Maddy stood in the center, her hands trembling as she held a manifested light spear. A zombie—a young woman who still wore a silver locket around her neck, stumbled toward her, raising a jagged dagger.
"Stop... please,"
Maddy whispered, her zoologist's heart breaking, no her human heart… She saw the way their eyes rolled back, the way their fingers twitched in a ghostly mimicry of living reflexes.
"There has to be a way. Lucy! Can I reverse them? Can I use Photosynthetic Regeneration to jumpstart their cells?"
[Response: Negative. The biological threshold has been passed. The souls have been severed. These are merely biological puppets controlled by the Lich's mana frequency.]
"Mother, watch out!"
Sephiran screamed, diving from the air to bash a zombie archer's head with his war bat just as it leveled a bow at Maddy. Maddy parried a strike from the girl with the locket, her movements stiff.
