The entity found me three miles from the compound.
Not physically—it couldn't reach this far, not yet. But mentally, through the connection we shared, it slammed into my consciousness like a tidal wave of malice.
VESSEL.
I stumbled, nearly fell. The world inverted—sky below, ground above, reality folding in on itself—
YOU THINK YOU'VE ESCAPED. YOU THINK YOUR STOLEN MEMORIES MAKE YOU STRONG.
Pain. Not physical pain. Something deeper. The entity was trying to tear the first Zombie King's consciousness out of me, ripping at the fusion we'd achieved.
I pushed back.
No.
The word wasn't mine alone. It came from ten thousand years of resistance. Ten thousand years of defiance. The first Zombie King's will merged with my own, and together we shoved the entity's presence back.
YOU CANNOT—
I already have.
The connection snapped. The entity recoiled—I felt its surprise, its fury, its fear. It had expected to find me weakened after the facility. Instead, I was stronger.
And it knew.
I straightened, breathing hard, and looked toward the compound gates. The survivors on the walls were staring at me—they'd seen me freeze, seen my eyes blaze with amber light, seen something they couldn't understand.
I raised a hand in reassurance.
Then I walked the last three hundred yards, carrying millennia of war inside my skull.
------------------------------
Min-Tong reached me before anyone else.
She ran across the compound courtyard, past the zombie sentries, past the nervous survivors who stepped back from my approach. She didn't slow down. Didn't hesitate.
She crashed into me with an embrace that should have knocked me over.
I barely felt it.
"You're alive," she breathed into my chest. "I couldn't sense you. For hours, I couldn't sense anything. I thought—"
"I'm here."
She pulled back to look at my face.
And froze.
"Wei... your eyes..."
I didn't need a mirror to know what she was seeing. The amber glow that had appeared when I used my power was permanent now. My irises had shifted to something that wasn't quite human—flecks of gold swimming in darkness, like stars in a void.
"There's a lot I need to tell you," I said quietly.
Min-Tong's hand rose to my cheek.
"You're colder. And you feel..." She searched for the word. "Old."
"Ten thousand years old, apparently."
Her eyes widened. "What?"
"Like I said. A lot to tell."
------------------------------
The inner circle assembled in the War Room.
They stared at me like I was a stranger. And in many ways, I was.
"The entity retreated," Rachel said slowly. "You made an elder god retreat."
"Temporarily."
"Still. That's... that's not nothing."
"No. But it's not enough either." I moved to the map of Seattle—the same map we'd been using for days, now marked with far more territory under our control. "The entity will fully manifest in approximately five days. When it does, nothing in this world will be able to stop it."
"Then what's the plan?" Drake's fire flickered uncertainly. "If we can't stop it when it manifests, what do we do?"
I turned to face them.
"We stop it before it manifests. Or we stop it in the instant of manifestation, when it's transitioning between realities."
"How?"
I closed my eyes.
The first Zombie King's memories unfolded—centuries of attempts, failures, near-misses. He'd tried everything. Direct confrontation. Assassination of the entity's vessels. Destruction of the facility. Each attempt had failed because the entity was simply too powerful in its complete form.
But there was one approach he'd never fully tested.
Because he'd never had an army large enough.
"The entity needs to anchor itself to this reality," I said. "Its true body exists somewhere else—somewhere beyond normal space and time. The manifestation in the pit is just a projection. A hand reaching through a doorway."
"So?"
"So if we can destroy the anchor before the manifestation completes, the entity gets pulled back. Slammed between dimensions. And that..." I opened my eyes. "That's the moment of vulnerability. The one instant where it can be hurt."
Maya spoke from the corner, her silver eyes distant.
"I can see it now. The futures are clearing. There's a moment—a single moment—where the threads converge. If you act then, the entity dies. If you miss it..." She shuddered. "Everything ends."
"How do I not miss it?"
"You don't." Her gaze focused on me with terrible clarity. "You're already there. In every timeline. Every future. You're at the center of that moment. You've always been."
------------------------------
We planned through the night.
The anchor point was in the pit—a crystalline structure that connected the entity's projection to its true form. Morgan's people had studied it for decades but never understood its significance.
I did now.
The first Zombie King had tried to destroy it once, five thousand years ago. He'd gotten close. Close enough to crack it. Close enough to feel the entity's panic before its servants overwhelmed him.
He'd died three inches from victory.
"We need distraction," Rachel said, studying diagrams Morgan had transmitted from the facility. "Something big enough to draw the entity's attention while you make your move."
"That's where my army comes in." I gestured at the map. "Eight thousand zombies, plus the converted servants. Every single one attacks the entity simultaneously. Not to hurt it—we can't hurt it directly. But to force it to defend. To split its attention."
"And while it's focused on them...?"
"I go for the anchor."
Drake leaned forward.
"Alone?"
"Alone." The word hung in the air. "The anchor is protected by the entity's deepest defenses. The closer I get, the more its power will push back. Taking anyone else would just slow me down and get them killed."
"Wei." Min-Tong's voice was steady, but her hands trembled. "If you fail—"
"If I fail, you do what we discussed." I met her eyes. "You end it before I become something worse than the entity."
She nodded once.
And said nothing more.
------------------------------
The survivors gathered at dawn.
Fifty-nine people—all that remained of the world we'd known, at least in our corner of it. They stood in the compound courtyard, watching me with expressions that ranged from fear to hope to something in between.
I'd thought about what to say.
The first Zombie King's memories offered countless speeches—rallying cries delivered to armies across the ages, words that had inspired followers to fight against impossible odds. But none of them felt right.
I wasn't him.
I was Wei Chen. A man who'd worked in an office. A man who'd loved a woman he thought he'd lost. A man who'd woken up one morning with the weight of ages on his shoulders and decided to keep fighting anyway.
"I'm not going to lie to you," I said. "What's coming is worse than anything we've faced. Worse than the Hive King. Worse than the mutations. In five days, something ancient is going to try to enter our world completely, and if it succeeds, there won't be a world left to fight for."
Silence.
"But we have something it doesn't expect. We have each other." I looked at Max, who had organized the compound. At Harold, who had kept the lights on. At Dr. Vasquez, who had healed the wounded. At Rachel, who had kept them safe.
"Every one of you has survived because you chose to. Because you refused to give up when giving up would have been easier. That choice—that stubbornness—is the one thing the entity can never understand."
I raised my hand.
My power rippled outward—not as a claim, but as a connection. Every zombie in my army, every converted servant, every undead creature under my control lit up with pale light.
The survivors gasped.
"I can't promise we'll win. I can't promise we'll survive. But I can promise you this: whatever happens, we face it together. As a community. As a family. As the last line of defense against something that has never—in ten thousand years—faced anything like us."
Maya stepped forward, her silver eyes shining.
"I see it," she whispered, loud enough for everyone to hear. "I see a future where we win. It's not certain. It's not guaranteed. But it's possible. And possibility is enough."
The fear in the crowd didn't disappear.
But something else joined it.
Hope.
------------------------------
Min-Tong found me on the roof that evening.
The sun was setting over Seattle—painting the ruined skyline in shades of orange and gold. Beautiful, even now. Maybe especially now.
"You're different," she said, sitting beside me.
"I know."
"Not just your eyes. Not just your power. You're... quieter. Sadder." She took my hand. "You're carrying something heavy."
"Ten thousand years of failure." I watched the sun sink lower. "Millennia of watching people die. Watching worlds end. Watching everything I loved burn over and over again."
"That wasn't you."
"It was. And it wasn't." I turned to face her. "The first Zombie King made a choice—to split himself across time rather than surrender. Every version of him since then has been fighting the same battle. Some won small victories. Some died early. Some got further than others."
"And you?"
"I've gotten the furthest." My free hand rose to her face. "I've kept my humanity the longest. Built the strongest army. And I have something none of the others had."
"What?"
I leaned forward and kissed her.
When I pulled back, my eyes were wet.
"You."
She kissed me again—harder, desperate, like she was trying to memorize the feeling.
"Don't die," she whispered against my lips.
"I'll try."
"Don't try. Don't die."
I held her close as the sun sank below the horizon.
And made no promises I couldn't keep.
------------------------------
Day 12 ended.
Four days remained.
In the distance, toward the mountains, the sky began to glow. Unnatural light. Wrong colors.
The entity was still manifesting. Still growing. Still preparing for the moment when it would tear its way fully into our reality.
Somewhere in my mind, the first Zombie King's memories whispered.
This is the closest we've ever been. Don't waste it.
Four days.
Four days until everything ended.
Or began.