If you're waiting for your manager to tell you "do X" before saying, "no, I won't do X, it's not valuable" you are still way behind for high-level promotions even on an individual-contributor track.
Figure out what is important to the business - and specifically, what's important to the business under you're manager's area of responsibility. Figure out and clearly articulate why. Sometimes this will be modernization (especially if there are ongoing costly outage, downtime, or compliance issues), sometimes it will be features (if your customers, stakeholders, and other devs aren't having big issues from tech debt. Proactively propose this to your manager, work collaboratively to build the roadmap. Your manager rarely has enough time to deep into the weeds on prioritization from a technical POV, so your input will be appreciated as long as (a) it's actually in line with business priorities in a way relevant to your manager, and (b) your manager isn't a paranoid psychopath who thinks you're undermining them or coming for their job.
But if your manager is a paranoid psychopath you've got bigger problems and you're not gonna finesse your way around them by declining tasks either.
You should also communicate your career goals and expectations - this might help you figure out "is my manager a psychopath" earlier rather than later too. A strong manager would've stopped you from spinning your wheels much earlier, in this scenario; but even a meh manager can help you climb the ladder if you're collaborative. Especially if they start to feel like you're key to their success too.
Figure out what is important to the business - and specifically, what's important to the business under you're manager's area of responsibility. Figure out and clearly articulate why. Sometimes this will be modernization (especially if there are ongoing costly outage, downtime, or compliance issues), sometimes it will be features (if your customers, stakeholders, and other devs aren't having big issues from tech debt. Proactively propose this to your manager, work collaboratively to build the roadmap. Your manager rarely has enough time to deep into the weeds on prioritization from a technical POV, so your input will be appreciated as long as (a) it's actually in line with business priorities in a way relevant to your manager, and (b) your manager isn't a paranoid psychopath who thinks you're undermining them or coming for their job.
But if your manager is a paranoid psychopath you've got bigger problems and you're not gonna finesse your way around them by declining tasks either.
You should also communicate your career goals and expectations - this might help you figure out "is my manager a psychopath" earlier rather than later too. A strong manager would've stopped you from spinning your wheels much earlier, in this scenario; but even a meh manager can help you climb the ladder if you're collaborative. Especially if they start to feel like you're key to their success too.