As Rix pedaled over the shattered asphalt, the destruction around him only got worse by the second. Cars were scattered everywhere—some flipped, others crushed so badly they were just twisted piles of scrap.
Then he passed something that made his stomach turn inside out.
A school bus lay crushed beneath a massive chunk of fallen concrete, its side split open like a cheap tin can. The bodies inside were reduced to a pulp of blood and bone, and a group of zombies had already gathered into a frantic circle, feasting on whatever was left.
Rix tightened his grip on the handlebars, forced himself to look straight ahead, and kept moving.
Further down the avenue, a few survivors were trying to make a run for it. Some were caught instantly, dragged down and torn apart before they made it fifty feet. A guy in a sedan tried to start his engine, but the loud, sputtering ignition just acted like a dinner bell. A crowd swarmed the car in seconds, bashing against the glass and ripping at the rubber seals while he screamed inside.
From a distance, Rix probably looked calm. To anyone watching from a window, he might have seemed fearless—just some guy casually coasting through the apocalypse.
In reality, he was terrified out of his mind. His hands were shaking so violently he could barely keep the front wheel straight.
Still, as he wove around an abandoned delivery truck, he had to give credit where it was due: this bike was the only reason he was still breathing.
He leaned forward and gave the handlebars a quick pat. "I told you that you were my best investment, didn't I, buddy?"
If the bike had a mouth, it probably would've said: 'Oh really? That's not what you said when you got that flat tire last week.'
The advantage was obvious—it was quiet. The faint rattle of his chain just blended into the background noise of a crumbling city. While every running engine drew a swarm, he floated past unnoticed.
The disadvantage? He was completely, terrifyingly exposed.
A car gave you a metal shield, a cage that could buy you a few extra minutes. The bike gave him nothing. Just air between his skin and the dead. If one of them lunged, he couldn't roll up a window.
Fear made him hyper-observant. As he pedaled, his mind frantically started piecing together what he was seeing.
First hypothesis: these things weren't like the weak, sluggish zombies from the movies. They were heavy, dense, and unnaturally tough. When he kicked that one in the face earlier, it should've dropped to the ground. Instead, it barely stumbled back a few steps.
Or maybe I'm just weak, Rix thought bitterly. Fuck, I should've actually trained when Jake told me to!
Second hypothesis: they were sensitive to sound... and maybe blood, though he wasn't sure yet. But one thing was clear—they could definitely see.
And there was a key detail he caught: they couldn't always tell their targets apart.
He realized this when he passed a car with its engine still idling. No one was inside, but a group of zombies was swarming it anyway, biting at the side mirrors and pounding on the hood like it was alive. One was jumping on the hood, another was chewing on a tire, and a third was trying to bite through the windshield.
As Rix glided past, the one chewing on the glass suddenly stopped.
It turned its head. Its clouded eyes locked right onto him.
For a heartbeat, they just stared at each other.
A cold shiver ran straight down Rix's spine as he realized what was happening. It actually looked stunned, watching him ride a bicycle right through the middle of total chaos. It dropped the shard of glass from its mouth and started coming straight for him.
It was slower than a healthy human, but just the sight of it made panic flare in his chest.
"Shit!" Rix hissed.
His careful mental theories shattered into pieces. He'd been sitting back and observing, but the moment he realized he was screwed, he pushed up off the seat and stood on the pedals, forcing every bit of speed out of the chain.
"Go away, you bastards!" he gritted out, his heart hammering against his ribs.
The count behind him started rising.
First one...
Then two...
Then five...
Ten.
Looking back was a mistake. His focus slipped for a single second, and his front wheel slammed into a jagged rock hidden in the dust.
The handlebars whipped out of his hands, and he went flying over the frame, hitting the asphalt hard and rolling across the broken road.
"Ahh... dammit, shit!" Rix groaned as pain shot through his elbow and knees.
He didn't have time to feel it. Panic cut through the stinging, and he scrambled up, lunging for his bike. He hauled it upright, threw himself back onto the seat, and pedaled like a lunatic.
It was terrifyingly close. The nearest corpse was barely ten meters away, reaching for his rear tire. If he had been two seconds slower, he would've been torn apart right there.
Rix drove through every tiny gap he could find, weaving between wreckage and cracked concrete to break their line of sight. But no matter what he did, they wouldn't drop off. More joined in as the noise spread.
Twenty...
Thirty...
Forty...
A whole horde was trailing behind him now.
"Fuck... fuck you all!" Rix shouted, pedaling with everything he had left, his legs burning like fire.
At this rate, even if he made it home, he'd just be leading a massive parade to his front door.
Assuming his house was even still standing. Was it still there, or had a meteorite flattened it? It was a fifty-fifty gamble at best. But he'd already placed his bet, and there was no turning back now.
"Huff... huff..." His breath came in rough, ragged gasps, his stamina draining fast. His legs felt heavier with every turn, and his vision blurred at the edges from sheer exhaustion.
Then, through the haze of drifting smoke, he saw it.
A familiar shape in the distance. Four hundred meters away.
His house.
The roof was intact, the walls were standing, and there was no major damage he could see from here.
"Come on, move!" he forced out, a spark of hope lighting up inside him.
Then something completely impossible happened.
Out of nowhere, totally outside Rix's calculations, a zombie came screaming in from his right side, sliding across the pavement.
It tackled his front wheel with the kind of clean, calculated precision you'd see in a professional football match.
To make it even more absurd, the damn thing was actually wearing a tattered sports jersey.
The bike drifted violently, and Rix was launched into the air.
As he hung mid-air, his eyes locked with the bastard who performed this glorious, Oscar-winning tackle. The guy must've been a die-hard defender in his past life.
Mid-air, Rix swore from the absolute bottom of his heart, "What the motherfucking hell?!"
He slammed shoulder-first into the asphalt, rolling until he crashed into the side of a parked car. He coughed up a mouthful of blood, the metallic taste flooding his throat as he struggled to catch his breath.
He looked back, and his heart dropped.
The horde was right there. Just a few meters away.
His bike had rolled too far out of reach thanks to that sports-jersey bastard. As Rix struggled to his feet, the jersey zombie scrambled up and lunged at him again—faster and more aggressive than the others.
Without even a second to breathe, Rix used the last burst of adrenaline to drag his aching body to the left. The zombie slammed headfirst into the car, its upper body getting stuck in the open window frame as it thrashed wildly.
Rix didn't wait. He turned and bolted down the street toward his house.
Four hundred meters...
It should've taken a minute, but today it felt like miles.
Then he froze.
Ahead of him, a dozen zombies feasting on torn remains around an overturned van suddenly turned their heads toward his footsteps.
He was completely fucked. Blocked from the front, hunted from the back.
Rix stopped. His lungs burned, and his hands hung limp at his sides.
There was no way out.
In that hopeless, death-sure moment, a bitter smile pulled at his lips. He couldn't even help it.
"Hahaha... is this really how I'm going to die?" he whispered softly to himself. "Is this what they call karma?"
He looked at the monsters closing in from both sides, a cold irony washing over him.
"Is this what I get for leaving Noel... and ignoring Professor Harin?"
His eyes fell on a piece of debris in the rubble next to his foot—a two-foot length of steel rod.
He reached down, gripping the cold metal with both hands until his knuckles turned white.
"Come on then! If I'm dying, I'm taking you bastards with me!"
Before he could even finish his cinematic speech, a zombie pounced from his blind spot. Its teeth sank deep into his shoulder, tearing through his hoodie and into his flesh.
"AAAAHHH! GET OFF, YOU BASTARD!" Rix roared in agony, twisting violently to shrug it off as he swung the steel rod aimlessly.
The metal hit something with a dull thud, but another zombie slammed into his leg, sinking its teeth into his thigh.
"AAAHHH!" Tears burst from his eyes as raw agony tore through his nerves.
He knew he was dying. The realization hit harder than the pain itself.
Another set of jaws clamped onto his forearm, crushing the bone with a sickening snap. The steel rod slipped from his fingers and clattered onto the road.
"Ah... please... anyone... please help me!!"
The horde collapsed over him, pinning him flat against the road. One bit into his thigh, another tore at his skin.
"AAAAAHHHHHHH!"
His composure completely shattered. He collapsed flat, trembling as his cries echoed through the street.
"Anyone... please..." he whispered, dragging his left arm across the gravel.
A heavy weight dropped onto his lower body as a zombie buried its teeth into his leg, pulling until the muscle tore open.
"AHHHHHH!"
The swarm was fully over him now—a heavy, suffocating mountain of rotting flesh. A female zombie with half her face missing leaned down and tore into the side of his neck.
They began digging under his skin, ripping away muscle.
"AAAHHHHHHHHH!! M-Mother... Dad... Siya... please... anyone help!"
He kept screaming, his voice breaking and gurgling as blood filled his throat.
Pain dissolved into a cold, heavy haze. The world turned into a blurred smear of red and gray.
In those final milliseconds, memories flashed behind his eyelids like a dying light—himself as a kid, his mother's smile, his father's hand, his sister Siya laughing in the park.
The happy moments felt like salt on open wounds as tears poured down his face, mixing with the grime and blood.
I don't want to die...
Then, at the exact moment before his heart gave its final beat...
A sharp, digital chime echoed directly inside his mind.
DING~
It wasn't just in his head; it vibrated through his skull, crystal clear and freezing cold.
Every surviving human on the planet heard that exact same sound at the exact same instant.
But Rix's eyes were already glazing over. The light in them went out, and his head slumped to the side as life left his body.
He died before he could hear what came next, leaving the world behind while the dead tore into what was left of him.
DING~
A series of glowing messages manifested in the darkness of vision across the world.
⛧ [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....