The night was a burial shroud thrown over Ajmer.
Above, familiar constellations were blotted out by a ceiling of smoke and ash, their light choked by the malevolent, pulsing glow of violet cracks that scarred the heavens.
Ajay remembered this city in its former life—a cacophony of blaring horns, festival music, and the sizzle of street food. A city that never slept. Now, the only sounds were the low, hungry moans drifting from the streets below and the distant crackle of unchecked fires. Silence was the new ruler, and it was a tyrant.
Perched on the ledge of a half-gutted textile building, Ajay was a statue woven from shadow. His hood was a cowl, his face hidden, but his eyes—cold, calculating, and unnervingly still—scanned the urban graveyard below. This was his kingdom of ruin.
Spread neatly beside him was the inventory of his fragile survival: two hunting knives, a rust-pitted revolver with thirteen bullets, a crowbar, a roll of bandages, two bottles of water, and four cans of beans. Each item had been cleaned, arranged, and accounted for.
Ajay's breathing was slow, unnaturally calm for the chaos around him. He whispered into the night, though no one was there to hear.
"Weapons kill bodies. Knowledge kills empires. If I want to survive, I need more than bullets… I need intelligence."
He raised a pair of military-grade binoculars, one lens webbed with a hairline crack.
He saw past the flaw. To the west, on Mayo College Road, the military's last stand was an open grave. Humvees lay on their sides like slaughtered cattle. The soldiers were not merely dead; they were desecrated, torn apart with a violence that spoke of frenzy, not hunger. Their weapons were gone. Scavenged. This was not the work of mindless dead, he noted, the thought a cold spike in his mind. This was the work of men. Wolves are already tasting the blood in the water.
Below, a group of men—their skins a tapestry of crude tattoos, their eyes gleaming with feral greed—herded a group of survivors. A man stumbled, pleading. A machete fell. The pleading stopped. Ajay's finger did not tremble. His pulse did not spike. The Red Fangs. A name. A variable. Predators recognize other predators.
But this is not my hunt. Empathy was a luxury priced in blood, and he was bankrupt.
On the other side of the city, his breath caught in his throat, a nearly imperceptible hitch. This was where the world was bleeding. The air itself was torn, a vortex of violent amethyst and crackling black energy. A Storm.
The old world is a corpse, he synthesized, his mind a cold, efficient engine. The government is its rotting brain, disconnected and dying. The gangs are the maggots, feasting on the decay. And from the wound we tore in the sky, the new world is being born in a tide of monstrosity. The city is not falling. It is being divided, and the auction has already begun.
The silence below shifted.
Two zombies stumbled through a collapsed lane, their ruined jaws clicking, their dead eyes rolling toward the faint clink of Ajay adjusting his crowbar. He exhaled slowly.
Dropping from the rooftop, Ajay landed in the alley's shadows. One of the undead turned its head sharply, groaning. He didn't retreat—he threw a shard of glass down the opposite path. The sound drew one zombie away.
The second lunged. Ajay ducked low, his knife flashing upward, the blade sliding cleanly into its temple. The creature twitched, then collapsed with a dull thud. The other returned too late. Ajay caught it by the throat, shoved it against a wall, and slit deep across its neck. Black blood spilled over his hands.
[System Notification] Kill Count: 5
Ajay flicked the blood off his blade. "Silent. Clean. That's how it must be."
He was wiping his blade on the corpse's rags when a new sound froze him. Not a groan. A hiss. From a collapsed sewer grate, two shapes emerged. Cats. Or what was left of them. Patches of fur clung to stretched, muscular frames. Their eyes glowed with a sickly green phosphorescence, and their tails lashed like barbed whips. Faster. Smarter.
The first launched itself, a blur of claws and teeth. Ajay met it with a roll, coming up with his knife. The blade caught it mid-leap, shearing through its jaw and into its skull. It died with a pathetic screech.
The second circled, a low, continuous growl rumbling in its chest. It was learning. Ajay backed toward a wall, presenting a false opening. The creature took the bait. It darted in low, going for his legs. At the last second, Ajay sidestepped and kicked a pile of loose bricks into its path. The cat stumbled, confused. It was all the opening he needed. The revolver barked once, the report shockingly loud in the silent alley. The bullet took it square in the head.
Too fast. Too aggressive. The fauna is changing. Adapt or die.
[Kill Count: 7]
He was reloading the single spent cartridge when the earth trembled. A rhythmic, ground-shaking THUD. THUD. THUD.
From the mist, it emerged.
A monument of fused flesh and riot gear. A Juggernaut. Bone-like plating armored its chest. It was a walking fortress. Crack! Crack! Two rounds sparked harmlessly off its chest plate. It roared, a sound of pure, undiluted hate, and charged.
Ajay was ready. He feinted left, drawing the beast's momentum, then dodged right. The Juggernaut's fist smashed a crater into the wall where he'd been an instant before. The air pressure slammed him against the opposite wall. He spat out a mouthful of blood. His vision swam.
No frontal assault. Lure. Trap. Exploit.
Ajay ran, not in fear, but with purpose, leading it into a narrow thoroughfare. The beast obliterated everything in its path. Ajay's eyes scanned, calculating. There. A teetering scaffold of bricks. He shot past it. The Juggernaut thundered after. As it passed the scaffold, Ajay jammed the crowbar into its base and levered his entire weight. With a groan of protesting metal and stone, the structure collapsed, entombing the creature's legs under a ton of rubble.
It roared, trapped, swiping with tree-trunk arms. Ajay ascended its prison, a climber on a mountain of rage. The helmet had a weak point—the visor. He reversed his grip on the knife and stabbed down, through the slit. Once. Twice. On the third strike, the beast shuddered and died.
[Kill Count: 8]
He found a higher vantage point. And he froze.
Not monsters. People. Survivors.
Six of them. Moving through the carcass of a supermarket with a tense, practiced caution. Two haulers. A protector, her eyes holding the hollow terror of a prolonged nightmare, a child clutched to her side. Two guards—posture rigid, rifles held with professional competence. Ex-military.
Ajay became part of the shadow, his entire existence focused into his senses. His ears, sharpened by a lifetime of listening for the fatal step, captured their whispers.
"—Jaipur. Command shattered. Anyone with a rank fled to the new HQ."
"We're not there. We're here. And the Red Fangs hold the granaries. They are the law now."
"The Lake… rumors say the army was fortifying the shores before the big storm hit. A safe zone."
"You'd risk the storms? The things coming out of them? That's not a safe zone. It's a feeding ground."
Jaipur. Red Fangs. Ana Sagar. The words were keys. Jaipur was a failed state. The Red Fangs was the new regime. The lake was a gamble, a potential haven ringed by teeth.
He stepped back into the shadows. He didn't want to meet new people in his injured state. He went to his apartment, but he found someone there. He moved with caution. His senses were telling him there was something dangerous in there.
Fatigue was a phantom limb, aching but ignored. The count was nine. The finish line was a phantom ahead.
One more. A lone Shambler. This was not combat. This was artistry. Ajay became a ghost. He matched its shambling gait, his footfalls making less sound than settling dust. He synced his breathing with its wet, rattling exhalations. He waited for the perfect moment—its foot caught on a crack, balance compromised.
He moved. A hand clamped over its mouth, a steel vise. The knife drew across its throat in a single, profound motion. He lowered the body to the ground, a gentle offering to the god of death.
[Kill Count: 9]
He wanted to rest, but his mind still played the day's events: the zombie fight, the new, faster creatures, and the survivors' whispers.
"Contact risks exposure. Observation means ignorance. But ignorance kills faster than claws."
Before closing his eyes, he made his decision. He would follow that group.
I will be their phantom. I will be the listener in their walls. I will learn their truths and their lies. And then I will decide if they are worth more as allies… or as bait in a larger trap.
The watcher was done watching.
The hunt for knowledge had begun.