Two days before, in the same girls' dorm that Garret and his group were now raiding, five girls sat huddled together on the third floor. The air was stale, thick with fear and the faint stench of rot that crept up from below. Their stomachs growled, dry lips cracked—their food was running out. If no one was coming for them in two days, it would get really troublesome.
The youngest, Mira, couldn't have been older than sixteen. Her cheeks were streaked with dirt and tears, her thin fingers clutching a broken bracelet as if it could still protect her.
"I'm scared," she whispered, her voice trembling. "Please, I want to go home…"
The eldest, Clara, wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close. Clara's hair, once neatly braided, now hung loose and tangled over her shoulders.
"Shh," she murmured, forcing a small smile she didn't feel. "You're doing great, Mira. Just hold on a little longer, okay? Someone will come. Someone always does."
But the words felt hollow, even to her. They were quickly running out of food. The water had turned stale. Then, that morning, they heard footsteps
"Someone's here," whispered the girl near the door, eyes wide. They all froze.
Through the cracks, they saw him — a tall man surrounded by a group of terrified women. He carried a blade, but the women carried him, literally. They bore him on a crude seat fashioned from scavenged wood and scrap metal, their shoulders trembling beneath his weight. At first, the girls on the third floor thought they were hallucinating. But the scene below was all too real. The man barked orders like a self-proclaimed king, sending women forward to draw the attention of the undead while he stayed back, untouched, clean, smirking.
"Is… is he saving them?" Mira asked hopefully.
Clara's expression darkened. "No," she whispered. "He's using them."
They watched in horror as he cleared the first floor, then the second. Finally, when he reached the third floor, something changed. A shriek — sharp, unnatural echoed through the building. Then silence. The man stumbled back, pale-faced, staring at something unseen beyond the corridor.
"What's wrong with him?" whispered one of the girls.
The answer came in the form of a thud. A massive, inhuman silhouette stepped into the light — the intelligent creature, its curved limbs glinting like knives. The man froze, cursed, and retreated immediately, shouting orders for his followers to grab what they could and run.
And just like that, he was gone.
The echoes of his footsteps faded down the stairwell, leaving the dorm in suffocating silence.
No one spoke for a long time. Then Mira's voice, small and shaking, broke it.
"He left them… all of them."
Clara swallowed hard. "He was never here to save anyone."
That night, none of them slept. Whatever fragile hope they had left had gone with that man, the false savior who had proved what they already feared most.
No one was coming.
Now, two days later, the dorm had become a tomb. The stench of rot hung in the air, mingling with the metallic tang of dried blood. The five girls were still there, weaker than before. Their lips were cracked, their eyes sunken.
Mira lay against the wall, half-conscious, murmuring nonsense through dry lips. Clara sat beside her, brushing her hair back with a trembling hand. She tried to hum something, an old lullaby, but her voice cracked halfway through.
Then, faintly, from below, came a sound they hadn't heard in days. Footsteps.
But these were different. Slow. Controlled. Heavy, but not desperate. There was no panic, no shouting. Only a methodical rhythm, echoing up through the hollow stairwell.
Clara's head snapped up. "Someone's here," she whispered.
Mira stirred. "Him again?"
Clara shook her head, listening. "No… different."
They crept to the broken window, peering down through the dust and ruin. What they saw made their breath catch.
A man, alone was moving through the first floor, his blade glinting faintly even in the half-light. He was silent, precise, every motion deliberate. He dispatched wandering corpses with single, effortless strikes, their bodies falling before they even realized what had happened.
"Who is he?" one of the girls whispered.
"I… I don't know," Clara murmured, unable to tear her gaze away. "But he's not like the other one."
There was something about him, something cold and unyielding. He wasn't saving anyone. He wasn't playing the hero. He was simply… there, a force cutting through the dark. And yet, in that coldness, Clara saw something else, resolve. When he reached the third floor. The girls expected him to turn and run. But they could hear fighting.
As the battle sounds drew nearer, the walls seemed to shudder with each impact. The girls clung to one another as growls, crashes, and the sound of tearing flesh filled the air. Then came a roar—a deep, guttural sound that made the air itself vibrate.
Mira screamed and covered her ears. "What's happening?!"
"Stay back!" Clara hissed, shielding her.
The fight was getting closer, too close. A heartbeat later, the door exploded inward. Splinters of wood and shards of glass burst across the room.
Through the smoke and dust, two figures crashed in—a blur of motion, steel, and monstrous limbs. The creature twisted, mantis-like, its four scimitar-shaped limbs flashing—and the man, bloodied and wild-eyed, locked in deadly combat.
They slammed into the far wall, the impact shaking the entire floor. The girls screamed, backing away as the two figures tore at each other. Garret's sword, Chixiao, sang through the air, black mist trailing in its wake. The creature shrieked, its movements sharp and violent. Mira screamed, the sound piercing through the chaos.
Clara's heart was hammering so hard it hurt. She could barely breathe as she watched the man fight, his fury raw and unrelenting, yet somehow still controlled—an edge honed by pain. She didn't know who he was, but something inside her knew this was different. This was no tyrant, no scavenger. This was someone who fought for something real. The man she had admired from afar now stood mere feet away, fighting death itself.
Then, in a burst of shattering glass, both man and monster crashed through the window, disappearing into the open air.
For a long moment, there was only silence—the soft whistle of the wind through the broken frame.
Mira's trembling hand clutched Clara's arm. "He fell…"
Clara's throat tightened, her vision blurring as she stared at the jagged edge of the window where he'd vanished. Her pulse raced, a strange ache swelling in her chest.
And for the first time in days, she felt something she thought she'd lost forever.
Hope.