The world folded wrong.
Lucan's teleportation stuttered that sickening lurch where space gathered around him like crumpled silk and then refused to smooth out. He landed hard on cracked asphalt, claws scraping concrete, and immediately pivoted into a crouch. The zombies were already closing. Dozens of them. Hundreds. Shambling through the market stalls, their movements too coordinated, too directed.
He teleported again. He had been teleporting for hours, running away from her. She didn't want him anymore, and it stung.
This time the fold pulled sideways, and he came out three meters to the left of where he'd aimed, slamming into a rusted car frame. The impact rattled through his ribs. He tasted copper.
Again.
The space around him gathered, compressed, and released, and he was somewhere else entirely. A narrow alley between two collapsed buildings. Vines choked the walls. The air reeked of rot and something electric, something that made the fur along his spine stand on end.
