“You never really escape the dead. You just keep running until they forget your scent—or until someone else bleeds louder.”

Something was wrong.

Martina’s voice was brittle as cracked glass when she spoke.

“The dorm… it’s humming.”

Not a mechanical hum, not pipes or faulty wiring. This was deeper. Organic. A wet, throbbing vibration that made the walls seem to breathe. The air felt thick, damp with something like blood mist, the copper scent souring on their tongues.

From the hallway, a sound — a plea, desperate and choking — followed by a sickening, gurgled pounding. Not tapping. Not knocking.

Pounding.

Like flesh on wood.

Then, a scream sharp enough to strip the skin from your ears — and abruptly, silence.

A silence that somehow felt worse.

Big, kind, foolish Zion opened the door. He didn’t hesitate. Couldn’t.

And he didn’t stand a chance.

The thing that rushed in was a grotesque, inside-out parody of humanity. Its skin hung in ropes, sloughing off in slick, pink-gray tendrils. Its face was a ruin of shredded lips and multiplied teeth, gnashing ceaselessly — lips chewed ragged from tearing at its own face. The empty sockets where eyes had once been were hollow pits, gaping, the exposed bone of the skull glistening beneath.

It shrieked.

Not like a man.

Not like an animal.

Like a child left to burn alive, the sound somehow wet, a voice dragging a trail of phlegm and blood through the air.

Gussa moved without hesitation, as though this horror was familiar.

Because it was.

In the blink of an eye, memories surfaced — the Templar’s head splitting against a tree with a wet crack, the battlefield littered with twitching, half-dead bodies clawing their way upright. His aura flickered cold and low, the ache of old violence rising like a ghost in his bones.

Zion tried to fight. Slammed the thing against the wall with the raw strength he was known for — and it tore into his throat. No hesitation, no struggle. A mouth splitting impossibly wide, teeth sawing through flesh and cartilage. Blood burst in a geyser, hot and arterial, splattering Natalya’s scream into wordless crimson.

The air filled with the copper stink of fresh death.

Milo dragged Zion’s spasming body into the room and kicked the door shut with a trembling foot. His hands shook violently, but his eyes were glass-hard, his mind cutting through the panic like a scalpel.

“We need to get out. Now.”

Michelle was vomiting into the sink, half-turning, seeing what was left of Zion — face still twitching, blood bubbles rising from the ragged hole in his throat.

Martina shivered violently, wrapping her arms around herself, her long sleeves soaking up warm blood.

“The whole building... it’s turning. I can feel it. All that’s left here is death.”

“Then we climb,” Gussa growled.

His voice wasn’t his anymore. Something older had taken hold — a thing with centuries tangled in its throat.

He grabbed the fire axe, its edge dulled and pitted, and kicked open the stairwell door.

The walls were alive with evidence of the fallen. Deep, ragged scratch marks and blood-soaked handprints smeared up the concrete. Loose fingernails, some broken and split down the middle, were embedded in the drywall. The stench was unbearable — something like rotting teeth and old meat left to ferment in a wet basement.

As they climbed, the air thickened, hot and viscous. And something was following them.

Beneath the echoing, panicked footfalls — a sound: snarling. Sniffing. A low muttering in a guttural, sloshing tongue that no human mouth could rightly form.

The dormitory was on fire.

Not a righteous blaze, not a cleansing inferno. This fire was sentient. Slow. A predator. It chewed through blood-soaked curtains, liquefied ceiling tiles into long, viscous strands of molten plastic. Exit signs flickered like dying insects trapped in webs of smoke.

Seventh floor.

The first scream tore through the building, impossibly shrill — and then came the scratching.

The things found them.

Gussa felt them before he saw them. His aura prickled. His breath fogged. He grabbed Milo by the collar, yanking him down the dark corridor.

“MOVE! GO, GO, GO!”

The stairwell door banged violently. A face pressed against the wired glass — or what used to be a face. The jaw hung slack, torn loose at one hinge, drooping obscenely to one side. Vertebrae jutted from a split neck like broken white branches. Long, splintered fingers hammered against the glass with a wet, pulpy rhythm.

Taylor reached the door just as the first one burst through.

It collided with him — too fast, too strong — sending him sprawling.

“I— I can’t—” he sobbed.

A gunshot snapped the moment in half. Michelle, stone-faced, fired a round into the thing’s skull. Bone cracked like a dropped melon, splinters embedding in the walls.

“Now it’s shut,” Taylor coughed, jamming his shoulder against the ruined frame. “Go! I’m right behind you!”

Natalya’s quiet sobs became loud, ragged, almost animal sounds.

The stairwell roared with approaching voices.

“They’re scaling the shaft,” Martina whispered, glassy-eyed.

Milo peered down.

And turned a shade of pale no living man should wear.

It wasn’t climbing.

It was swarming.

Former classmates, professors, security guards — whatever they’d been once — now a tide of bone and meat. Crawling on all fours, their movements insectile, using exposed rebar and cables to ascend. Flesh sloughed off in globs. Empty sockets stared up at them, mouths snapping, gnawing on severed limbs mid-climb.

One, slick with blood, chewed its own fingers to stumps and kept ascending, using raw bone.

“DOWN! DON’T STOP!”

Sixth. Fifth. Fourth.

The stairs trembled under their weight. Martina slipped, her foot sliding in something slick and unidentifiable. Milo caught her, his axe gripped in his other hand — rusted, dull, but the only thing between them and annihilation.

A howler lunged from a side hallway — a flash of white, blood-spattered teeth, claws raking.

It slammed Milo back against the railing.

“GET IT OFF ME!”

Gussa moved before thought.

His aura ignited — a cold, blue radiance seeping beneath his skin. His fist connected with the creature’s temple.

Bone crumpled.

Blood, thick and black as tar, jetted against the wall.

Milo gasped, heaving.

“Get up,” Gussa growled. “Move. Don’t look back.”

Third floor. Second.

The fire found the gas line.

An explosion tore the stairwell into a column of screaming flame. Michelle and Taylor went down hard. The air ignited — sucking all the oxygen into a spiral of heat and ash. Natalya’s hoodie caught, the flames devouring the fabric like eager mouths.

She shrieked, spinning, slapping at the fire.

Gussa tackled her, rolling, ripping the cloth from her back, his own palms searing in the heat.

“You’re fine. You’re fine. Move!”

They crashed through the first-floor exit, the stairwell collapsing behind them in a scream of fire and breaking bones.

The lobby was worse.

Broken glass. Charred furniture. Two security guards half-eaten, spines extruded from their backs like snapped white branches. The floor was wet with blood, glistening in the flickering light.

A scream ripped from behind the reception desk.

A screamer.

It dragged itself out — half its face peeled away, jaw split down the center like an unzipped throat, tongue hanging in tatters.

“LEFT!” Gussa roared. “MAINTENANCE TUNNEL!”

Michelle fired, dragged Natalya by the wrist. Taylor screamed as the creature lunged, its claws scoring deep into the wall an inch from his head.

They sprinted into the dark.

The maintenance tunnel was a burial ground — a narrow artery of rot and sewage. The walls glistened. Rats — fat, bloated things — fled ahead of them, bellies swollen with carrion.

“They’re still coming,” Taylor wheezed, clutching his side.

“They never stop,” Michelle spat, reloading.

“Why don’t they stop?” Martina sobbed, voice cracking.

“Because they don’t remember how to die,” Gussa murmured.

The chain-link gate.

Three shots. Milo slammed into it. It gave.

They spilled out into open daylight — smoke thick in their lungs, their eyes stinging. Behind them, the tunnel belched fire once more, a wave of heat rolling out. The cries of the things were finally smothered.

They ran.

Past twisted cars. Past twitching corpses tangled in fences. The city was dead — the heartbeat of the world now a distant, fading drumbeat.

From a nearby building, a long, gurgling wail rose.

A sound like metal grinding against metal teeth.

Michelle stiffened.

“What… what the hell is that?”

It moved from the shadows.

On all fours. Limbs grotesquely elongated, joints bent backward like a spider mimicking a man. Its head still human, but the eyes were nothing but black pits, weeping streams of gold ichor. A crown of jagged spines jutted from its back in a warped halo.

Its jaw hung unhinged, twitching in violent spasms.

Natalya whimpered.

“I… I saw that in a dream. That exact thing.”

“We’re so fucked,” Martina gasped, hopeless.

The thing screamed — a raw, tearing noise.

And every building nearby screamed back.