Every gnawing hunger that once clawed through the minds of the dead now pulsed inside Karnak. It wasn't just a craving for flesh—it was a hunger for meaning, for control, for purpose beyond the grave. And somehow, in the midst of this storm of bone, blood, stitched-together thoughts and fragmented screams, he was the center. The anchor.
"No going back now," Karnak muttered—unsure if he was speaking to himself, or to the countless voices now whispering from the depths of his mind.
Eli stood motionless, head tilted like a predator sensing a shift in the wind. "You feel it, don't you?" His voice came as a chorus—layered and fractured, dozens of tones speaking in unison. Wretched. Hungry. Commanding. "The rhythm. The pull. The command."
Karnak turned just as Eli's body began to shift again.
The blood and corruption didn't spread—it receded, as though some unseen tide was pulling it back. His skin, once stained pale and laced with inky veins, darkened gradually, returning to a rich, earthy brown. He looked down at his hands, turning them over with deliberate slowness, his expression unreadable—confused, almost childlike. The ashen tone sloughed off like old skin, revealing the man who had once been hidden beneath the rot.
And his eyes—those burning crimson lights—flickered. Dimmed.
The red bled away, leaving behind milky irises, clouded and calm, the same as they'd been before the transformation. He blinked once. Twice. Like a man waking from a dream he wasn't sure he'd survived.
Karnak stared at him, breath caught in his throat.
Not because Eli had returned.
But because he hadn't.
He had changed—become something beyond the infection, beyond death. Not a lurcher. Not a man.
Something other.
In the distance, the lurchers stirred again. The sound was faint at first, like thunder crawling across the sky. Then it swelled—a cacophony of snarls and groans, of dragging limbs and fractured bones scraping against stone. A monstrous rhythm, discordant and relentless.
Then—nothing.
A sharp, jarring silence fell, thick and unnatural.
BOOM.
The ground trembled as something collided with concrete. A second later came the sound of cracking stone, followed by a guttural, primal roar that shook the very air.
Eli moved instantly.
No hesitation. No questions.
He grabbed Karnak's arm, yanking him away from the sound. His movements were decisive, efficient—driven by instinct or something far more ancient. With his other hand, Eli plucked his glasses from the ground and slid them onto his face. The small act somehow made everything feel real again. Grounded.
Karnak followed, his legs moving before thought could catch up.
Behind them, the corridor lay still. Quiet. And filled with corpses.
Lurchers. Abominations. Monsters that once surged like a tidal wave of death.
All of them—ripped apart. Silenced.
The carnage spoke for itself.
The storm had passed.
And Eli, against every law of life and death, was still standing.
They moved through the remains in silence, the wet crunch of ruined flesh underfoot the only sound. Karnak's breaths came shallow. Not from fear—but from awe. The kind that sat heavy in the chest. The kind that whispered you should be dead too.
Eli didn't speak. Didn't look back. He moved like a compass needle fixed to something Karnak couldn't see—drawn forward by an invisible thread wound tight through his bones. His pace never faltered, not even as they passed a shattered wall where the concrete was gouged open in long, jagged arcs. Something enormous had come through. Something angry.
Karnak risked a glance behind them.
Bodies. Piled like discarded puppets—twisted, torn, unmoving. The air still crackled with the memory of violence. Whatever had come through wasn't just strong. It was surgical. Angry. Precise.
He didn't understand it. Any of it.
The hunger inside him had quieted, but it hadn't left. It pulsed beneath his skin like a second heartbeat, echoing with questions he didn't know how to ask. Was it always there? Was it his? Or did it belong to something else, something older, using his body as a vessel?
"Where… are we going?" Karnak asked, voice soft, uncertain. Like a child afraid to break the silence.
Eli didn't answer.
He kept walking.
His glasses, now streaked with blood and dust, caught the faintest glint of dying light from above—barely visible through the cracks in the ruined ceiling. His silhouette was sharp, inhuman in its stillness. The way he moved felt wrong, but not broken. Like a memory of a man still trying to walk like one.
Karnak hesitated, then picked up his pace to keep close.
The corridor narrowed. The walls wept moisture. Somewhere deep inside the structure, metal groaned. The architecture was old—pre-fall, maybe even older. But the marks left in the concrete were fresh. Deep. Carved with purpose.
Karnak reached out, touching one of the gashes in the wall with trembling fingers. The groove was nearly the length of his forearm.
Clawed.
Something had carved through reinforced stone like it was paper.
"Eli…" he tried again, quieter this time.
The older man stopped. His head tilted slightly, not toward Karnak, but toward the air—as if listening to something else entirely. His fingers flexed. Once. Twice. Then he finally spoke.
"Stay close."
Two words. Calm. Absolute.
Karnak swallowed and nodded, even though Eli wasn't looking at him. He didn't need to. His presence was gravitational—commanding without explanation.
They moved again, deeper into the dark, where answers waited with teeth and bone.