The first thing that hit Z-69 wasn’t light.

  It was sound.

  A battlefield didn’t roar from one direction.

  It came from everywhere at once—like the world itself had become a throat, and that throat was screaming until it tore.

  The ground trembled as if something huge was moving under the city’s bones.

  Above, the sky was shredded by bands of violet lightning that didn’t behave like weather. T

  hey behaved like wounds—cracks spreading through glass that still refused to break.

  Sirens wailed—long, metallic, desperate—then got swallowed by thousands of human voices yelling over each other.

  Orders. Prayers. Screams. Names.

  Z-69 opened his eyes and inhaled.

  His lungs filled with heat and ash.

  The stench was burned blood, burned hair, burned oil… and a sour, rotten undernote that didn’t belong to fire.

  It belonged to the dead that were no longer dead.

  Ash fell like dirty snow, sticking to his lashes, his lips, the blackened edge of his cloak.

  Every breath scraped his throat like hot sand.

  His body coughed—hard, involuntary—enough to make his ribs hurt.

  He pushed himself up.

  His hand came into view.

  Not pale.

  Not decaying.

  A living hand—thick-veined, callused, the hand of a man who had swung steel too many years to count.

  But the fingertips…

  They were turning a bruised, deep violet-black.

  Under the skin, dark veins twisted like burned wires.

  The veins pulsed faintly, as if something inside him was chewing through his flesh from within.

  Z-69 stared at his own fingers, and a feeling rose in him—familiar, irritably familiar.

  Not memory.

  Instinct**.**

  A name that wanted to exist on the tip of his tongue… and wouldn’t.

  That irritation was almost worse than fear.

  A shout cut through the noise.

  “Commander-in-Chief!”

  A hand clamped onto his shoulder.

  Z-69 turned his head.

  A man in a torn uniform, face blurred—not by smoke, not by ash—blurred as if reality itself had decided his identity didn’t matter.

  Only the eyes remained: bloodshot, exhausted, stubborn eyes looking at Z-69 as if he was the last wall Valdora had left.

  “Sir—can you still stand?” the man shouted.

  Z-69 meant to answer, I can.

  Instead, his mouth spoke before his mind could.

  “Third Squad—fall back to the western gate!” he barked. “Fifth—move the wounded into the evacuation tunnels. Split them. Don’t clump! All units—hold the inner line. No push. No heroics until I say so!”

  The officer froze for a half-beat—then spun and screamed the orders into the chaos as if his throat was made for that one purpose.

  Z-69 stood up like his bones remembered the shape of command better than his mind remembered his own name.

  He looked forward.

  And saw Valdora.

  The walls were no longer walls.

  They were a wound—hundreds of meters long.

  Steel beams bent like broken ribs.

  Concrete melted and dripped in black, tar-like streams.

  The breach was wide enough for the city to feel exposed, like a chest with its armor torn off.

  Beyond it…

  An ocean surged.

  Not dozens.

  Not hundreds.

  An army.

  The undead packed together like swarming ants—except ants didn’t scream.

  Ants didn’t look at you like they were still hungry for you specifically.

  Some of the dead were swollen by radiation, backs sprouting bony spines.

  Some moved on all fours, muscles twisted into ropes. S

  ome were huge—two stories tall—dragging arms thick as pillars, each step cracking stone with a thunderous boom.

  Inside the walls, Valdora was still alive, but only in the worst ways.

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  Children crying for mothers.

  Mothers screaming names into smoke.

  Soldiers swearing, praying, and dying in the same breath.

  And the dead didn’t just kill.

  They converted.

  A soldier fell off a watchtower, neck snapped at a wrong angle.

  Two seconds later, he rose again on his elbows, crawling forward, mouth open, making a shrill hiss like wind through a broken pipe.

  Z-69’s jaw tightened.

  He reached behind him.

  His fingers wrapped around the hilt of a weapon that felt like a part of his body.

  A short blade.

  Not a long sword.

  The Heaven-Sundering Short Blade.

  The name arrived without explanation, like a fact carved into his bones.

  The edge was already coated in black blood.

  Along the spine of the blade, faint engravings flickered with weak violet arcs—nothing like a thunder god’s glory anymore, more like a dying spark that refused to surrender.

  He didn’t remember why it was called “Heaven-Sundering.”

  But his hands knew exactly how to use it.

  The stance.

  The footwork.

  The wrist twist needed to split undead like tofu.

  A younger voice cut through the smoke.

  “MASTER!”

  Z-69 turned.

  A figure sprinted toward him—face erased by the same unnatural blur.

  But the way the person ran was unmistakable: frantic, reckless, loyal to the point of stupidity.

  Hands grabbed Z-69’s shoulder, trembling.

  “Master… are you sure?” the voice asked, cracking.

  It wasn’t a tactical question.

  It was a human question.

  Are you sure you’re about to do what we both know you’re about to do?

  Z-69 looked into those blurred eyes and saw something that made his chest feel heavier.

  Trust.

  Fear.

  And the awful kind of hope that only exists when you’re standing next to a monster you love.

  Z-69 wanted to say: I don’t know.

  Instead, he heard himself answer, calm and cruel in its simplicity.

  “There’s no certainty,” he said. “Only what must be done.”

  The youth swallowed hard.

  “Then… don’t die.” the voice whispered, like a prayer disguised as an order.

  Z-69 didn’t promise anything.

  He couldn’t.

  The lights along the ramparts flashed three times.

  Flash.

  Flash.

  Flash.

  Something about that rhythm scraped at his nerves—like a finger tapping on a coffin lid.

  “Three times… why?” Z-69 ask himself.

  The ground shook violently.

  A mutated beast charged forward—a colossal bull-shaped monster coated in bone plating, horns curved like sickles.

  It slammed into the western gate.

  The steel gate rang like it had been struck by a god’s hammer.

  Support beams snapped with a sharp crack.

  The undead outside howled as one.

  The tide surged.

  Z-69 inhaled.

  Iron filled his throat.

  The violet veins in his fingertips pulsed, spreading their bruised darkness up toward his knuckles like a slow infection.

  He raised the Heaven-Sundering Short Blade.

  Violet lightning crawled along the metal—weak, razor-sharp—like a serpent that had learned how to live inside a man.

  “One step.” he murmured to himself.

  Then louder, to the soldiers near him:

  “Hold the line. Don’t chase. Don’t break formation. If you die out there, you come back in here.”

  Somebody laughed—sharp, terrified.

  Somebody else whispered a prayer.

  Z-69 moved.

  Down the stone stairs, into the breach, into the screaming mouth of the city.

  The first swing was clean.

  A horizontal cut.

  A row of undead split in half.

  Violet electricity snapped through their bodies, burning rotten flesh into black smoke with a wet sizzling sound.

  The second swing was faster.

  He pivoted, wrist snapping, short blade cutting upward under a creature’s jaw.

  Its head separated like a fruit on a stem.

  The third swing—

  His arm slowed by a single beat.

  One beat was all the dead needed.

  An undead leapt, jaws wide, and buried teeth into his shoulder.

  Fangs pierced flesh.

  Z-69 didn’t scream.

  He frowned, annoyed—like a man bitten by a mosquito.

  But under his skin, the black veins twitched violently, as if the bite had hit something deeper than flesh.

  He grabbed the undead by the hair, tore it free, and smashed its skull into the wall.

  Once. Twice. Three times.

  The head burst.

  Blood sprayed his face—hot.

  And something stirred in his chest.

  Not pain.

  Not fear.

  A hunger so sharp it felt like a second mouth opening inside him.

  Z-69 clenched his teeth.

  “Don’t.” he told himself.

  He didn’t know who he was talking to.

  His body?

  His power?

  Or the thing inside him that loved the taste of war?

  Another support beam snapped.

  The breach widened.

  The corpse tide poured in.

  Hands.

  Teeth.

  Cloudy eyes.

  Z-69 planted himself in the gap like a nail driven into a storm.

  The Heaven-Sundering Short Blade carved violet arcs through the air, each cut tearing bodies apart.

  Lightning raced through bone and metal, leaving the scent of ozone and cooked meat.

  He fought like an old man who had already died once—and decided death didn’t get to collect him today.

  His movements weren’t flashy.

  They were efficient.

  He stepped exactly where he needed to.

  He wasted nothing.

  Even his breathing was measured, like he was budgeting oxygen.

  A huge mutant—towering, plated, thick-necked—swung an arm like a wrecking ball.

  Z-69 didn’t block.

  He slipped inside the swing, close enough to smell the rot, close enough to see the cloudy eye twitch.

  Short blade up.

  A precise cut into the joint.

  Lightning snapped.

  The arm fell.

  The mutant roared, staggering.

  Z-69 pivoted and drove the blade under its ribs, electricity flaring through its torso like a lattice of violet veins.

  The monster convulsed—then dropped.

  Soldiers behind him stared.

  One of them whispered, voice breaking, “He’s… still like that.”

  Another one—older, shaking—answered, “No. He’s worse. He’s calmer.”

  Z-69 heard them.

  He didn’t turn.

  He couldn’t afford to.

  Because as he cut, he felt the cost rising.

  His arms grew heavy as lead.

  The violet-black spread from fingertips to knuckles, creeping like a slow poison.

  The burned-wire veins webbed farther up his hand.

  Every time he called lightning, the air tasted more metallic.

  Every time he killed, that hunger tried to open wider.

  Behind him, someone shouted, “Open the evacuation tunnels!”

  Wheels rattled.

  Boots pounded.

  Children cried.

  Valdora was tearing its own organs out to keep the heart alive a few seconds longer.

  Z-69 kept cutting.

  Cutting.

  Cutting.

  Until the battlefield blurred.

  Until he couldn’t tell which bodies were undead and which were soldiers who had fallen five seconds ago.

  Until he heard the tunnel doors—far behind—slam shut with the heavy finality of survival.

  Someone screamed, “That’s enough people! Seal it!”

  A hollow feeling hit Z-69.

  Like a lung emptied.

  So this is the moment.

  The wall lights flashed three times again.

  Flash.

  Flash.

  Flash.

  The world… skipped.

  Not physically.

  Mentally.

  Like someone rewound his brain by a single frame.

  Z-69 froze mid-breath.

  A voice spoke from nowhere.

  Not human.

  Not mechanical.

  It sounded like wind forced through ducts, like whispers ground fine by time.

  “Choose.”

  The battlefield split in his perception—two paths drawn across fate.

  One path led toward the evacuation tunnels.

  The other path led back to the breach.

  Two outcomes slammed into his mind.

  Not memories.

  Predictions.

  If he stayed at the breach, he could hold the line long enough for civilians to escape.

  But he would die.

  Valdora would still fall.

  If he retreated, he could live longer.

  But the undead tide would flood in faster.

  More would die.

  And he… would still die.

  Z-69 let out a short, dry laugh.

  “What kind of game is this?” he muttered.

  No answer came.

  Only the corpse tide roaring like black waves.

  The short blade trembled in his grip—not from fear, but from the strain of keeping lightning caged.

  Z-69 tightened his hand.

  “Fine.” he said, voice low.

  He turned toward the breach.

  “I’ll stay.”

  He expected to feel something noble.

  Pride.

  Resolve.

  Sacrifice.

  Instead, he felt only the mechanical rhythm of violence.

  Step.

  Cut.

  Turn.

  Cut.

  Lightning.

  Smoke.

  Blood.

  He fought until time became meaningless.

  Until his hands looked less like hands and more like something burned by its own power.

  And then—

  The sky tore.

  A sound like the world’s spine breaking.

  An explosion detonated above, turning the air white.

  The wall collapsed like a mountain falling.

  A colossal shadow descended—something huge enough to make even the undead hesitate, huge enough to make soldiers forget how to breathe.

  Z-69 looked up.

  Cloudy eyes stared down at him like a man looking at an ant.

  Z-69 raised the Heaven-Sundering Short Blade.

  Violet lightning flared—one last time—thin, furious, refusing to die quietly.

  And then—

  Everything turned white.