The journey north was harder than Nate expected.

  Not because of the monsters—there were plenty of those, but they were weak, scattered, easy to avoid or kill. The problem was his body. Four broken ribs, a fractured arm, and enough bruising to make every step feel like punishment.

  He pushed through it anyway.

  The road followed an old highway, cracked and overgrown but still passable. Abandoned cars lined the shoulders, their occupants long gone—fled, or dead, or worse. The sky overhead was gray and heavy, threatening rain that never quite came.

  Twenty miles. At his normal pace, he could have covered it in a few hours. In his current state, it took most of the day.

  He stopped twice to rest.

  The first time, he found shelter in an overturned bus, lying on the seats while his ribs knit themselves back together. The pain was fading—slowly, too slowly—but he could feel the bones mending. Another day and he'd be back to full strength.

  He didn't have another day.

  The second stop was near a river crossing. The bridge was intact, but something had made a nest underneath it—he could hear chittering, see movement in the shadows. He circled wide, found a shallow point upstream, and waded across. The cold water helped with the swelling.

  By late afternoon, he could see the hospital on the horizon.

  It was bigger than he'd expected.

  A sprawling complex of buildings—the main hospital, several outbuildings, a parking structure that rose five stories. The kind of place that could house hundreds of survivors, maybe thousands. Walls had been erected around the perimeter, makeshift but solid. Guard towers stood at the corners.

  From a distance, it looked intact. Defended. Alive.

  Then he got closer.

  The gates were open.

  Not broken—open. Pushed inward, like someone had simply walked through without resistance. No guards on the walls. No movement in the towers. No signs of life at all.

  Just silence.

  Nate slowed his approach, every sense on alert. His ribs still ached, his arm still throbbed, but the pain was distant now. Background noise. His body knew what was coming, even if his mind hadn't caught up yet.

  He stepped through the gates.

  The courtyard was full of bodies.

  Dozens of them. Men, women, children. They lay where they'd fallen—some in groups, some alone, some still clutching weapons they'd never had a chance to use. Blood stained the concrete, dried to a dark brown in the afternoon light.

  They hadn't been dead long. A day, maybe two. The smell hadn't fully set in yet.

  Nate walked among them, looking at faces he'd never know. Another settlement. Another failure. Another group of survivors who'd made it through the integration only to die anyway.

  How many was that now? The destroyed settlement he'd passed on the way to the warehouse. And now this.

  How many more?

  A sound made him turn.

  The bodies were moving.

  Not all of them. But enough. A dozen corpses, rising to their feet with that horrible jerky motion he'd come to recognize. Dead eyes filmed over with white. Limbs moving like puppets on strings.

  [Risen Corpse — Level 4]

  [Risen Corpse — Level 5]

  [Risen Corpse — Level 3]

  More of them. Emerging from doorways, stumbling out of buildings, crawling through the broken windows of the hospital. Twenty. Thirty. Fifty.

  The settlement hadn't just been destroyed. It had been harvested.

  Nate raised his fists, ignoring the pain in his ribs. He'd killed sixty of these things on the way to the warehouse. He could kill sixty more.

  "I wouldn't bother."

  The voice came from above.

  Nate looked up.

  A figure stood on the roof of the parking structure, five stories above the courtyard. Too far to make out details—just a silhouette against the gray sky, slim and still.

  "You cleared the western tower," the voice said. Female. Calm. Not a question. "I felt it fall. Impressive, for someone from a world without mana."

  The risen dead had stopped moving. They stood motionless around him, a ring of corpses waiting for orders. Waiting for her.

  "Who are you?" Nate called up.

  "Someone who cleared a tower too. The eastern one, three days before you finished yours." The figure shifted, and Nate caught a glimpse of pale skin, dark hair. "The Guardian showed you things, didn't it? The other worlds. The integrated cosmos."

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  She knew. She'd seen the same vision he had—millions of worlds connected by threads of power.

  "You killed these people," Nate said.

  "I gave them purpose." She moved to the edge of the roof, and Nate could see her more clearly. Young—younger than he'd expected. Maybe mid-twenties, with skin so pale it was almost translucent and hair so dark it seemed to absorb the light. "They were going to die anyway. Everyone on this world is going to die, eventually. The integration is just the beginning."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "You saw it, didn't you? The multiverse. Countless worlds, all connected." She tilted her head, studying him from above. "Did you think Earth would just... join them peacefully? That we'd clear our towers and be welcomed into some cosmic community?"

  Nate didn't answer. He hadn't thought about it at all. He'd been too busy surviving.

  "Other worlds have been integrating for millennia," she continued. "They have armies. Empires. Powers we can't imagine. And now Earth is on the map. A fresh world, full of resources and bodies and potential." Her voice hardened. "They're coming, climber. Maybe not today. Maybe not this year. But they're coming. And when they do, this world needs to be ready."

  "So you're building an army of corpses to fight aliens?"

  "I'm building an army that doesn't fear death. That can't be broken or demoralized. That grows stronger with every battle, every casualty." She spread her arms, gesturing at the corpses below. "Every body that falls becomes a soldier. Every enemy we kill joins our ranks. Do you understand what that means? We can't lose. Not in the long run."

  "You're insane."

  "I'm practical." She lowered her arms. "The System gave me this gift for a reason. The power to command the dead, to bind the living. It's not evil—it's evolution. Adaptation. The only way a world like ours survives what's coming."

  "And you get to rule whatever's left."

  "Someone has to." She smiled—cold, empty. "The Guardian told me something else, climber. Something it probably didn't tell you. There are ways off this world. Portals. Pathways. Connections to the greater cosmos that open when certain conditions are met." She paused. "I intend to find them. To take my army beyond this dying rock and claim something greater. A kingdom among the stars."

  Nate's jaw tightened. The Guardian hadn't mentioned that. Portals to other worlds. Ways to leave Earth entirely.

  Was she lying? Or had the Guardian told her things it hadn't told him?

  "You could come with me," she said. "Someone with your strength would be valuable. We could conquer worlds together. Build something that lasts."

  "I'll pass."

  "A shame." She didn't sound disappointed. "I suppose you'll try to stop me instead. Protect the survivors, save the innocent, all that heroic nonsense." She raised one hand, and the corpses around him shifted. Readied. "It won't matter. I have time on my side. Every day, more die. Every day, my army grows. You can't kill death, climber."

  She turned away.

  "But let's see how many of my soldiers you can destroy before you fall."

  The dead attacked.

  They came from every direction—shambling, reaching, grasping. Nate spun, drove his fist through the nearest skull, kicked another in the chest hard enough to send it flying. But more replaced them. Always more.

  He looked up at the parking structure. The necromancer was walking away, disappearing into a stairwell, leaving her army to deal with him.

  "No—"

  A corpse grabbed his arm. He ripped it free, took the arm with it. Another grabbed his leg. He stomped down, crushed the skull, kept moving.

  He had to get to her. Had to stop her before she escaped.

  But the dead were everywhere. A wall of bodies between him and the parking structure, more pouring out of every building, every doorway, every shadow. Fifty had become a hundred. A hundred was becoming more.

  He fought toward the structure anyway.

  [Killing Intent].

  He let it loose, pouring out the pressure in every direction. The corpses didn't react—the dead felt no fear—but it was habit now, reflex.

  He pushed forward. Punching, kicking, tearing through the horde. Bodies fell and more took their place. His ribs screamed with every movement, his fractured arm burning as he used it to block and strike.

  He reached the base of the parking structure. The stairwell door was there, twenty feet away. The necromancer was inside, climbing, escaping.

  A corpse grabbed him from behind. Then another. Then three more.

  He threw them off, but more replaced them. They were piling onto him now, weight bearing him down, dead hands clawing at his coat, his face, his throat.

  [Impact].

  He drove his fist into the ground, and the shockwave scattered the corpses around him. He lunged for the door—

  And found it locked.

  He slammed his fist against the metal. Once. Twice. The door dented but didn't break. Reinforced. She'd planned for this.

  More corpses coming. Dozens more, flooding into the courtyard, cutting off any retreat.

  He could break the door. Given time, he could break through anything. But the corpses would overwhelm him first. Even at Level 20, even with [Iron Body] and the Enforcer's Mantle, there were limits. A hundred corpses he could handle. Two hundred. But there had to be three hundred now, maybe more, and they just kept coming.

  She was getting away.

  Nate made a decision.

  He turned and ran.

  Not away from the corpses—through them. He barreled into the horde, fists swinging, bodies flying, carving a path toward the outer wall. The dead grabbed at him, slowed him, but they couldn't stop him. Nothing that weak could stop him.

  He reached the wall, jumped, caught the top, and hauled himself over. Dropped to the ground on the other side and kept running.

  Behind him, the corpses massed at the wall. They didn't follow—couldn't follow. They just stood there, watching him with their dead white eyes.

  In the distance, he saw a figure emerge from the far side of the parking structure. The necromancer, walking calmly away from the hospital, a dozen corpses falling into formation around her like an honor guard.

  She glanced back at him. Across the distance, their eyes met.

  She smiled.

  Then she turned and disappeared into the ruins of the city.

  Nate stood outside the walls of the hospital, breathing hard, his body screaming with pain.

  She'd escaped. The necromancer—the woman who'd cleared a tower just like him, who'd seen the same vision of the multiverse, who was building an army of the dead.

  But it was worse than that. She knew things he didn't. Portals. Pathways. Ways to leave Earth and reach other worlds.

  If she was telling the truth, the integration wasn't just about survival. It was about connection. Earth was joining something larger, and there were forces out there—empires, armies, powers beyond imagination—that might come looking for them.

  And the necromancer wanted to meet them with an army that couldn't die.

  Was she insane? Or was she the only one thinking far enough ahead?

  Nate looked at the hospital one last time. At the walls that had failed. At the settlement that had been harvested. At the corpses still massed behind the gates, waiting for orders that might never come.

  He didn't have answers. Didn't know if she was right about what was coming, or if she was just a monster justifying her cruelty.

  But he knew one thing: he couldn't let her win. Whatever she was planning, whatever she intended to do with her army of corpses, he had to stop her.

  First, though, he had to warn the others.

  He turned and started walking south.

  He had a lot of people to talk to.