Chapter 3: First Blood
The day was long, dry, and quiet.
Axel moved like a shadow through the ruins of his neighborhood, past overturned cars, shattered windows, and bloodstained sidewalks. The world had already started to rot. He didn't flinch when he saw the dead—walkers stumbling through streets with skin peeling and eyes empty.
He took them down quickly.
Three of them.
The first came too fast, mouth wide, arms out.
Axel swung his katana low, severing both legs at the knees. The second one he sliced through the neck, clean and fast. The third he stabbed through the eye with his military knife. No wasted movement. No wasted emotion.
By midafternoon, his boots were soaked in walker blood. His hands still steady. His eyes colder than ever.
But just as the sun began to drop behind the ruins of the trees, he heard it.
A voice.
Not a growl. Not a moan.
A cry.
He stopped, turned his head slightly, listening.
It came from a broken-down gas station just ahead. Faint, desperate—a woman's sob. Then a man's grunt. Then silence. Then more crying.
Axel moved toward it without thinking.
His footsteps silent. Controlled. Deadly.
He slipped through a broken window at the side of the station and crouched low behind a stack of shelves. That's when he saw it.
A man—old, gray-bearded, with a knife in one hand and a twisted grin on his face. His pants half down. Standing over a woman.
She was shaking, shirt torn, eyes full of horror.
On the floor beside her, a man—her husband maybe—bound at the wrists and ankles. His mouth gagged, blood dripping from his temple. His eyes wide with helpless terror.
The old man whispered something vile.
Axel didn't hear it.
He didn't need to.
He moved.
No warning. No sound.
One second, the old man was leaning in—smirking.
The next, Axel was behind him.
And then—
Shhhhhnk.
The katana slid through his neck in one clean stroke.
The head dropped before the body realized it was dead.
Blood sprayed across the tiles.
The woman gasped, her mouth open in shock, her voice caught in her throat. Her husband began to cry through the gag.
Axel just stood there, holding the blade as the old man's body collapsed in a heap.
He didn't speak.
He didn't ask if they were okay.
He walked forward, cut the man's restraints, and handed the woman a bottle of water from his pack.
She looked up at him, trembling.
"Th-thank you," she whispered.
Axel said nothing.
He nodded once—and left.
Behind him, the last light of day faded.
And inside him, something shifted.
His first human kill.
Not for survival.
Not for vengeance.
But for justice.
And it would not be the last.
---
After a few days
Night fell hard.
Axel walked alone along a cracked road, the katana on his back stained red and dry. His breath was calm. His face unreadable.
The stars offered no comfort. The moon looked more like a scar.
He didn't care.
He followed a plume of smoke in the distance—thin, quiet. A campfire. Maybe walkers. Maybe people.
Didn't matter.
He moved toward it anyway.
When he reached the edge of the small clearing, he stopped behind the trees. Six of them—survivors. Camped around a weak fire. Two women, one older man, three others. All tired. Dirty. Hungry. Armed with sticks, knives, makeshift weapons.
They hadn't seen him.
Yet.
He stepped into the firelight.
The reaction was instant.
Weapons raised.
A scream.
One of them fell backward scrambling away, eyes locked on his face.
The silver streak in his hair caught the firelight. His black clothes made him look like something born from smoke and death. Blood still dried on his boots. The blade on his back gleamed.
He didn't flinch.
He raised both hands slowly—not in surrender, but to show he wasn't hunting them.
Not yet.
"Who the hell are you?" one of them snapped. A younger guy, maybe early thirties. He held a pipe like it was a sword. His hands shook.
Axel said nothing.
Didn't blink.
"Answer me!" the man barked again.
The older woman stepped in front of him, her eyes narrowed. "Wait… I heard about him," she said quietly. "The one with the silver hair. Some called him The Silent Cut. Found a camp where a man was butchered clean—throat gone, head rolled."
"I saved them," Axel said, voice low and cold.
They all fell silent.
He looked at the fire, then at their food. Two cans left.
"You got a place?" he asked.
The older woman nodded. "Down the road. We were headed that way tomorrow. Old factory."
Axel said nothing else. He sat down on a log just outside the fire's reach, unsheathed his katana, and began to clean it in silence.
The group whispered behind him. Afraid. Unsure.
"He doesn't look like someone we should trust," one muttered.
"Yeah?" the older woman replied. "And yet, I don't see any of us walking around with calm eyes and blood on our sword."
Axel didn't sleep that night.
He kept his back to the fire. One eye open. Hand near his blade.
They feared him.
But fear keeps people honest.
And that was enough.
---
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