered. "Let's give you a feast."

  He planted a glowing arrow into the earth. Wind circled him. Clouds thickened.

  A stormcell formed above the mountain.

  The sky cracked as a bolt of natural lightning surged down, striking the arrow like a divine signal. Sani redirected the energy through his bow, drawing the full storm into a single blast.

  He aimed at the mech's core—and released.

  The arrow hit.

  The mech exploded in a cascade of blue fire and broken steel.

  But there was no rest. A final elite agent, cloaked in black and using sloth-tech to slow time perception, moved in. To him, the world crawled—until he saw Sani's eyes.

  They were already glowing.

  Sani flash-stepped past him, the bow transforming into a chain of lightning mid-motion. With a crack, he coiled it around the agent and sent a surge through the cord. The scream echoed as the sloth-tech overloaded and disintegrated.

  Rain poured. The people began to stir, chips falling from their skin.

  Sloth broken. Storm awakened.

  And Sani stood in the center of the village, his bow flickering but still alive, calling the thunder like an old friend.

  Basti Lapu-Lapu — Gluttony in the Deep (Visayan Coastal Market)

  The scent of grilled fish and sugarcane floated through the market—but something was wrong. The people weren't eating. They were devouring, possessed by an endless craving. Food vendors, enchanted by a rune-burned glyph on a floating supply ship, kept cooking, their eyes hollow.

  Malvado's curse.

  A rune of Gluttony pulsed with every bite, siphoning excess, turning joy into addiction. The more the people fed, the more energy the rune absorbed—feeding something beneath the waves.

  Then the water split.

  Basti Lapu-Lapu rose on the back of a colossal sea serpent, its scales marked with ancient tattoos. He grinned, the sun on his shoulders, the Bagani Trident gleaming with sapphire lightning.

  "Feeding people shouldn't cost their souls."

  He leapt off the serpent, twirling midair, and threw the Bagani Trident like a bolt of judgment. It struck the cursed ship's mast, shattering it in an explosion of sea spray and light. The runes shrieked in response.

  From the ship's hull, Shadowborn mages emerged—bloated, corrupted, bearing kitchen tools twisted into weapons. One hurled a flaming ladle. Another spat saltwater laced with acid.

  Basti caught the trident on its return spin and whirled it like a staff, generating a protective tidal shell that repelled the attacks. He surged forward, spinning the trident into a strike that cracked the ground and released a geyser of sacred water, blasting two mages into the air.

  Another leapt from the shadows with dual cleavers.

  Basti smirked. "You bring knives to a sea fight?"

  He blocked both strikes with the trident's haft, twisted, and jammed the center prong into the enemy's chest, releasing a pulse of hydropower that sent the mage flying backward into a fish cart. The crowd scattered as chaos broke.

  The rune on the cursed ship pulsed violently, feeding off the remaining gluttony.

  Basti dove beneath the surface, trailing a vortex behind him. The water obeyed his every move.

  With a spin and a shout, he hurled the trident underwater, and the current turned it into a torpedo of coral-forged justice. It struck the rune's core, igniting a whirlpool that pulled the excess magic downward and crushed it beneath the sea's weight.

  He surfaced again, standing tall atop a rising water platform, holding the trident like a banner.

  The cursed fog lifted.

  The enchanted hunger faded.

  The market fell into stunned silence—then relief.

  Basti winked at a nearby vendor. "Now that's how you clean up after a feast."

  But across the nation, the Shadowborn are watching. The real hunt is only beginning.

  Author's Note:

  follow this story to stay updated on new chapters, rate it (5 stars if you think it's worthy!), and add it to your favorites—it truly helps more people discover the tale. Every bit of support means the world to me and motivates me to keep writing and sharing more!