Days later…
The sky was stained with the permanent hue of ash. Sunlight didn't fall anymore—it broke through in jagged cracks like a wounded thing trying to survive. The trio had moved farther north, past the broken hills and blackened rivers, where the trees still grew but twisted, their trunks veined with something wrong, something hungry.
They hadn't spoken much since burning Eli. Something about the way he screamed—like a man being dragged from both life and memory—had stayed with them, especially Rui. She hadn't cried. But Li Wei noticed the way she sometimes touched her face at night, as if making sure her skin was still her own.
Chen Yu, as usual, tried to mask the heaviness.
"You know," he said, biting into a stale biscuit they'd stolen from a trader's corpse. "Eli's last words were 'I saw the gate.' I mean—damn. The guy went full drama mode. If I ever die, just let me say something stupid like 'My left toe will avenge me.' Much cooler."
Rui didn't laugh.
Li Wei gave him a glance. "He wasn't just talking about death."
Chen Yu grinned and leaned back, arms behind his head, eyes scanning the gray canopy above them. "Yeah, yeah. Ghost Batch. Vaults. Secret projects. We've been through this like twenty times. But whatever that 'gate' was? It's opened. And it smells like bad soup."
They were camped in the skeleton of a half-collapsed medical outpost. There were no bodies—only rusted equipment, shattered lights, and faded documents that flaked like ash in Rui's fingers.
That night, the wind changed.
Midnight.
Rui woke first.
She sat up slowly. The cold was normal. The silence wasn't.
There were no sounds—no animal screeches, no howls, no distant groaning from the infected. Just… nothing.
And then—a voice.
A child's voice. Thin, genderless. Whispering in a language she somehow understood.
"Unit 0107. Return. Recall initiated. Reclamation begins."
Her heart slammed against her ribs.
A glow pulsed behind her eyelids. She turned.
The corner of the room—the air bent there. Like heat shimmer, except colder. Sharper. Something was pulling itself into the world from beneath it.
She stood, her breath freezing midair.
Li Wei was already awake, eyes narrowed, sword in hand.
Chen Yu was sitting up, rubbing his face. "I swear if this is another haunted hallucination, I'm gonna—oh."
He paused as he saw the thing.
It wasn't a figure. It was a distortion. Like a void wearing skin.
Rui stared at it.
And it responded.
"She hears us. Protocol breach. Subject waking."
The distortion snapped out of existence.
Silence.
Chen Yu broke it, voice too casual. "Okay. So either we're all insane, or that was some government ghost trying to invite us to dinner."
The next morning.
They found the outpost's basement. Not because they wanted to. Because the whisper led them there.
Li Wei pried open the rusted trapdoor. A ladder led down into pitch black. Rui hesitated. Chen Yu just sighed and said, "Of course it's a creepy basement. Why not?"
They descended.
It was colder than above. And more sterile—no dust, no webs, no rot. Just smooth metal walls, still humming with long-dead power.
In the center was a screen.
It flickered on.
A face appeared. But it wasn't human. It was a 3D render of a fetus. Half-formed. Eyes too large. Skin translucent.
"Welcome, Subject 0107. Code activation complete. Project Ghost Batch — final directive initiating."
Rui backed away.
Chen Yu blinked. "Okay… yeah, definitely dinner invitation."
Li Wei didn't move. "What is this?"
The voice answered.
"You were created to interface with the Void Layer. The Ghost Gate. You are the key and the lock. Your awakening destabilizes the walls between mutation and intention."
The fetus-face smiled. Teeth. Too many teeth.
"Phase One complete. Phase Two—dominance. Let the war begin."
The screen shattered from within—like it imploded—and black smoke spilled out, disappearing into the walls.
Silence returned.
Then Rui whispered, "I didn't… I didn't want to know this."
Chen Yu stepped forward and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Join the club, kiddo."
Elsewhere…
Beneath the continent, deep in the catacombs of the Ascendancy, the alarms began to blare.
A man in a white robe and gas mask pressed trembling fingers against the console.
"Sir… the Subject. The Vault. The sequence—it's been triggered."
Another man, older, scarred, and smoking a yellowed cigar, didn't flinch.
"So," he muttered. "The Ghost Code is active."
He exhaled smoke, eyes narrowed.
"Time to clean up our sins."
Back at the surface.
The group exited the outpost.
Something was different.
Zombies weren't just groaning now. They screamed. Some moved in packs. Some crawled on ceilings. And others? Others spoke—not words, but snarls that almost meant something.
Animals had grown leaner. Stronger. And the sky?
The sky was starting to bleed again.
Chen Yu cracked his neck. "You guys feel that? Like… we're about to be hunted by everything nature spat out of its womb?"
Li Wei nodded once.
Rui didn't speak.
But inside her… something had awakened. And it was listening.