An armored vehicle thundered down a crumbling highway, its reinforced frame grinding against debris and scattered wreckage. In its path, the infected were reduced to smears beneath the wheels, unheeded. Inside the vehicle, five figures sat in silence. They wore sleek black combat suits rubber-like in texture, reinforced at the joints, their helmets faceless, covered in chromatic visors that reflected the world in prismatic shards.
One of them held a worn photograph.
In the picture: a family portrait. Wise stood in the middle, flanked by two siblings and their parents smiles caught in time, warmth that no longer matched the world outside. Gloved fingers brushed the image softly before it was returned to a pouch.
Back in the depths of the mall, under cracked skylights and quiet decay, Wise sat with his rifle laid across his lap. His hands worked with quiet focus, cleaning the barrel, checking each part like a ritual. He slid in five rounds each one a promise.
The weapon clicked shut.
With practiced ease, he slung it across his back, the strap tight across his chest. His golden eye glimmered as he stood, the remnants of sorrow still pulsing in his chest like a distant drumbeat.
"Are you sure you want to do this? This is utterly a stupid plan, Wise. This one would even think it an unwise plan."
Wise gave a slight smirk, not turning to face her.
"Don't worry. I don't plan to fail."
"If anything go wrong, you run to this one. Okay?"
He stopped, his back to her, hand tightening slightly on the crowbar at his side.
"That would be... if, my lady. But I don't plan to burden you."
Her branch extended toward him, hesitated... then withdrew.
He moved silently into the camping store, retracing old steps, boots soft on dust-covered tile. He paused before the doorway to the warehouse. On the other side: silence.
His crowbar was in hand. The rifle, still slung. His breath was steady.
He was ready.
The metal door to the camping store warehouse groaned open with a long, aching creak that echoed into the dusty dark. A stale gust of air rolled out, thick with mildew and rot.
Inside, standing hunched like a collapsed tower, was the infected.
Its height rivaled the brute that once tore through Wise's body. Thin, unnaturally stretched, its limbs dangled and twitched as if still learning to belong. At the sound of the door, its head jerked upward unnaturally fast and glowing blue eyes locked onto the silhouette in the doorway.
Wise stood still at the threshold, a shadow in golden light. His left eye shimmered, scanning calmly.
GROAAAAANNN!!
The creature let out a guttural cry, limbs flailing as it lurched toward the entrance. Its clawed hand reached out, but Wise was already moving. A clean sidestep to the left measured, practiced its talons scraped air.
The infected didn't stop.
It began to shift.
Bones popped with wet, snapping cracks. Shoulders dislocated and reset, the ribs unhinged like a twisted puzzle folding in reverse. The creature bent forward at a grotesque angle, its spine grinding loudly as it collapsed inward, adjusting its frame to fit through the narrow doorway.
Wise's jaw tensed. His hand remained on the crowbar.
The thing squirmed and writhed, its limbs folding over themselves, like a puppet with tangled strings. Its jaw unhinged and reattached as its body twisted unnaturally to fit through the doorframe. The kaleidoscopic glow of its eyes refracted like broken crystal, an ever-shifting mosaic of blue light that pulsed with eerie life.
SHRIEEEEEKKKK
It shrieked loud enough to rattle rusted signs and make the dust leap from old shelves. Its hand lashed out toward Wise long, clawed fingers scraping just inches from his chest.
Wise didn't run.
He took one calm step back, eyes fixed, breaths steady. Every sound, every twitch of that creature's contorting body, was calculated in his mind.
With a groan and crack, the infected's head finally slipped through the threshold, shoulders beginning to follow. Its body kept breaking and resetting with grotesque determination.
That was the moment.
Wise's hand reached back.
A rope, looped through the camping store's rusted shutter pulley, coiled in his fingers.
He yanked.
CLANG THUD!
The metal shutter dropped like a blade gravity-assisted, years of weight and rust behind it slamming down directly onto the infected's neck.
RAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHH!!!
The shriek turned to a gurgled, warbled roar as the creature thrashed beneath the steel. Its torso spasmed violently, arms swinging madly through the open air outside the store. But its head its eyes still glowing like broken glass was pinned.
Wise stood above it, unblinking.
He looked down at the trapped horror, its mouth stretching open in agony, and tightened his grip on the crowbar.
Wise didn't flinch.
His boot slid forward, steady, firm both hands gripping the crowbar. With a sharp thrust, he plunged it through the infected's outstretched arm, nailing it to the floor.
SPLAT
A gush of glowing blue ichor sprayed upward, smearing across Wise's face and dripping from his chin. The crowbar cracked through ceramic and into concrete with a resonating crunch.
RIIIIIAAAAAAAAKKKKKKK!!!!
A scream of primal agony and frustration.
Aurum's leaves jolted her senses flared in shock. She had seen his strength in action before, but to lodge iron into hardened flooring like it was dry soil? It was something else. Something... more. But she kept her silence, watching him from afar, her golden leaves dimming to a hum.
The creature's fingers spasmed, twitching uselessly. It clawed at the air with the strength of a starving animal.
Wise stepped closer.
The malformed head jerked up, mouth hanging wide like a rusted bear trap, its grotesque jawbone shifting unnaturally in one last instinct to bite.
Wise unstrapped the rifle.
Calm. Precise.
He raised it like a spear. The glint of the scope caught in the flickering mall light.
JLEB!
The barrel drove straight into its right eye socket.
GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHH!!!!
The creature shrieked, its whole body convulsing, pinned beneath the fallen shutter, arm skewered to the floor, skull locked in place by the rifle.
Wise furrowed his brow his finger wrapped the trigger.
BANG!
A thunderous echo erupted, the sound rolling like a wave through the dead mall halls.
The recoil jumped in his hand, and the infected's head jerked back. The rear of its skull burst open, fragments of bone and luminous blue brain splattering the shutters.
And then... silence.
The mangled corpse hung limp.
But Wise didn't look away. Not yet.
He watched as the sprayed remains on the shutter twitched. Faint veins in the glowing matter pulsed once twice flickering like dying embers
and then faded into stillness.
No light.
No pulse.
Dead.
Wise stood unmoving before the shutter, the still-warm barrel of the rifle resting loosely in his grasp. His eyes were vacant focused, yet distant as if staring into some place far removed from the mall, from the corpse, from himself.
The luminous blue splattered across his face shimmered under the flickering light, casting faint reflections in his golden left eye. It clung to his skin like ceremonial warpaint like a tribal mark not of victory, but of necessity.
With a sharp jerk, he yanked the rifle free from the skull. A sickening slrrk echoed as the barrel tore out of ruined flesh, trailing viscous, bioluminescent blood in its wake.
He knelt. Lifted the front gate of the shutter.
The infected's body flopped forward with a dull, wet thud, its limbs slack, grotesque, already losing the tension of unlife.
Wise didn't spare it a second glance.
He stepped inside the camping store again quiet, but purposeful. The scent of dust, canvas, and long-expired leather cleaner lingered.
Behind the counter, where he once discarded it without thought, lay the hatchet. Small, stained from age and past use. He picked it up, its weight suddenly heavier, more significant. He had thrown it away before thinking it blasphemy to bring such a weapon near her.
But this wasn't for her.
It was for them.
For what they made.
He turned back toward the body.
Boot planted firmly on the twisted spine of the dead infected, he grabbed one of its long, mutilated arms, raising it like a butcher preparing a carcass. His breath steady. His hands sure.
CRACK!
The hatchet cleaved through flesh and tendon. Blue blood sprayed across his coat, down his arms.
CRACK!
Another strike. Another limb severed.
He did not pause.
He did not speak.
Piece by piece, he dismantled what remained of it.
Wise dragged the butchered limbs one by one, their grotesque weight trailing behind him, the soft wet-thumps marking his path across the mall floor. Blue ichor smeared in streaks behind him like the trail of something half-human, half-forgotten.
When he reached her roots, Aurum's branches extended slowly hesitantly as if uncertain of what they were about to receive. But when her wood touched the flesh, her roots slithered forward instinctively, beginning to drink, to absorb. The glowing blood soaked into her bark like morning dew into soil.
"Wise..."
He didn't respond right away.
Covered in radiant gore, clutching the hatchet limply at his side, Wise looked distant not shocked or frightened removed. Even as his eyes met hers, they didn't seem to see her fully.
He looked to the hatchet, studying it in his grip like a relic, or perhaps a mirror.
That blade had once been a symbol of practicality just another tool. But now, now it had drawn blood that once coursed through a person.
Did the infection trap its victims in their minds? Were they still screaming somewhere behind those kaleidoscopic eyes?
He didn't know.
He didn't care.
Aurum raised his chin with her branch, coaxing his gaze upward.
"Come here..."
The hatchet slipped from his hand, clattering onto the cold tile, metal ringing once before falling silent.
Wise stepped into her embrace without resistance. Her branches wrapped around him not tightly, not possessively, but protectively. Her bark warmed gently against his skin, her fibers drinking the last traces of corruption from his coat, his face, his golden arm.
She cleansed him not of guilt, but of stain.
She didn't speak further. There was a feeling in the air a heaviness, fragile and slow, and asking about it would only break it.
Wise leaned back into her roots, his gaze tilted upward to her leaves stretching into the open air. His golden fingers reached for them lazily, almost like a child reaching for stars.
A smile faint, soft, almost haunting formed on his face.
And then, quietly…
He hummed.
A lullaby.
As though nothing had happened.
As though the world wasn't broken.
As though he hadn't just cut down a ghost.
After letting the weight in his chest settle under Aurum's care, Wise pushed himself back to his feet. The silence had returned to the mall, the lullaby long gone, replaced once more by grim practicality. His mission wasn't over. That grotesque infected had been guarding something and Wise needed it gone to get what he came for.
He walked back to the camping store's warehouse.
The smell hit him first.
A rancid cocktail of decay and mildew rolled out the moment the door cracked open, thick and sour. The warehouse was nearly pitch dark, but Wise was ready. He flipped the switch on his electric lamp, the beam cutting through the darkness and sweeping across rows of abandoned supplies and collapsed shelves. He placed the light on a nearby ledge to free his hands, letting it cast long shadows over the back of the room.
There, slumped in the far corner, was what was left of a corpse snapped in half cleanly at the waist, the lower body twisted unnaturally beside it, gnawed and blackened. The upper torso was withered, sunken into itself like paper soaked and dried again. A patch of scalp was missing, revealing cracked bone. It was a horrifying sight.
Wise crouched beside it, suppressing the instinct to flinch. This was no fresh kill. The rot had settled deep weeks, maybe months. Whoever this person was, they died slowly. Violently.
But what stopped him cold wasn't the state of the body.
It was the shoulder.
A bite mark. Deep. Old. Blackened at the edges.
But no signs of corruption.
Wise's eyes narrowed. His pulse jumped slightly, his breath catching.
No glowing veins.
No cracked blue eyes.
No reanimated flesh.
This corpse had been bitten. It should have turned. It didn't.
He stared harder, checking again. No mutations, no glowing blue fluid leaking from the gums, no hardened skin. Nothing.
"…No way," he murmured.
Wise sat back on his heels, suddenly unsteady. He'd never seen this before.
Not in all his travels. Not after all the countless stories, the files, the reports his father had reviewed. Not even during the final days with his family, waiting for the extraction zone to fall apart. He remembered the voice on the walkie-talkie his father clutched tightly that night the tone grim, the language clinical, and yet panicked.
"It's not viral. It's not bacterial. It's not parasitic. It's something else."
"No, it doesn't even incubate. It just assimilate."
"It rewrites. Overrides. There's no immune system response, because it's not a pathogen!"
It wasn't a virus.
It wasn't a fungus.
It was something new entirely. Something they couldn't even name.
Once bitten, the process always started.
It didn't matter how much blood you lost, or if your heart stopped.
As long as the brain remained you turned.
Wise knew it firsthand. He could still remember the moment the bite in his arm, the agony in his spine, the pressure behind his eyes. His vision had blurred red. His head felt like it would split open. He thought he'd die… or worse, that he'd turn and tear into his own family.
But he didn't.
Because Aurum remade him.
Because she changed him.
He was no longer human.
But this man… this corpse...
He wasn't like Wise. He hadn't been blessed. He hadn't been transformed. And yet
Wise's fist clenched, his other hand touching his left arm the one that once bore the bite, now golden, reforged by Aurum's will.
He knew what it felt like. The way the corruption wormed its way up your spine, like ice and fire dancing over your nerves. The way your heartbeat began to echo someone else's rhythm. The dread of losing yourself.
And this man… this stranger… had died resisting it?
"Impossible..." he muttered, barely audible.
He closed his eyes and exhaled sharply.
Maybe he was wrong.
Maybe it was a fluke.
Or maybe just maybe there was something else. Some lost chance. Some unspoken miracle that wasn't Aurum.
But judging by the rotting flesh, by the expression frozen on the corpse's face agony, not peace it wasn't hope.
It was a fight.
And in the end, it was still a loss.
Wise sighed, the weight settling back in his bones.
Wise moved through the dim store with a careful pace, boots brushing aside bits of debris and faded packaging. The air still stank faintly of dust, mildew, and something older something rotten that clung to the floor and ceiling like a second skin. But it was quieter now, emptier, with that tall infected gone for good. That meant he could work.
Looting wasn't easy these days, not just because of the infected or the decay. It was because everything was a gamble. Would the tent still hold together? Would the gas canisters for the stoves still burn, or had the fuel gone sour? Would the boots crumble the second you wore them? Time didn't tick normally anymore. Nothing aged the way it used to not even people.
He didn't know how long it had been since the fall. Not weeks. Not months. Maybe years. Maybe more. Aurum said time still moved, but to Wise, everything before her felt like a dream fading at the edges.
He checked shelves with methodical precision. A few bear traps still sealed. Good. Tent poles, battered but usable. A portable stove, empty of fuel. He sighed. No surprise there. If the gas hadn't leaked or rotted out by now, it'd be a miracle.
Then something glinted.
Not bright, not neon but just enough. A shimmer in the corner of his eye.
He turned and there it was.
On the top shelf, half-covered in an old jacket: a composite hunting bow, matte black with minimal wear, strung and intact. Beside it, a small quiver holding seven arrows. Not the kind you'd find in a museum, either. Real. Practical. Used.
He stepped closer and brushed the dust off with his palm. Beneath the grime, fingerprints dried blood smudged along the shelf in thin clawing streaks. Someone had tried to reach it. Must've been that corpse. Maybe he'd dragged himself across the floor, wounded, desperate. Maybe he thought a bow could stop that tall infected. He was wrong.
Wise pulled the bow free. It was lighter than expected, sturdy. He tested the draw strong tension, but nothing he couldn't handle. No rust. No rust. That made no damn sense.
His handgun had rusted within days after waking up. It was supposed to be stainless steel military grade. Yet it was flaking like scrap metal when he found it near his body. But this bow? It had been sitting untouched through gods-know-what... and it was fine.
Like the mall itself. Like everything since he came back.
A talking tree. Glowing blood. Golden eyes. A world that had rotted, but never fully died. Nothing made sense. Not anymore. And honestly? He didn't care.
He released the string with a faint thunk. He didn't know much about archery just what he'd seen in games or clips before everything went to hell. But arrows could be recovered. Bullets couldn't. And right now, he needed everything that gave him an edge.
Wise slung the bow over his back with the rifle, careful not to tangle the quiver. He scoured the rest of the warehouse, but it was all the same: junk. Molded shoes, dead batteries, cracked camping mugs. Leftovers of lives that never made it past the first wave.
With a final glance, he stepped out and grabbed the shutter chain, pulling it down until the gate clattered shut. The clang echoed down the hall like a bell tolling the end of something.
His first fully looted store.
A small, hollow victory.
But a victory nonetheless.
He turned, eyes scanning across the shattered mall. A few stray beams of cloudy sunlight pierced the glass roof above. The air smelled like wet dust and dead time. And in the center of it all, waiting with open branches, stood his sovereign.
Aurum.
Wise smiled just a little and walked back toward her. Back to the only thing in this world that made any sense anymore.
For a couple of days, Aurum silently observed from the shadows of the cracked mall as Wise trained with the bow he scavenged. The first day, he could barely draw the string with proper form. The arrows wobbled midair, clattering off walls, hitting mannequins in the knees, shoulders anywhere but where he aimed. Aurum chuckled quietly to herself, rustling her leaves in amusement. For someone so precise with a rifle, he was hopelessly awkward with a bow.
By the second day, he had started using one of the broken mannequins as a makeshift target, marking a red 'X' across its forehead with a strip of cloth. He paced out fifteen studs, took position, drew and missed. Again. And again. His breath steady, his arms taut, his golden eye focused but his arrows thudded uselessly around the mannequin, some barely even sticking.
Still, he didn't quit.
Aurum could tell he was frustrated. Not by failure but by inconsistency. It was a weakness he couldn't tolerate in himself. Especially not now.
By the third day, however, his stance had changed. Shoulders looser, breaths deeper, the rhythm more natural. He wasn't fighting the bow anymore. He was listening to it. Reading the wind. Adjusting the angle with quiet patience.
Then
JLEB!
The arrow struck with a sharp, clean sound. Right through the forehead of the mannequin.
It tumbled backward, hollow head split clean, the red mark pierced dead-center.
"Wow! Thine finally did it." Aurum's voice echoed with delight, her leaves clapping softly in approval.
Wise lowered the bow, a small exhale escaping his lips. He didn't smile just rolled his shoulders and looked at the fallen mannequin like it owed him that shot. Maybe it did.
He picked up another arrow without a word, nocked it, and aimed again.
There was more to learn. And he wasn't done.
By the sixth day, something had shifted.
Wise stood in the middle of the mall's desolate corridor, mannequins positioned at irregular distances and angles. His breathing was slow, measured not from fatigue, but focus. He pulled the bowstring smoothly, the arrow sliding into place like muscle memory, then released.
THUNK.
The arrow buried itself precisely in the collar of the nearest mannequin.
Another draw. Another release.
THUNK.
Between the eyes.
Aurum watched in silence. Wise had become frighteningly proficient. Each shot was deliberate, each mark struck true. He was moving between targets now without stopping, his limbs responding with uncanny fluidity.
He paused, bow lowered slightly, brow furrowed.
"How…?" he muttered to himself.
Archery wasn't part of his past. He wasn't a hunter, nor a soldier trained in this craft. By all logic, he should've taken weeks, months to reach this level. Yet here he was, hitting precision marks as though he were born for it.
He nocked an arrow again this time taking aim at the mannequin's groin.
He released.
THUNK.
A hollow pop echoed as the mannequin folded over.
Wise didn't even grin. Something about the motion, about all of this felt natural. Almost too natural. But it wasn't satisfying.
He looked at his hands. His left the golden one, glowed softly with her blessing. No wear. No ache. But his right hand was bruised red, skin raw from repeated bowstring contact.
Aurum's branch slithered down, curling between his fingers like a comforting hand. Her warmth pulsed through him, golden glow mending his flesh with gentle flickers.
"Dost thou not think it's enough?"
He didn't look at her. His eyes were still on the mannequins.
"Nay."
"Thou hast hit everything with every mark."
He slowly shook his head.
"I need to be faster. I need to draw and loose as quickly as I would pull a trigger."
He flexed his healed fingers, rubbing them lightly.
"Until then… I am still a trainee."
He stepped forward, boots echoing lightly across the marble as he approached the mannequins. His hand reached out to retrieve the lodged arrows, fingers brushing the shaft
Then he froze.
The air shifted.
A chill crawled down his spine. Not a wind, not a breeze, but a pressure, like something ancient had awoken.
There in the distance, past where the cracked glass ceiling of the mall ended and the sunlight could no longer reach stood a shape. Massive. Lurking in the shadows.
A beast.
A bear.
Or what was once a bear.
Its fur was no longer brown, but sickly blue patchy and mottled like necrotic frost. Its face... was not a face. It was bone. A bleached, animal skull stripped of flesh, resting on a hulking frame, with ribs poking beneath the thin skin like blades.
The beast groaned. The sound was deep, unnatural, echoing off the empty storefronts.
Its skull creaked open split like a grotesque flower blooming. The jawline widened, splitting vertically as sinews tore open. From within that gaping maw, a pair of pale blue hands reached outward.
A man's hands.
No… not a man. Not anymore.
The being inside crawled forward, revealing a torso tangled with veiny, blue corruption. A humanoid figure embedded within the bear, using it like a puppet a corpse worn as armor.
Wise didn't move. His breath caught. Not out of fear, but instinct. His golden eye narrowed.
It was an eye.
The humanoid figure's head… no, not a head, a single eye. Swollen and enormous, taking the whole face, the iris pulsing with lines of bioluminescent blue. Veins webbed out across it like frostbite.
It blinked.
And spotted him.
The bear shrieked.
Wise didn't hesitate he ripped one of the arrows free from the mannequin and aimed straight for the beast's eye.
But the creature reacted fast. The moment it sensed danger, the humanoid figure retracted, sucked back into the bear's skull like a puppet into its case. The skull snapped shut, thick and unyielding, acting as a shield.
The arrow struck thud but couldn't penetrate.
"WISE, FALL BACK NOW!"
He cursed under his breath and turned, leaving the remaining arrows behind. The creature barreled forward with bone-rattling weight, paws cracking the floor.
He sprinted back to Aurum. The moment he reached her domain, her roots surged from the marble twisting, spiraling, striking upward like spears.
The bear's shriek shattered the silence, pain echoing through its inhuman lungs as Aurum's roots tore into its legs. Blood not red, but glowing blue splattered across the floor.
Wise turned, eyes narrowing.
It was no ordinary infected.
And this fight was only just beginning.
More of Aurum's roots burst forth from the floor, a chorus of splintering marble and twisting wood. They shot up, lashing at the infected bear's ribs. The beast roared in agony, its monstrous cry shaking the broken windows and rattling the dust in the air.
Wise was already back on his feet, the shock of the moment long gone. He pressed his back against Aurum's bark, breath steady, eyes calculating.
He loosed another arrow, this time aiming for the creature's throat. Thunk! The arrow hit but barely sank in. The bear didn't even flinch.
"Tch..." He clicked his tongue, frustration bleeding into focus. His hand reached for the rifle slung across his back. In one fluid motion, he brought it forward and aimed at the bear's skull, the cold barrel locked on target.
Then he heard it.
A stifled cry. Not from the beast.
"Ugh... Ughffff!"
"Aurum!?"
His head snapped to the side.
There her root.
One of her glowing, golden-veined roots, caught in the bear's flailing limbs, was being torn away.
Crack!
The sound shattered something inside him.
His golden eye widened. His pupils shrank. His throat clenched.
He saw the golden sap her blood spilling across the floor.
Suddenly.
His chest. His heart he couldn't hear it anymore. It was too fast. Too loud. The world blurred.
Riiiiiiiiing...
That high-pitched noise whined in his ears, drowning out everything. The mall faded to silence.
Only that sight. Only her pain. That root torn. That golden blood.
Something snapped.
Aurum barely saw it no, she didn't see it at all. One moment, her knight stood beneath her. The next he was gone.
A blur of gold and black streaked across the battlefield.
BOOM.
Wise slammed into the bear's side, shoulder-first, with such force it was like watching a cannonball made of muscle and wrath.
A bear a creature of hundreds of kilograms was launched into the air.
It let go.
The root was free.
Blue blood splattered as the beast tumbled back, screeching, legs splayed, trying to regain its footing.
Wise stood there, crowbar in one hand, left eye blazing. The light of Aurum's gift glowed like fire from beneath his skin.
The creature snarled, but before it could react, a hand his hand clamped down around its exposed skull. Bone ground against palm as the infected beast writhed, trying to pull away, claws slashing blindly in panic.
BWAAAM!!
A crushing sound tore through the mall like thunder.
Wise had buried his fist into the creature's gut if one could still call it that. The blow was so deep, so violent, the infected vomited glowing blue blood from every hole in its twisted, malformed skull. Its shriek turned into a garbled gurgle, part pain, part confusion.
Wise's face did not change.
He reached down, hand closing around a jagged stone from the shattered floor.
SMASH.
He slammed it into the bear's skull. The stone cracked. The skull splintered.
GRAAAAAAHHH!!
The beast thrashed, but Wise didn't waver. With one fluid motion, he lifted the bear by the neck.
As if it weighed nothing.
The weight of a monstrous infected hurled like trash smashed into a concrete wall with a sickening crunch, sending cracks spidering across the surface as blood painted it like a grotesque mural.
Still, no words.
Still, no hesitation.
Wise reached behind him. His fingers closed around the cold, familiar metal.
Shiiiink.
He unsheathed his crowbar from the belt like a knight drawing his blade. The weapon gleamed under the flickering mall lights.
And then
BWAM!
CRACK!
BWAM!
CRACK!
He pounded the crowbar down like a hammer of judgment, blow after blow cratering into the bear's skull. The bone finally gave way, shattering into shards, exposing the grotesque flickering blue glow beneath.
The monster screamed a high-pitched, primal shriek and jerked violently.
Its claws slashed wide.
Wise raised his crowbar just in time.
CLANG!
The claws smashed into the metal, sending a jarring force up his arms. He was pushed back, boots skidding across the marble floor, grinding until they carved a shallow trail. Dust kicked up in clouds.
He didn't fall.
He didn't flinch.
He didn't blink.
Wise stood upright, crowbar ready, his golden eye blazing, his right eye shadowed by his damp hair.
The infected body rose, twitching grotesquely as it shed fragments of its ruined skull. Then
That monstrous eye emerged again.
Slitting open the bear's ruined skull like flesh petals, the grotesque orb pushed itself out wide, luminous, veins glowing like lightning threads. The iris pulsed, blue tendrils crackling outward like coiled thunderclouds.
Wise took a step forward, muscles coiling like a spring. He was going to end it
"WISE, DON'T!!!"
Aurum's voice boomed through his head like a crack of divine command.
Her roots snapped from the marble beneath him, lashing out, slithering around his waist and arms like serpents of salvation. With speed faster than thought, she yanked him back, just as the eye finished charging
PLISH!!
A concentrated beam of searing blue light shot from the creature's pupil, slicing through the air like a celestial blade. The moment it fired, Aurum's roots twisted upward, four of them weaving together mid-air into a tightly sealed cross formation.
And then
A flower bloomed.
Aurum's golden bloom unfurled in front of Wise like a radiant shield its petals glowing with intricate veins of shimmering gold. The air trembled, and from its core, a piercing beam of golden light erupted.
KRAKOOOOOM!!!
The two beams collided blue and gold clashing in a storm of energy.
The air quaked.
The mall shook.
Light swallowed everything.
In that instant, it was as if the sun and a dying star had met in the heart of ruin. The beams screamed against each other, crackling, snarling, pulsing. The golden light pushed against the eye's unholy glow, and Aurum strained every root, every ounce of power into keeping the flower steady.
Wise, held tightly in her embrace, could only stare as the battlefield turned into a holy war of light.
And then
A blinding flash swallowed the world.
As the titanic clash of light waned, the aftershocks of golden and blue energy still shimmered faintly in the air, like dying embers after a divine battle. The moment the blinding radiance faded
Wise was already crouched low on one knee.
His mismatched eyes glared forward, sharp as blades, cold as steel. The infected beast half-hidden behind the curling smoke of scorched marble and molten air was still there. That thing... the abomination that dared to wound her.
He didn't feel the rifle in his hand begin to change.
Where his fingers gripped the worn frame, cracks formed spreading like wildfire. Veins of black and gold, like the fusion of ash and light, slithered across the metal, corrupting and blessing it in the same heartbeat. It groaned, shifting like it was alive. But Wise didn't flinch. He didn't even blink.
He had one focus.
That son of a birch dies now.
BANG!
The world detonated.
It wasn't a gunshot it was a roar. A thunderous boom that shattered the quiet like a wrathful god screaming down from heaven. Aurum's leaves reeled from the shockwave, some scattering, curling inward from the sheer force. The air distorted.
From the cursed, blessed rifle
a golden spear of annihilation shot forth.
It didn't pierce the beast. It erased it.
Half of the abomination's body simply disintegrated on impact, turning into luminous blue mist that hissed as it touched the air. The beam tore through it like paper, and beyond through the walls of the mall, and into the far horizon where concrete turned to clouds. It left a haloed tunnel in its wake, edges glowing, charred, carved by divine fire.
The mall fell into silence.
Even the infection dared not groan.
Aurum's breath stilled, if such things still applied to her. What lay before her eyes was beyond reason a corrupted beast made of nightmare and decay, obliterated by the wrath of one man. And the trail it left behind… was a wound carved into the world by golden judgment.
She tried to speak, but the awe robbed her of words.
Then
Clatter.
Wise dropped the rifle.
Blood no, not red. But molten golden ichor poured from his nostrils, from the corners of his lips, and even his left eye. It streaked down his face like tears of a god suffering mortality.
He staggered. Then crumbled forward, right into her roots.
"WISE!"
Her voice cracked through the air, shaking every inch of her branches. She reached for him with urgency, vines wrapping tightly around his limp form, hoisting him into a trembling cradle.
"WISE, WAKE UP! WISE! WISE!"
She shook him gently, then firmer, as his head lulled. No reply. Only the steady drip of gold from his body, staining her bark like sacred oil. His face remained pale, serene... yet broken.
The world had gone still again.
But not from peace. From the deafening silence of fear.
Wise opened his eyes to a sky bathed in gold. The clouds floated gently, scattered like delicate brushstrokes across a canvas of light. The world around him shimmered with quiet majesty, and as he lifted himself, his hand met the ground
Splash.
It wasn't ground. It was water. A shallow, endless mirror stretching out in all directions, reflecting the golden heavens above. Ripples broke the perfection with every movement, sending gentle waves of light across the surface. There was no mall. No ruin. No blood.
Only this.
He touched his cheek
warm. Alive.
Is this… heaven?
The thought flickered, but he shook his head. He didn't want to answer it. Not yet. Not like this.
As he rose to his full height, he noticed his garments had changed.
A simple white shirt, soft and untorn. Trousers clean and untouched by ash or time. His clothing from before. Before Aurum. Before the corruption. Before the end.
But his body… it betrayed the illusion.
His left arm, black and gold, still gleamed with unnatural shine. His chest, marked with that jagged, radiant scar, pulsed faintly beneath his shirt.
His fingers brushed against it.
Still there. Still him.
Then, in the distance
A tree.
A golden crown of leaves that shimmered like sunlight woven into silk. Black bark as deep as night. Her silhouette, rooted at the center of this divine sea.
"Aurum!?"
He called out, voice echoing across the shallow ocean.
He stepped forward, water slowing him, clinging to his feet like silk-threads of resistance. Each stride felt heavier, like the world was trying to hold him back.
But he pressed on.
The closer he came, the more defined she became. Her radiant branches reached skyward, whispering gently in the breeze, like they had been waiting for him all along.
But just as he reached the final steps
Someone stood before her.
A man.
Taller than him. Broad. Silent. But with mismatched eyes that mirrored his own. An opened shirt exposed a chest marked by the same golden scars deep, carved, radiant. His left arm was armored, wrapped in sleek, black plating reminiscent of an ancient warrior's gauntlet, samurai-like, molded to protect and empower. Beneath the armor, gold still pulsed like a buried sun.
Wise's breath caught. That face… it was his.
Yet not.
A version older, rougher, wearier carved by trials yet unknown. A reflection twisted by fate, or a glimpse into what he might become.
The man said nothing.
He moved slowly, with absolute purpose, and unsheathed a blade.
Or what remained of one.
The sword was shattered near its midsection, but the cracks were not jagged. They were filled with gold. As if molten light had been poured into the broken steel, mending it into something new. Something stronger.
Kintsugi. The art of healing through beauty. Of making scars sacred.
The man this other Wise raised his golden-stitched weapon. His gaze met Wise's, unwavering.
Then
He swung.
WHOOOOOSH
The strike didn't land.
But the sea responded.
A tsunami erupted from the blade's arc, water rising into a gleaming wall of gold and light. It crashed into Wise with the force of a thousand tides, engulfing him
Pulling him under.
Wise sank beneath the golden waves, the sunlight above flickering further and further from reach. His arms kicked out weak, sluggish. Why… can't I swim? He had always been a strong swimmer, wasn't he?
The water didn't answer.
It pulled.
Dragged.
His limbs lost their strength. The light faded from his eyes.
Then
Silence.
Darkness.
He surrendered to it.
Drip.
A single golden drop fell onto his lips.
Then another.
His mouth opened on instinct, catching the viscous sweetness. Warmth pooled in his throat. His vision, blurry and slow, began to sharpen, not remembering what just happened.
a branch hovered over him, glowing faintly.
And beyond it
"WISE!"
Aurum's voice rang in his soul before his ears. He let out a ragged groan, muscles spasming with pain.
"AGRHK "
"Slow down, Wise. Thou art just..."
She paused hesitation so rare in her tone that it caught his attention even through the haze.
"Huh...?"
Then it hit him memories flooding in like broken damwater.
The bear.
The eye.
The pain.
His fury.
And then... pulling the trigger.
"Oh... no. WAIT! Your root!"
He jolted, trying to force himself upright but before he could even strain, her branches wrapped around his waist, cradling him. Holding him back.
"Shhhhh... Thou hast slept for six days. The wound in this one is long gone."
"Six... days? Damn. I must've worried you sick."
"Thou did. Verily, this one thought thine needed another resurrection."
He barked out a dry laugh, wincing immediately at the pain in his ribs.
"Ahahahaha... yeah, well I'm not planning to head to the other side when I've got half your core keeping me tethered here."
"Mhm."
He raised a hand and gently caressed her bark his strength only just returning. Her roots carefully adjusted him, helping his body sit upright like a fragile doll.
Then she pointed.
Her branch extended slowly toward the far end of the mall. His gaze followed
And there it was.
A hole. A perfect, smoldering void carved through floor, wall, and god knows how much more. The beast's corpse what was left of it still hissed and sizzled. The edges of the blast bore golden burns, still fizzing with residual light... even after six days.
"There thine master work."
Wise let out a long exhale, body sinking slightly into the soft cradle of Aurum's roots.
"...I did that?"
"Thou did not remember?"
He stared at the still-simmering ruin across the marble floor.
"No... All I remember is the moment I pulled the trigger, everything went blank. Like a curtain fell. I saw everything in gold everything. I couldn't feel anything but rage. No thoughts. No weight. Just..." He clenched his fist. "The need to end that beast for hurting you. That's all I saw. That's all I was."
"Wise... dost thou know that abomination weighed a hundred times more than thee?"
"Yeah," he muttered. "Bears are heavy. Real heavy."
"Thou carried it. Threw it. Slammed it down like a mere child's doll. Even I could not hold its force back entirely. Yet thou thou, with thine fragile flesh shoulder-bashed it through the air. And thou sayeth nothing remains in memory?"
He sat silent. The air grew still.
Wise's golden eye dimmed as confusion settled in.
"...That doesn't make sense," he murmured. "I was fighting it, sure. But that? I shouldn't even be standing. Hell, I shouldn't be alive."
The disbelief in his voice wasn't just from modesty it was real. Cold and sinking.
He looked at his hands.
One flesh, bruised.
The other gold, unshaking.
"...Aurum... what did you put in me?" he asked, half in awe, half in fear.
"This one only remade thee according to what thy flesh was once capable of. True, this one granted thee mine eye and half of my core... yet such should not have altered thy form beyond thy natural design. Thine self should remain as thou were before."
Wise stared at his own reflection in a puddle pooled atop her bark. His left cheek glowed faintly, golden veins pulsing under the skin like buried lightning.
Was that strength… really mine?
Was it from the infection before he was remade?
Was it Aurum's doing accidental, unknowing?
His gaze drifted to the side, to where it lay.
"...What is that, Aurum?"
"That is thy rifle. When thou fired it, it changed… by thine own grasp."
The weapon resting beside her roots no longer resembled the scavenged rifle he once wielded. Its frame shimmered, black forged with golden accents like veins carved into obsidian. Sleek, brutal, beautiful it looked like something torn from the pages of a soldier's fever dream. The scope was gone, replaced by a solid rail, and the barrel now bore the thickness and menace of anti-materiel rifles only more refined, almost ceremonial. A hybrid between lost-world warfare and divine craftsmanship.
He reached for it but pain lanced through his arm. Aurum, wordless, extended a branch and gently laid the weapon across his lap.
"Thy masterwork was with that tool. It breathed flame like a hurricane, loosing a projectile so fierce..."
She paused, as if the memory of that golden lance of destruction still echoed in her sap.
"...Even this one knows not the full breadth of its ruin. The hole it left there is no end to it. The wall was but the beginning."
Wise ran a hand over the rifle's surface. Warm. Familiar. Alien.
And his.
He gripped the rifle's handle with intent but the moment his fingers closed around it:
"OH!?"
"Wise!?"
A sudden lurch. His body tensed. His heart skipped
And then his vision shifted.
His left eye, golden and divine, warped before his mind could process it. Like gears aligning behind a lens, his world twisted into sharp lines and precise angles. A sniper's reticle bloomed across his iris, and suddenly, everything in front of him zoomed forward like a long-distance scope snapping into focus.
"I what's happening!? I I can't see!"
"Hold still! Let this one see thy eye "
Her branch gently tilted his chin. She stilled.
There it was, glimmering in the shade: his pupil no longer resembled anything human. A targeting crosshair etched in golden light had completely overtaken his iris, layered with concentric rings like a digital scope. It was not artificial but arcane, living, bound to his soul.
Wise, however, was no longer panicking.
His breath slowed.
His eye his sight was fixed on her.
Her leaves.
He saw them not as clusters or colors. No. Each vein, each delicate edge, the tiniest web of golden light and the shimmer of sap beneath their surface it was all clear. All beautiful. Like seeing divinity through a god's lens.
"...So this is how she looks."
"Thine eye it changed once again."
Wise didn't respond. Not at first. His hand lifted toward her canopy, yearning to feel what his vision now revealed. But the moment his fingers left the rifle's grip
Fshhhh.
His vision returned to normal.
The divine clarity vanished.
"Ahhh..." he exhaled, dazed.
"Art thou really fine?"
His head gently met her bark. He closed his eyes, palm brushing his temple, tracing the golden ridges around his eye.
"I... I don't know."