The chapel remained silent except for the dripping of black liquid from Hugo's blade. The survivors stared at him, huddled together like frightened animals. Their faces reflected horror, but something else too, a desperate, awful hope.
A woman at the back pushed forward. "Move," she ordered, shoving past the armed men. "Let me see him."
She wore a medic's coat stained with old blood. Dark hair pulled back in a messy knot, strands falling across her face. She carried a pack that clinked with vials and tools.
"Your eyes," she said, stopping a few feet from Hugo. "They've changed."
"What?" Hugo reached up instinctively.
"There's a ring around your irises. Pale, almost white." She studied him clinically, fear buried beneath professional assessment. "I'm Naomi. Field medic, Southern Quarter. You're hurt."
Hugo glanced down. His armor was torn across the ribs where the undead had caught him with a glancing blow. Blood soaked his shirt underneath.
"It's nothing," he said.
Naomi stepped closer, ignoring the warning looks from the others. "Let me see."
She didn't wait for permission, pushing aside the torn armor to examine the wound beneath. Her breath caught.
"This should need stitches. It's... closing already." She looked up at Hugo, brow furrowed. "What did you do to that thing? What are you?"
"We need to move," Hugo said, stepping back from her touch. "More will come. That thing was a feeder, they travel in packs."
The survivors exchanged glances.
"He's right," said one of the armed men. "I saw three of those monsters near the market. Where can we go? The gates were overrun hours ago."
"The inner wall might still hold," Hugo said. "That's where the last evacuation point was."
"Through five blocks of undead?" an older woman scoffed. "We barely made it here."
"They're avoiding me." Hugo sheathed his sword. "Stay close, and we might get through."
Naomi was still watching him, eyes narrowed. "You still haven't answered my question."
"We don't have time for answers," Hugo replied. "Just decisions. Stay or go?"
The group gathered what little they had. Naomi checked the old man's wounded arm, redressing it with bandages from her pack. The children, a boy and girl who couldn't be more than ten, stayed silent with the hollow-eyed stare of those who'd seen too much.
Hugo led them out into the gray dawn. Rain fell steadily, washing blood into the gutters. Bodies lay everywhere, civilians caught in the open when the walls fell. Hugo felt the others' horror, but something in him had gone numb. He saw the dead as... empty vessels. Used up. Nothing worth considering.
This coldness frightened him more than the undead.
They moved through side streets, Hugo at point. The group watched in disbelief as undead scattered before them, fleeing like rats from fire.
"They're afraid of you," Naomi said quietly, keeping pace beside him. "Why?"
Hugo focused on the path ahead. "I don't know."
It wasn't entirely a lie. He didn't understand what was happening, only that he could feel the dead now. Sense them clustered throughout the city like cold spots in his mind.
"That's bullshit," Naomi hissed. "I saw what happened in the chapel. You did something to that monster. Drained it somehow."
Hugo stopped suddenly, raising a hand. The group halted.
"What is it?" one of the men whispered.
"Wait." Hugo closed his eyes, concentrating on the strange new senses flowing through him. Ahead, he felt a pressure. Dozens of cold spots clustered together, a weight that pressed against his awareness.
"We need to go around," he said, opening his eyes. "There's too many on this street."
"How do you know?" Naomi pressed.
"I can feel them." Hugo turned down an alleyway. "Like a pressure in my head."
"That's not possible," Naomi said, but followed anyway.
They emerged onto another street and found it empty save for the dead. Hugo's detour had worked. The others looked at him with growing awe, whispering among themselves.
"He's blessed."
"Or cursed."
"Does it matter, if it keeps us alive?"
Naomi stayed close as they navigated the ruins of Greyhaven. "Your wound is completely healed," she said when they paused to let the older members of the group rest. "I need to understand what's happening. Not just for curiosity, for survival."
Hugo leaned against a broken wall, suddenly exhausted despite the power flowing through him.
"When the wall fell, I should have died," he admitted quietly. "An undead had me pinned. It was... feeding. Taking my soul, I think. But I pulled back somehow. Took from it instead."
Naomi's eyes widened. "You consumed an undead's essence?"
"Yes. And again at the chapel."
"That's not possible," she repeated, but with less certainty. "The dead feed on the living. Not the other way around."
"I know what I felt." Hugo met her eyes. "And I know how it sounds. Like I'm cursed. Maybe I am."
"Or you're something new." Naomi studied his face. "The first time the dead have had reason to fear."
They continued on, making slow but steady progress toward the inner wall. Hugo felt the survivors watching him, their fear mixing with desperate gratitude. He didn't belong to their world anymore. He walked between states, neither dead nor fully alive.
The inner gate loomed ahead, its iron portcullis still intact. Beyond it lay the evacuation point where ships had been taking survivors downriver. They could hear distant fighting, the last defenders holding out.
But the approach to the gate was packed with undead. Dozens of them, pressed together in a writhing mass. Too many to avoid.
Hugo stopped, the others crowding behind him.
"We can't get through that," one of the men whispered.
Hugo stared at the mass of undead. With his new senses, he could see more than just rotting flesh. Clinging to the creatures were wisps of light, souls not fully consumed, fragments of the people they once were and those they had fed upon. Dozens of them, like pale lanterns in a dark sea.
A terrible hunger rose in him. He could take them all. Devour every essence, grow stronger with each absorption. The cold calculation formed in his mind: he could save these eight survivors by destroying every undead at the gate.
By becoming something monstrous.
"Wait here," Hugo said, drawing his sword.
Naomi caught his arm. "What are you going to do?"
Hugo looked down at her hand, then back to her face. "What I have to."
He stepped forward, walking steadily toward the mass of undead. They sensed him coming, turning as one, their moans rising in volume. Not hunger now, but fear.
Hugo felt his eyes burning, the pale rings around his irises expanding. The hunger within him swelled, overwhelming his disgust and hesitation.
He didn't look back at the survivors. At Naomi. Better they didn't see what he was about to become.
Hugo raised his blade and charged into the mass of undead, opening himself to the darkness within.