Chapter 1: The Awakening
The dead kept their secrets, but the earth remembered.
Deep beneath fractured soil, something twitched—not life, but memory. A phantom breath. Above, the wind shrieked like a gutted beast, howling a warning through desolate oaks:
*Don't wake him.*
Too late.
A skeletal hand exploded from the grave. Dirt-caked fingers clawed at the bleeding sky. Stone cracked as the figure hauled itself from the void—jerking, gasping, a marionette of rotten flesh and shattered bone.
Black soil vomited from his lips. His skin: corpse-grey. Nails: necrotic shards. Blood and mud crusted every inch. Yet his chest hitched—a wet, sucking rasp.
*Not dead.*
*Not anymore.*
Eyelids peeled back. Empty pupils stared into nothingness. Then—a spark. Cognition. Agony. Primal terror.
"Where...?" The words scraped his throat raw. Less human, more predator's guttural snarl.
Silence answered. No birds. No insects. Only the death-rattle of broken streetlamps and the cemetery's mournful keening.
He studied trembling hands. Tendons snapped like overstrung wires beneath grey skin.
"Alive?" he whispered.
The lie curdled in his veins. His pulse: sluggish sludge. Skin: grave-cold. Something *else* throbbed in his core—a viral heartbeat, hungry and alien.
---
He staggered from the shallow pit. Bare feet tore on shattered ribs and forgotten headstones. Above, the sky hung like a burial shroud—moonless, starless, choked by clouds thick as coagulated blood.
As he limped toward rusted gates, the sound froze him:
*Schhhluck.*
Wet fabric dragging on stone.
A guttural moan.
He whirled.
Shadows detached from the treeline. Hulking. Twisted. Skin sloughing off in meaty ribbons. Eyes like smoldering embers in the gloom.
*Zombies.*
But they didn't charge.
They *watched.*
One lurched forward. Head cocked. Rotting jaw slack. Not aggression—recognition.
And in their milky gaze, he saw it:
His own reflection.
Pain detonated in his skull. Memories tore through his mind—shattered, scorched:
▫️ A stainless steel lab. Chemical stench burning his nostrils.
▫️ Screams echoing off sterile tiles.
▫️ A syringe's cruel glint in a white-coated hand.
▫️ Liquid fire in his veins.
▫️ Flames devouring everything.
▫️ The coppery tang of blood on his tongue.
And seared into his neural pathways—one name:
**A R M A N**
---
He crashed to his knees.
The horde stood motionless. Waiting. As if he were their lost king.
*Maybe he was.*
*Maybe resurrection was his curse.*
But the grave had spat him back.
And the world would choke on its final breath.