The growing daylight didn't reveal hope.
It revealed scale.
A dense, heaving mass of beasts—so thick she couldn't make out individual shapes—pushed against the dying barricade. The sound was a grinding, snarling roar, a living avalanche forcing its way through the last cracks of civilization.
Metal screamed under pressure.
Tires melted into bubbling, tar-black puddles.
Petrol slicks burned in uneven blue-orange waves, shadows warping and twitching like something alive.
The entire barricade shuddered, groaned, and sagged centimeter by centimeter as thousands of beasts pressed forward in one suffocating mass.
A ute in the front line snapped its chain.
The cars chained behind reacted in a brutal ripple, each one jolting forward as if kicked by a giant.
The whole structure fractured along the left third.
"IT'S GIVING—MOVE, MOVE—!" someone shouted.
The South corridor didn't just look like it was collapsing.
It sounded like it.
People began to run.
Not chaos. Not yet.
But the sharp, instinctive retreat of people who knew death was three heartbeats away.
Beasts climbed the fallen ute like it was a ramp.
The bus on the right flank toppled sideways under the combined weight. When it hit the asphalt, the impact cracked the ground in a jagged spiderweb.
Steam burst from broken radiators.
Burning engine oil turned the air metallic and sharp.
A firefighter screamed from the right, "HOSE—GO, GO, GO!"
A jet of white water blasted across the breach. At point-blank range, the industrial hose hit like a battering ram—snapping necks, flipping bodies. The water didn't kill many—but it broke momentum.
Seconds.
It bought seconds.
And that was all they had left.
Talia inhaled once—too deeply—and then she jogged toward the collapsing bus.
The heat radiating off the metal was intense. She grabbed the jagged frame and climbed, boots slipping on ash and glass. Her thigh ripped with white-hot pain, nearly buckling her. She hauled herself up mostly with her arms, boots slipping on ash-slick metal as she dragged rather than climbed.
Up here she had height.
Unstable, dangerous height—
—but height all the same.
Beasts leapt up the wreck, claws scraping the metal, jaws snapping inches from her boots. She struck down with brutal efficiency:
Thrust— her strapped shoulder jolted, fire along the tendon. Pivot. Slice. Reverse. Stab again.
Throw a Molotov down the side.
Repeat.
Bodies dissolved in ash cascades.
[Kill Count: 7291]
Ten, fifteen, twenty beasts at a time fell screaming.
But each time she carved a pocket open, more bodies surged in to replace them.
A dog lunged high. She skewered it mid-air, flicked it off her spear, and pivoted sideways to intercept a goat lunging toward a pinned policeman.
"Thanks!" he gasped, scrambling backward.
Talia didn't answer. She was already moving.
Her HUD kept ticking upward. It seemed that the System counted everything killed in the breach zone — fire, falling cars, crush deaths, her own blade — all feeding the rising number, whether it was a final act of mercy or it just included team kills now, she wasn't complaining. This change would help more people to leave with their family.
But smoke stung her eyes. Her head pulsed. She blinked ash out of her lashes—
—just in time to feel a hand clamp onto her shoulder.
She twisted hard, spear half-raised—
—but the grip was steady, familiar.
System armor.
"TALIA—DOWN!"
A thunderous blast of water shot past her ear, hammering a wolf off the roof. It spiraled away, crashing into the heaving crowd below.
Rob stood behind her, bracing the hose with both arms.
Soot covered his forehead. His jaw was locked tight.
"Talia!" he roared. "Get DOWN! We need you alive if we're getting out of this! If the Binding is real!"
She was about to snap back—I'm not leaving yet—
but the bus lurched underneath them, metal folding inward.
Rob swung the hose again, clearing a climbing boar from the right side.
"We've done our best here!" he shouted. "NOW MOVE!"
She felt the truth of it. The barricade was seconds from catastrophic collapse.
Behind them, defensive calls rang through the corridor:
"SECOND LINE—SECOND LINE, NOW!"
"Leave the wounded! Get them on stretchers at the back!"
"Kids, behind the cars—GO, GO!"
"Pull the elderly in—fast!"
"Fall back, fall back—FALL BACK!"
Talia skidded off the bus as the roof began to cave.
Her landing was rough. A muffled cry escaped, as her vision went white for half a heartbeat as she hit the ground. Her leg folded, hot blood bursting through the bandage. Sure that fall had reopened a wound.
She forced it straight with a snarl and pushed off the ground using her spear as a support—Luckily it was made from alien metal and could hold her weight.
The first blockade wasn't collapsing. It had already fallen.
Cars avalanched forward in a horrific cascade, metal twisted, glass snapped.
Beasts poured through the collapsing gaps like floodwater breaking a dam.
Talia limped-lunged toward her bike, using her spear as a crutch. Her leg shook violently—Dale was going to lose his mind when he saw this tear—but she didn't have the luxury of thinking about consequences.
"Don't fall, don't fall, don't fall—" she muttered, voice breathless.
She kicked the engine alive.
With her last stores of fuel in space, she created a fuel trail inside the collapsed first barricade, then lit it. A last gift to the invaders—flames crawling along the edge of the ruin. The blockade burned behind her, a funeral pyre for the people who had held it all night.
She revved hard, shot the bike toward the Second Line, and plunged down the blazing lane.
Heat curled up her legs. Sparks bit at her clothes.
Beasts surged toward her from both sides—
—and she tore through them.
Her spear was an extension of her breath:
Slash low—take two dogs.
Elbow to the skull—break the fox jaw.
Thrust forward—puncture a goat's heart.
Kick sideways—send a possum tumbling into fire.
Embers chased her wheels, spilling fire in her wake.
She launched off a crushed sedan, landing back on the ground with a sharp skid as the Second Line came into view.
The first blockade behind her collapsed fully, disappearing in a wave of flame and bodies.
The second line was messy. Imperfect. Barely finished.
But it was there.
Rob stood at the center—hose over his shoulder, shield strapped to his arm, hair plastered to his forehead. Kids cowered behind him; elderly huddled near the brick wall; fighters formed a rough wedge around the families.
He looked at her, eyes sharp despite the exhaustion, and nodded once.
"Talia—the line's holding," he panted. "Your warning saved us. We built it in time."
She scanned the structure:
Cars staggered in tight formations, improvised towers with long-range weapons, hoses set at angles to break momentum, smoke drifting strategically to blind beasts.
It wasn't pretty. But it worked.
The beasts slammed into the second line seconds later. But this time the line didn't shudder.
It absorbed the impact.
The wedge curved like a crescent, centering pressure and forcing beasts into kill pockets. Water blasts shoved climbers off roofs. Foam drenched the edges, slowing movement.
They would not last a full day. But they would last the final hour needed.
Talia exhaled—a ragged, painful release.
Her spear—barely holding together—groaned when she leaned on it. She checked for cracks. Everything was cracked.
Her HUD shimmered.
[Kill Count: 8053]
The rewards were getting further apart. Exponentially further.
Her body shook. Her thigh bled again. Her breathing was shallow.
Her head throbbed with overuse of foresight, adrenaline, and smoke.
But the second line stood.
More families would live.
More children would reach the Binding Hour.
More fighters would earn weapons and armor to take into the next world.
Talia rested her forehead against a car door for three long seconds.
"Good work," she murmured to Rob's team. "You all made it. I'm heading for one final quick loop. See you in the New World."
Rob huffed a shaking breath—half-laugh, half-exhale.
"Go. We'll hold. And… Talia?"
She glanced back.
"You're not just a fighter. You're… what did the teens call you?"
A voice from somewhere behind him shouted, "WAR GODDESS!"
Rob smirked tiredly. "Yeah. That."
She shook her head, almost smiling.
Barely able to move, she braced both hands on the handlebars, hauled her good leg over, and dragged the injured one after it—biting down a full-body wince as her wound screamed open again.
"Last ride," she whispered to the engine. "You and me."
The bike made a few metallic groans of protest.
"Yeah. Same."
She revved it hard and turned toward the East Blockade—toward the last battlefield waiting.
The trial wasn't done with her.And neither was the world. She sped into the smoke, fire lighting her silhouette, the ruins of the first blockade smoldering at her back.
The South Blockade had fallen. But the Second Line held.
Her body was breaking. But she wasn't broken.
Not yet.