Prologue
Through the sharp, golden eyes of an unknown girl, the city burned.
Flames spread across rooftops like veins of molten gold, rivers of fire crawling and devouring brick, wood, and steel. Entire towers crumbled under their own weight, groaning like dying beasts before collapsing into heaps of sparks and ash the skyline once proud and alive had become a jagged silhouette wrapped in orange light the night sky above thick with smoke swallowed the stars.
She stood still on the remains of an overpass her boots pressed against fractured concrete. The air was suffocating, choking everybreath carried ash that scratched down her throat and filled her lungs with the bitter taste of iron and burnt plastic. Her golden eyes stung from the smoke, but she didn’t blink. Didn’t flinch. She stared out at the chaos below like she was seeing it all in slow motion, like every detail had been carved into her mind.
The fire wasn’t the only thing crawling through the streets.
The creatures moved beneath her like shadows given flesh, twisting through the blaze their bodies bent and stretched in ways that mocked humanity. They had once looked human. Some still wore tatters of clothing coats burned to blackened rags, shoes half-melted into their skin but their movements… no, those weren’t human anymore.
These things weren’t the stumbling corpses of cheap horror films they weren’t clumsy they weren’t dumb.
They were predators “Disgusting bastards..”
She grinned her fist.
The girl’s jaw tightened as she watched one of them move low, steady like a fighter circling prey It didn’t lunge without thought It waited. It listened. When a man swung a length of broken pipe at it the creature’s twisted arm rose and parried the strike glanced off the pipe snapping and in a single smooth motion its claw speared through the man’s chest.
Another human screamed nearby a high shrill sound that cut above the roar of the fire.
It wasn’t just one scream.
They came from everywhere down every alley across every burning street through every collapsing building raw human voices cracked open with terror some begged some cursed most were cut short far too quickly.
A girl sprinted barefoot her dress torn and smeared with soot. She made it halfway down the street before one of the creatures darted from a side alley, faster than any corpse had the right to be Its hand clamped around her arm bones snapping under its grip and her cries bled into the firelight before silence took her.
The golden-eyed girl closed her fists tighter, her nails digging crescents into her palms she didn’t move. Not yet.
People fought back with what little they had. Guns cracked, a scatter of bullets sparking off twisted bone, one lucky shot ripping into a mutant’s skull and dropping it to the ground. But the gun jammed before the soldier could fire again another man swung a butcher knife like his life depended on it because it did but the creature’s claw caught the blade mid-arc It twisted the knife snapped the man’s arm snapped next.
For every creature that fell, five more replaced it crawling from the alleys climbing over cars dragging themselves out of the fires as if the flames themselves had birthed them.
The city wasn’t fighting anymore. It was losing. Drowning.
“How horrible once a beautiful it’s now it’s just a nightmare…” she clenched her shirt.
Her chest ached the heat from the fire pressed against her face, sweat dripping from her jawline but it wasn’t the flames that made her heart thunder. It was the truth the undeniable truth that sat like a stone on her shoulders.
She couldn’t just stand here.
Not anymore.
Her eyes flicked to a boy below small maybe eight or nine he tripped over a cracked sidewalk his knees scraping against broken glass he tried to crawl but a creature’s claw snapped out curling around his ankle he screamed, thrashing, begging for help but no one came.
Something inside her snapped.
Her breath hitched her heartbeat grew louder, louder, until it drowned out the roar of fire and the wails of the dying every muscle in her body coiled tight her fists trembling with the pressure she no longer cared to hold back.
The moment stretched, endless.
And then she moved.
The overpass shattered under the force of her legs as she launched herself forward concrete cracked, sending shards flying outward as dust exploded into the air for one impossible heartbeat she was weightless cutting through smoke and fire her body little more than a streak of shadow against the burning horizon.
The air howled around her as she fell, faster, sharper, the city’s ruin rushing up to meet her her golden eyes didn’t waver didn’t blink the boy’s scream cut through the chaos and she locked onto it her body aligning like a blade thrown from heaven.
Time warped in those seconds.
She saw everything.
The boy’s small hands clawing at the ground nails breaking against the concrete the creature’s claw tightening around his ankle, its jaw unhinging wider, wider, rows of jagged teeth catching the firelight. The shadows of others moving closer, circling, hungry for the easy prey.
The ground neared.
Her heart didn’t falter.
Impact.
The world shook when she hit the street concrete split like glass, the force sending cracks spiderwebbing in every direction dust and ash blasted upward in a ring scattering into the firelight the creature holding the boy reeled back, hissing, its grip loosening for the first time.
The boy blinked up at her, eyes wide with shock she rose slowly from the crater her landing had carved, smoke curling around her body her golden eyes burned through the haze like lanterns, steady, unyielding.
The creatures around her froze their movements was so sharp and coordinated before faltered as if some primal instinct warned them for a heartbeat they hesitated their heads tilting in eerie unison.
She rolled her shoulders the sound of bones cracking echoing in the night. Her fists unclenched, flexing, ready.
The fire roared louder, but in her chest, there was silence a calm, razor-sharp silence that came only before the storm.
She wasn’t here to watch anymore.
She was here to fight.
