The street below seethed like a wound that refused to close. Corpses—no, worse than corpses—shambled forward in droves, the air thick with the stench of rot and damp earth. Their hollow eyes glowed faintly in the dark, like lanterns for the damned.
Kairis stood at the edge of a rooftop, hood up, coat whipping in the wind. He stared down at them with an almost amused calm, as if the ocean of decaying flesh was nothing more than a bad joke the world had decided to tell him.
"So this is it?" he muttered, his lips curling into a faint smirk. "The grand nightmare? A bunch of dead things too stubborn to stay in the dirt."
The horde pressed forward, scraping claws on concrete, jaws snapping open and shut like rusted machinery. For a moment, their collective groans drowned out the city's silence, becoming a single suffocating noise that clawed at the mind.
Kairis spread his hand, dark energy humming faintly against his palm. Gyro-Telekinesis shimmered around him, bending air and dust in spirals. The system's cold blue script flickered briefly across his vision:
> [Skill: Gyro-Telekinesis Activated]
[Energy Drain: Moderate]
He tilted his head, eyes narrowing.
"Pathetic. You really think you'll drag me down to your level? Try me."
The first wave surged toward the building, bodies crashing into the walls, clawing upward like vermin. Kairis didn't move—not yet. He waited until they were halfway up the facade, until the creaking groans of broken spines reached his ears. Then he clenched his fist.
The nearest zombies lifted violently off the wall, as if the ground itself had rejected them. Their limbs twisted unnaturally in midair before they were slammed against one another with bone-cracking force. Brains and blood painted the concrete as their bodies folded like paper dolls.
"Bang," Kairis said flatly, releasing the grip. The corpses dropped lifelessly, piled on top of the others scrambling below.
The horde didn't falter. More came. Dozens. Hundreds.
Kairis leapt from the rooftop. His boots hit the asphalt with a sound that silenced everything for a beat. The horde turned toward him instantly, drawn by the pulse of living flesh.
He rolled his neck. "Finally. Some exercise."
The first corpse lunged. His blade—the Graviton Edge—snapped into existence, vibrating faintly with distorted light. With a single swing, he carved clean through its torso. The cut didn't bleed. It collapsed in halves, each piece thrown back by the gravitational distortion clinging to the weapon.
Kairis stepped forward, weaving between snapping jaws and flailing arms. His movements weren't wild or desperate—every swing, every kick, every twist of his wrist was measured, as if he had rehearsed this a thousand times. The zombies pressed from all sides, but his rhythm never broke.
When their numbers grew thick, he planted his foot and raised a hand. Gyro-Telekinesis surged outward like an invisible detonation, scattering the horde in a circle around him. Corpses flew into buildings, slammed into lamp posts, crashed into one another. Some rose again with broken spines and shattered jaws, others didn't move at all.
"Keep coming," Kairis snarled, voice low, taunting them as he dashed forward. "You're nothing but fuel. Ashes feeding the fire."
One of the larger zombies—a beast of a man with chunks of muscle hanging from its arms—barreled toward him. Kairis pivoted, let its claw swing past, then twisted the Graviton Edge upward. The strike cleaved it from hip to shoulder, splitting it open in a spray of decay.
The system chimed faintly in his mind.
> [Dark Matter Absorbed: 0.5 Units]
[Proficiency Increased: Graviton Edge Lv.2 → 28%]
The messages vanished as quickly as they appeared. Kairis exhaled sharply, eyes burning with grim focus.
This wasn't just survival anymore. This was a test. A stage. And deep inside, something darker whispered to him—that his bloodline had been born for this. His grandfather's words surfaced, unbidden:
"When the world burns, when the dead rise and the living falter, it will be the Ash bloodline that endures. And when the smoke clears, the God of the void will descend, to see which of us still stands."
Kairis swung again, tearing through another cluster, his coat flaring behind him like a banner of war.
"Watch me, old man," he muttered under his breath as the horde closed in from all sides. "Watch me burn your prophecy into reality."
Far beyond the crumbling city, in the endless expanse of the primordial void, a figure shifted on a throne of living roots. Lucien Dreamveil's smirk widened, eyes glimmering with amusement.
The god had seen this play before—but never with such fire.
And he would be watching.