As Rix rode his cycle over the broken roads, the destruction around him kept getting worse with every second. Cars were scattered everywhere, some flipped over, some crushed so badly that only a few parts were left.
As he moved, he passed a sight that made his stomach heave.
A bus full of students, crushed under the immense weight of the catastrophe.
The bodies inside had been turned into a pulp of blood and bone, and the zombies were already there, gathered in a frenzied circle, feasting on what was left.
Rix's grip tightened on the handle as he forced himself to look away and keep moving.
Further ahead, he saw survivors trying to run. Some were caught and torn apart.
Others tried to start their cars, but the loud engines only drew more zombies. They were swarmed in seconds. The people inside trapped with nowhere to go.
From a distance, it looked like Rix was calmly riding his bicycle through the chaos. To those who saw him, he seemed fearless, almost cold.
But inside, Rix was terrified to his very core. His entire body was shivering so violently he could barely keep his feet on the pedals.
Rix finally realized his cycle's worth at least now.
Amidst the tense and trembling atmosphere, Rix chuckled and patted his handlebars.
"I told you that you are my best, right? My buddy?"
If the cycle had a mouth, it would most probably be saying this:
'Oh really? That's not what you used to say.'
Even though there was this advantage, there was a massive disadvantage too.
The advantage was that his cycle made less or probably no noise as he rode through the road compared to a car.
The faint rattle of his chain was blended into the background noise of the crumbling city.
This helped him avoid attracting the attention of the zombies that swarmed every loud engine.
The disadvantage, however, was that he was completely open!!
Completely Exposed!!
Cars atleast provided a shield, a metal cage that could hold back the rot for a limited time.
But a cycle gave nothing.
No cover and no safety..
He was riding through the open space with nothing but air between him and the dead.
He had to be very careful: a zombie might pounce on him at any chance, at any time.
Even though Rix was terrified, he was becoming incredibly observant at the same time.
He started forming mental hypotheses as he rode, piecing together the nightmare unfolding before his eyes.
The first hypothesis:
The zombies were not weak like in the movies. They were strong.
He remembered when he kicked one in the face, it should have fallen back to the ground, but instead it only stumbled back a few steps.
'Or maybe… am I too weak?' Rix thought bitterly. 'Shit, I should have trained when Jake told me to!'
Second hypothesis:
The zombies were very sensitive to sound… and maybe even blood. He wasn't sure.
But one thing was clear, they could see.
In the movies, zombies were often blind or mindless, but here it was different.
There was a crucial detail Rix picked up: they couldn't always differentiate between their targets.
He reached this conclusion when he saw a car with its engine still idling, even though no one was inside.
The zombies had swarmed the vehicle anyway, biting at the metal and glass as if it were alive.
One kept jumping on the hood, another was gnawing on a tire, and a third was trying to chew through the windshield.
As Rix watched this while pedaling past, the zombie chewing on the glass suddenly stopped...
Its eyes locked on Rix...
For a heartbeat, both of them just stared at each other...
"_"
"_"
Rix felt a cold shiver run straight through his spine as he realized the zombie's eyes were widening.
It seemed stunned, watching him ride his cycle so coolly through the middle of all this chaos.
The creature dropped the glass shard it had been chewing and started running straight toward his cycle.
Its speed was slower than a normal human, but the sight alone made Rix panic.
"Shit!!" Rix hissed, his focused mental hypotheses shattering instantly.
Until now, he had been pedaling while sitting, his mind busy thinking and observing. The moment he realized he had been screwed, he pushed himself up and stood on the pedals, forcing more speed out of the cycle.
"Go... go away, you bastards!!!" he gritted out, his heart hammering against his ribs.
But the count of zombies behind him began to rise.
First one...
Then two...
Then three...
Four..
Five..
Ten.
But looking back was a mistake;
His focus slipped for a second, and his front wheel struck a large rock.
The cycle jolted, balance gone out of hand, and he fell hard, rolling across the broken road.
"Ahh… dammit, shit!" he groaned, pain shooting through his body. But he didn't have time to stay down. The zombies were closing in fast.
He didn't have a second to feel the pain. He scrambled up instantly, ignoring the sting, and lunged for his bike.
He picked the cycle up and threw himself back onto the seat, pedaling like a madman as the chain rattled.
It was a terrifyingly close call. The zombies...they were just barely ten meters away.
He knew with absolute certainty that if he had been just a few seconds slower, he would be one of them now...
Rix drove through every small gap he could find, weaving between wreckage and broken ground, trying to shake the zombies off his tail. But no matter what he did, they never left him.
It was like they had a personal grudge against him.
Instead of decreasing, the number of zombies chasing him kept growing.
20..
30..
40...
A whole horde was behind him now.
"Fuc… fuck… you all!" Rix shouted, pedaling with all his strength, his legs burning as he pushed the cycle faster and faster.
At this rate, even if he made it home, he'd just be leading a swarm to his front door.
Wait!!
Was his house even still there?
or
had it been crushed under the meteorites?
It was a fifty-fifty gamble at best.
But Rix had already placed his bet, and there was no turning back now.
"Huff… huff…" Rix gasped, his breath coming out rough as his stamina started to drain.
His legs felt heavier with every second, and his vision blurred slightly from the exhaustion.
but then, through the smoke he saw it..
A familiar dot in the distance.
His house.
Although it was still 400 meters away, he could identify the shape of it perfectly.
From what he could see from here, there was no major damage that caught his eye.
"C...mon, fast!" he encouraged himself, a spark of hope finally lighting up his eyes.
But!!
But suddenly...
Something impossible happened!!
Out of nowhere...
Out of Rix's calculation...
Out of Rix's imagination...
A zombie came screaming from his right side, sliding across the pavement.
It tackled the front tire of the cycle with that kind of perfect, calculated precision you'd see in a professional football match.
It was a clean tackle.
To make the scene even more fucking hilarious, the zombie was actually wearing a jersey.
A tattered football jersey.
The cycle drifted violently off to the side, and Rix was thrown into the air,
As he hung in mid-air, his eyes locked with the zombie who had performed this Marvelous, Glorious and Oscar-winning action.
The bastard must have been a football enthusiast or a professional defender in its past life.
Mid-air, Rix cursed from the bottom of his heart, "What the mother-fucking hell is that!!!"
"AhhhhhhhhH!" he screamed as his body rolled across the broken ground, finally slamming into the side of a car.
He coughed up a mouthful of blood, the metallic taste filling his throat as he struggled to breathe.
He looked back...
His heart dropped...
The horde was almost on him now.
Just a few meters away.
Rix didn't have the luxury of time to grab his cycle again, it had rolled too far away thanks to that damned zombie tackle.
As he struggled to his feet, the jersey-wearing bastard that had tackled him scrambled up and lunged again.
Somehow, this one felt different to Rix-faster, more focused than the others.
Rix didn't even have a second to breathe as the creature came crashing toward him. Using the last of his adrenaline, he dragged his fragile, aching body to the left.
The zombie slammed into the side of the car and got stuck in the window frame, thrashing wildly.
Rix didn't wait. In that split moment, he bolted, running toward his house.
Four hundred meters...
That was all. But today, it felt like kilometers.
But as he started his sprint, his heart dropped. He looked at the road ahead.
Dozens of zombies feasting on torn bodies suddenly turned their heads toward him.
He was completely fucked. Blocked from the front and hunted from the back.
Rix swallowed hard..
There was no way out now.
And in that death‑sure situation, he smiled. A soft, almost sweet smile.
"Hahaha... is this really how I'm going to die?" he whispered softly to himself.
"Is this what we call karma?"
He looked at the monsters closing in from both sides and felt a cold irony wash over him.
"Is this what I get for not helping Noel and Professor Harin?"
Rix muttered his last doubts, eyes lifted to the sky as if asking the universe for an answer.
Suddenly, his eyes caught the sight of a steel rod lying in the debris beside him.
"I see..."
Rix slowly reached out and gripped the cold metal, wrapping both hands around it until his knuckles turned white.
"C...mon! If I'm going to die, I'm taking you bastards with me!"
Before Rix could even finish his cinematic dialogue, a zombie pounced from his blind spot.
The creature's teeth sank deep into his shoulder, tearing through the fabric of his hoodie and into his flesh.
"AAAAHHHHH!!! Move, you bastards!"
Rix roared in agony, shrugging the creature off with a violent jerk and swinging the rod aimlessly.
He lashed out with whatever strength he had left, the metal whistling through the air as the circle of dead closed in.
Rix swung the rod with all his strength, but then another zombie lunged, grabbing his leg and sinking its teeth in.
"AAAHHHH!!!" Rix cried, tears spilling from his eyes as pain shot through him.
He knew he was dying. The realization hit him harder than the physical agony.
Another set of teeth sank into his forearm, crushing the bone with a snap.
The steel rod had fallen from his grip and fell to the ground..
"Ahhhh... ple... please... any... anyone... pleas... please... h.. help... m.. me!!"
The horde pressed closer.
One bit into his thigh,
Another clawed at his shoulder.
Rix collapsed with a dull thud, his body trembling, his cries echoing through the chaos.
"A… anyone… please…" he whispered.
He tried to crawl, but a third zombie dropped its weight onto his lower body, burying its teeth into his left thigh.
It didn't just bite as it pulled, stretching the tendons until they popped.
"AHHHHHH!!!" Rix's composure shattered. He collapsed flat onto the ground
The swarm was fully over him now, a mountain of grey, rotting flesh.
A female zombie with half a face missing leaned down and tore into the side of his neck..
They started to peel the skin off his chest, their black fingernails digging under his dermis and yanking...
"AAAHHHHHHHHH!! M..MO... mother... fa... th... er... Si... ya... ple... ase... anyone... help!"
Even at death's door, he kept screaming, his voice gurgling as blood filled his windpipe.
The zombies began to reach into the open wounds, pulling out strings of muscle and gulping them down..
Rix's voice cracked into raw pain as he cried out, calling for help that would never come.
"Ahhh… pla… please… anyone… help… me!!"
Rix felt his consciousness fading. The world was turning into a blurred haze of red and grey. There was no escape.
At the final moment of his life, his past memories began to flash like a small point light. He saw himself as a child, his mother's smile, his father's steady hand, and his younger sister, Siya, laughing in the park.
The happy moments felt like salt in his wounds as tears poured down his cheeks, mixing with the grime and gore on his face.
But at that exact millisecond...
at that exact moment before Rix's heart gave its final, fluttering beat...
A sharp, digital chime echoed through his mind.
DING~
It wasn't just Rix. Every human being left alive on the planet heard the same cold, crystalline sound vibrating in their skulls.
But Rix's eyes were already glazing over. The light in them flickered and went out. His head slumped to the side as the life left his body.
He died before he could hear the message. He left the world behind as the zombies continued to hollow out his chest.
DING~
The notification ran through everyone's minds simultaneously, a series of glowing blue messages manifesting in the darkness of their vision.
-------------------------------------
⛧ [INITIATING GLOBAL BROADCAST…] ⛧
[System Channel: Prithvi Mandala – Planet Designation: Earth]
Source: Core Seal of Prithvi-Lok – Unsealed After 432,000 Earth Cycles
⛧ — THE TRIAL OF KALI YUGA HAS BEGUN — ⛧
The Dharma Wheel lies in ruin.
❖ The Four Sacred Yugas have withered into ash: Satya, Treta, Dvapara, and Kali, consumed by time's hunger.
❖ And now… a new epoch emerges from their remains.
❖ Now dawns the Fifth--the Unspoken Yuga…
→ The Age of Rot.
[System Activation: Universal Evolution Protocol]
All sapient lifeforms are now subjected to the Trial.
Those unable to resonate with the Etheric Flow -Prana (Mana) will be Dehumanified.
All hail the almighty Blight.!!!
Let the Apocalypse descend....