The Corridor and the First Corpse
The corridor was quiet—the kind of quiet Adrian almost never heard anymore.
No gunfire.No screaming.No hunger gnawing at his stomach.
Just his own footsteps and the crystalline clink of scattered cores under his boots.
For once, he wasn't running.Wasn't hiding.Wasn't bracing for the next disaster.
He was… almost happy.
Adrian hummed as he walked, silver hair brushing his cheekbones with each light step. The cracked floor ahead gleamed with countless crystal cores—red, green, blue—but the ones that stole his breath were the colorless cores.
Pure.Cold.Perfect.
He dropped to his knees and picked one up.
The instant it touched his skin—
cool energy surged through his arm like quiet lightning.
He laughed softly, grabbed another, and then another, letting wave after wave of energy fill the hollow places inside him. His heartbeat slowed. His eyes half closed.
For the first time in days,he felt good.
Until—
A sharp thud hit the rafters above him.
Before he could look up,something dropped from the ceiling—fast.
A corpse.
Gray, cracked skin.Gums peeled back.Joints bending backward at impossible angles.
It twisted mid-air and lunged at him.
Adrian rolled aside just in time.The corpse crashed into the crystal pile he'd been kneeling in, shards exploding outward.
The shock snapped him back to reality.
More sounds followed—dragging, scraping, the crack of bone hitting stone—
And then the other bodies came.