By the time the last Hollowed collapsed in a heap of twitching limbs, the tunnel was a slaughterhouse. Black ichor and human blood mingled in thick puddles. The air stank of ozone, gore, and burnt flesh.
Rix stood in the middle of it all, chest heaving, arms streaked with black. Around him, Kael prodded bodies to be sure they didn't rise again, Zane leaned against a pillar wiping sweat from his brow, and Renn sat cross-legged on a corpse, grinning like a lunatic.
The new kids they'd saved — six terrified teens, no older than themselves — huddled together at the far wall, eyes huge.
"Alright," Rix rasped, spitting black phlegm. "We can't stay here. If one Variant was sniffing around, more will come. Ideas?"
Kael glanced back the way they'd come, then toward the surface stairs. "North side of the city. There's an old university campus. Stone walls, big interior courtyards. Lots of choke points. It'd be defensible."
"And libraries," Zane added with a thin smile. "Maybe we'll even find someone who knows how this hell started."
Renn popped up, sparks dancing on his shoulders. "Long as there's something to kill, I'm in."
Rix turned to the frightened kids. "You lot stick close. Don't scream. Don't run. You see anything that isn't us, shout first. Understood?"
They nodded frantically.
---
Hours later, they emerged from the shadowed underworld into late afternoon gloom. Valecity was a broken cathedral of streets — glass glittered like fallen stars, smoke rose from distant fires. Hollowed roamed in loose packs, sometimes feasting on corpses, sometimes simply swaying as if listening to voices only they could hear.
The trip was slow. Rix led them through side alleys, using Kael's sharp senses to avoid larger hordes. Twice they doubled back when Renn's reckless grin got too wide, which usually meant he was itching to pick a fight they didn't need yet.
By dusk, they reached the university gates. The place was half-eaten by vines, stone arches cracked, old flags hanging in tatters. But it was still solid. The main hall's heavy oak doors stood intact, though scratched with deep claw marks.
Kael pressed an ear to the wood. "Nothing moving inside."
Rix nodded. Together, they shoved the doors open.
---
Inside was dust and silence. Wide marble floors stretched under vaulted ceilings. Lecture hall doors hung ajar, chairs overturned and papers yellowed. Old blood stained the walls, dark handprints trailing up to where someone had once tried to climb for safety. But there were no bodies, no Hollowed. Just echoes.
"This'll do," Rix said quietly.
"Home sweet rot," Renn cackled, already poking into side rooms.
Over the next hours they swept the building. Kael secured windows with broken desks jammed under handles. Zane used his shadows to shape spikes across the main stairwell, a deadly welcome for anything that tried to crawl up from below. The new kids — jittery but eager to help — dragged old furniture into barricades. By moonrise, the main atrium looked like a fortress.
Zane stood by a cracked window, eyes dark. "Feels wrong. This place should be swarming."
Kael joined him. "Maybe it will be. If there's something that's driving them… it might be happy to let us cluster up first."
Rix overheard, jaw tightening. "Then we get stronger before it finds us."
---
They lit a fire that night in the grand foyer, using old books and a shattered piano leg. Around it, they ate stolen canned beans. The warmth was a comfort against the chill that crept through ancient stones.
Rix sat with his back to the wall, Meya's tiny bracelet still tied around his wrist — a memory from before the Crimson Outbreak. The new kids — Tallen, Mira, Kross, Jeyna, and two younger boys who barely spoke — curled together like pups. Kael was cleaning his knives. Zane sat with eyes half-lidded, letting dark tendrils curl lazily around his wrists. Renn stared into the flames, lightning buzzing now and then when his excitement peaked.
"Why us?" Mira whispered suddenly, hugging her knees. "Why did we live?"
Kael answered without looking up. "Because we were unlucky enough to survive."
Renn flashed teeth. "Because it's fun. Come on — tell me you don't feel it. When you punch one of those monsters so hard it pops, tell me your heart doesn't race."
Mira recoiled. Tallen put an arm around her. But Rix only watched Renn in the firelight, saw the hunger there — and knew part of him mirrored it.
---
Later, long after the others slept, Kael sat beside Rix.
"You're thinking too loud again."
Rix let out a breath, eyes on the ceiling's faded fresco of scholars pointing at stars. "I'm thinking we're too weak. That Variant nearly caved my ribs. If bigger ones come…"
Kael tapped his shoulder. "Then we kill bigger ones."
"And if it's not just Variants? If something's making them smarter, organizing them?"
Kael's smile was faint, cruel at the edges. "Then we cut off its head. Simple."
Rix laughed, despite the dread coiling in his gut. "Yeah. Simple."
---
Outside, the ruined city groaned under a cold wind. Somewhere far off, a Variant bellowed — the sound rolled across rooftops like thunder.
And in a hidden lab beneath another crumbling district, a man in a stained lab coat scribbled feverishly into a ledger. Tubes ran from the ceiling into bloated glass tanks, inside which floated half-formed horrors.
The man paused, cocked his head, and smiled.
"They're clustering," he murmured. "Just like I hoped."
He pulled a lever. One of the tanks drained, revealing a monstrous silhouette with eyes that burned bright red.