The biting, Siberian air was filled with a new kind of cold—the chill of dread. A shotgun blast ripped through the silence, scattering a trio of shambling skeletons into a mess of bone fragments. From the shattered window of a convenience store, a man with a wild, manic grin and a heavy-duty sledgehammer charged out. "Haha! The zombie apocalypse couldn't come soon enough!" he roared, swinging the hammer and crushing the skull of a skeleton with a sickening crack.
"Are you seriously enjoying this? We're all going to die!" a woman's terrified voice shrieked from inside the store. She was hunched over a shopping cart overflowing with canned goods and medical supplies.
The man with the sledgehammer ignored her, pivoting to face another skeleton. "Hurry up! We need to loot as much as possible and get back—there are more coming!"
The street was a scene of controlled pandemonium. Citizens of Yakutsk, a city accustomed to hardship, were scrambling, their usual resilience replaced by a primal, desperate panic. Shouts and screams echoed off the buildings as people fought over provisions. The undead, a silent tide of reanimated corpses and rattling skeletons, had risen from every cemetery, morgue, and hospital.
They were slow and mindless, their numbers manageable compared to the city's population. Yet they were also unkillable. A shotgun blast might scatter a skeleton, a sledgehammer might crush a skull, but after a few agonizing moments, the unknown force animating them would piece them back together. Bones would knit, broken limbs would reattach, and they would rise once more. The futility of fighting them was a slow, creeping horror that broke even the most hardened wills.
"They're getting back up! We need to move!" a man shouted from the back of the store, pointing to the undead that were slowly but surely beginning to reassemble.
"Where is the military? Why aren't they helping us!" someone else cried, but the question was lost in the general chaos.
"Where is the military? Why aren't they helping us!" someone else cried, but the question was lost in the general chaos.
The real terror, however, wasn't just the unkillable undead. A second, more unsettling phenomenon was taking hold. Across the city, people were randomly collapsing, falling into a mysterious coma. The sight of a person simply dropping on the street, eyes glazed over, was enough to make everyone else scatter in a frenzy. Was it an airborne disease? A curse? Would the comatose people become undead themselves? The unanswered questions were the fuel for the city's complete descent into anarchy.
Just as the chaos seemed to reach its zenith, an eerie silence fell. It began with the undead. The skeleton with the crushed skull stopped mid-reassembly. A half-decayed corpse crawling from a car's wreckage suddenly went still. Then, as if a switch had been flipped, they all began to crumble. Bones turned to dust, and fresh, rotting flesh desiccated and broke apart, carried away by the wind as a fine gray powder.
Those who witnessed it were struck dumb. Their frantic looting stopped. The wild-eyed shotgun-wielding man lowered his weapon. The only sound was the faint rustle of clothing as the undead vanished into nothingness.
Then came the second wave of change. The trees, thick and green from the city's parks and residential areas, began to wither. Their leaves curled, turning black and brittle, before flaking away. The bark turned a pale, sickly gray and then, like the undead, crumbled into ash. Bushes, grass, and every green thing across Yakutsk followed suit. The world went from vibrant to monochrome in an instant.
The survivors watched in stunned silence, their fear replaced by a profound, awe-struck bewilderment. Some dropped to their knees, not in fear, but in reverence, offering prayers to whatever saved them, be it god or demon.
_________________________________________
The air in the hotel room was thick with a silence that had not been there before. Eleanor stared at the figure getting up from the bed, a familiar face now unsettlingly changed. "Kaito… is that you? What happened to you?"
Kaito's face now bore subtle but noticeable traces of both Durandal and Shikabanehime. His eyes, once a simple brown, held a strange, mesmerizing swirl of black ink, but the core of his pupils remained his own. His hair, now an unnerving white ashen color, fell to his waist, and his frame had become slightly leaner, giving him an almost androgynous, feminine look.
Tamamo's tails bristled. "What did you do, human?"
Kaito offered no details, his voice calm and detached. "I temporarily fused with Durandal and Shikabanehime." He then stood up and walked toward the hotel balcony, the world outside a blurry backdrop to his focused gaze.
"Kaito? Where are you going?" Eleanor's question was laced with a desperate urgency.
He didn't turn around. "To fight the No Life King."
As he spoke, a set of wings burst from his back. They weren't just the ethereal light but a tangible, physical presence of a pair of white feathery wing. A half-white, half-black halo hover above his head. He turned his head slightly; his gaze fixed on a distant point. "He's in Saint Petersburg."
"How do you know that?" Eleanor asked. "Saint Petersburg is halfway across Russia from here. Do you plan to fly there and fight him alone?"
Kaito simply nodded. "Yes."
Without another word, he became a stream of pure light, a white-hot streak across the grey sky. As he flew, a devastating wake followed him. The all undead and traces of vegetation in his path turned to ash, the sparse ecosystem and array of forests left as scorched earth.
Eleanor turned to Tamamo. "We have to go after him! We can't let Kaito fight alone!"
Tamamo shook her head. "You've seen what happened before when we encountered the No Life King. I don't think either of us would be of any help."
"But…" Eleanor's voice trailed off. She knew Tamamo was right. She was effectively dead weight. But the idea of Kaito facing that the No Life King by himself left a bitter taste in her mouth.
Moque, watching the two of them, saw the raw determination in Eleanor's eyes and the hidden conflict in Tamamo's. "Let's follow him, Tamamo... I can see that you two care for him."
Moque then leaped from the balcony, transforming into her fiery phoenix form. "Hop on," she commanded as she hover next to the balcany.
Eleanor, without a moment's hesitation, climbed onto Moque's back. Tamamo hesitated, a silent battle raging within her. But a quick glance at the streak of light fading in the distance was all it took. With a sigh of resignation, she climbed onto Moque's back.
They soared through the sky, a magnificent phoenix trailing a plume of black fire, in pursuit of the ashen wing.