The municipal building loomed close enough to touch, yet it crouched in the shadows like some enormous beast lying in wait.
Thick clouds smothered most of the sunlight. On the plaza, shadows began to writhe—like ink soaked into water—seeping from the cracks between the paving stones, weaving together into an invisible net.
Chen Mo and Su Xiaoxiao crossed the empty expanse, each step as taut as walking a steel wire.
"Don't step into those shadows," Chen Mo warned in a low voice. "They'll crawl up your legs and into your own shadow."
But the light across the ground was changing fast—shadows shifting like living things, forcing them into an ever-shrinking patch of brightness.
Then, a faint hum brushed their ears, as delicate as a fingertip circling the rim of a glass. Chen Mo's head snapped up.
At the top of the municipal building's signal mast, a silver disk was spinning slowly.
"A jammer."
Su Xiaoxiao's face hardened. "They don't want the signal getting out."
The next moment, dozens of figures in hazmat suits emerged from behind the plaza's perimeter barriers. Beneath each mask was not a human face, but a smooth, featureless expanse of skin.
"Advanced shadow-slave form," Chen Mo muttered, tightening his grip on the axe. "They mask the host's appearance so you think you're looking at a 'clean' human."
Their shadows were all grotesquely tall—twice the length of their bodies—like stretched monsters crawling across the ground.
The hazmat ranks parted, and a gaunt man stepped forward, holding a transparent container. Inside floated a black "heart," its weak pulse making the surrounding shadows tremble with every beat.
"The primal core," Su Xiaoxiao gasped. "Ten times larger than the original substance we found before…"
The man's voice seeped through his mask like a whisper under water. "If you want it… come take it yourself."
At his words, the paving stones sank away. The plaza's center became a gaping black pit. Shadows surged toward it like a tide, rolling and whispering, as if inviting them to leap in.
"It's a trap," Chen Mo ground out. "They want to drive us into the shadow realm—once inside, there's no coming back to the light."
But the jammer's pulse was growing stronger. Their radios were already dead, and the municipal antenna was fading from sight under the creeping tide of darkness.
"If we don't shut it down, even with the cure in hand we can't send it out," Su Xiaoxiao said, eyes fixed on the darkening tower. "I'm the only one who can climb up—you hold them off."
"No." Chen Mo's voice was iron. "You're immune. If we lose you, this war ends here."
The hum sharpened into a shriek. All at once, the shadow-slaves lifted their heads, cold white light flashing in their eyes.
Their shadows tore free of the ground, solidifying into half-transparent forms that lunged forward—each carrying the host's scent and voice.
Chen Mo's breath caught. The shadow before him was Lin Lan.
Her familiar smile curved at her lips, but her whisper was a lure: "Don't move… let me take you home."
He snapped his head away, whipping the UV beam across her form. Light struck like a lash, ripping fissures through the shadow's body.
Meanwhile, Su Xiaoxiao had already slipped toward the plaza's edge, running the last strips of light, scaling the municipal building's outer wall. Clouds churned overhead, the sunlight dimming by the second; her shadow on the wall was a thin black serpent straining against the sun's grip.
Chen Mo split another shadow-beast in two, catching a glimpse of the pit—its tide of darkness was rising fast, like a boiling black sea.
"Xiaoxiao! Now!"
The jammer was only three meters from her fingertips—
—when a colossal shadow swooped from the far side of the building, engulfing her in a single sweep.
It was shaped like a giant butterfly, its wings woven from countless tendrils, folding slowly in to swallow her whole.
"That's… Professor Wang's second form!" Chen Mo's heart clenched.
He stomped hard on a steel manhole cover, using the recoil to hurl his fire axe upward. The blade spun through the air, clipping the edge of the jammer—sparks burst with a sharp clang. The shriek cut off instantly.
Light returned.
A sudden gale tore a rift through the clouds, and sunlight slashed into the plaza like a sword. The shadow-slave bodies writhed, shrieking as they burned into black ash.
The butterfly shadow thrashed wildly in the glare, finally loosening its grip. Su Xiaoxiao vaulted onto the antenna platform, pulled out a portable signal transmitter, and slotted the vial of pale-gold liquid into the transmission slot.
"Full-frequency broadcast online!" Her voice carried through the loudspeakers. "This is a survivor in the infected zone—we've secured a lead on the cure, respond immediately—"
She didn't finish. From deep within the plaza pit came a roar so low it shook the marrow, making the earth quake.
The shadows boiled again—something vast was waking beneath them.
Chen Mo looked up at the torn clouds, and a chill deeper than darkness swept through him. That voice… did not belong to a shadow-slave. Or to anything human.
"The trap," he said quietly, "has only just begun."