The silence after the kill was thick.
Damian stood over the twitching corpse of the Pack Leader, one boot still pressed into its spine. Steam rose from the gashes along its neck. Blood pooled out, soaking into the cracks of the broken street beneath him. The sky above was a bruised gray, heavy with smoke.
His breath came in slow, sharp draws.
Fuck. That thing had nearly taken his head clean off. His ribs felt like someone had worked them over with a crowbar where those claws had gotten him. The bastard had been twice the size of anything else he'd fought, muscles bulging under that infected skin like tumors.
Too close.
The fight was done. But the city was far from safe.
The system flashed.
[Quest Updated.]
Pack Leader: Eliminated.
Calculating remaining threats...
Remaining Hostiles: ~18
Sub-Objectives: Clean Sweep (Optional)
His jaw tightened.
Eighteen more. Eighteen more of these twisted shits are still crawling around Moscow. The big one was dead, but that didn't mean jack if the little ones got out. Stragglers always did wounded hounds limping through rubble, freaks hiding in basements, maybe worse things lurking where the bombs had hit hardest.
Leave them alone and they'd breed. Spread.
Some family hiding in a subway tunnel would get torn apart because he got lazy.
Damian kicked the Pack Leader's corpse into the gutter and wiped his kitchen knife on his coat. Chunks of something gray still stuck to the blade. He scraped them off with his thumb.
"Let's finish this."
His voice came out like sandpaper.
He moved through the ruins.
Every step hurt now. The adrenaline was gone, left him with that shaky tiredness that made his hands tremble. But he couldn't stop. Not yet.
Moscow looked like hell had opened up and vomited everywhere. Cars flipped and burning. Windows blown out. Bodies in the street that didn't look like bodies anymore.
The first straggler came at him near a busted tram. Half its face was missing but it still had that green glow in its eyes. It jumped—
Too slow.
His knife cut its throat before it hit the ground.
[+150 EXP]
Used to be someone's dad, probably. Had a job, paid taxes, worried about normal shit. Now it was just meat that wouldn't die right.
The cleanup took forever.
Damian didn't rush. Couldn't miss any. He watched how they moved, what scared them. Most tried to run when they smelled him coming. Others, the really fucked up ones, just charged with foam coming out of their mouths.
Didn't matter. He killed them all.
He went through buildings, down into subway tunnels where rats with too many teeth scattered when his flashlight hit them. Burned out nests that stank like rotting garbage. Climbed onto rooftops where people had tried to make a stand—bullet shells everywhere, blood on the walls.
One roof had a kid's backpack. Spider-Man. The zipper was open, juice box rolling around inside.
Empty.
He didn't look for the kid.
More hounds in an apartment. Used to be a family—he could tell from the wedding ring on one of them, how they stuck together even now. The smallest had pigtails.
He made it quick.
[+450 EXP]
By evening his coat was ripped to shit and his shoulder felt like it was on fire. The knife was slippery with blood and worse things. But the system finally dinged.
[Main Objective Complete.]
Zone: Moscow — Secured.
Remaining Hostiles: 0
You have gained: +12,400 EXP
LEVEL UP!
Level 4 → Level 5
+5 Stat Points
LEVEL UP!
Level 5 → Level 6
+5 Stat Points
LEVEL UP!
Level 6 → Level 7
+5 Stat Points
He leaned against a burned cop car and let out a breath.
The levels didn't mean much. But he felt different. Faster. The Void came easier now, like flexing a muscle he'd always had but never used.
Problem was, killing came easier too. Each level made it simpler to look at something that used to be human and just see a target.
[Level: 7]
STR +10 | DEX +11 | INT +15
[User: Damian Voss]
[Passive ability: V̶o̶i̶d̶] (Overloaded)
[Ability: Shadow Step]
[New Quest: ???]
He dumped the points into all of his stats. Need to balance the numbers.
[Shadow Affinity increasing… latent growth detected.]
"Shadow Affinity?"
Great. More bullshit he didn't understand.
[System Notification]
Global Quest Initialization: Pending…
Estimated Time Until Launch: 168 Hours
One week. Then it starts again somewhere else.
By the time he got to the city edge, the sun was bleeding orange across broken windows. Smoke still rose from a dozen fires. The air was quiet but not peaceful. Just... empty.
Like death had finished eating and moved on.
He stood there a minute.
Last time around, Moscow fell in five days. Millions dead. Military ran with their tails between their legs. The whole city became a feeding ground.
Now?
Gate closed. Hounds dead. Pack Leader cooling in a gutter.
Survivors would tell stories about some masked guy who moved through the fires like a ghost. They'd get it wrong, but that was fine. Better they didn't know what it really cost.
Getting back to his home took most of a day. The world was still trying to figure out what happened. Terrorist attack? Chemical spill? Something worse?
The system had shown up for everyone, but people didn't get it yet. They wanted their governments to explain, to say everything was under control.
Damian knew better.
He stuck to the woods. No cameras, no checkpoints, no questions he couldn't answer without sounding crazy.
When he finally made it to his street, his legs felt like concrete. Not tired from running—tired from doing things that left marks on your soul.
The house looked normal.
Small. Quiet. End of a street where regular people worried about regular things. Rent. School. Whether their team would win on Sunday.
He fumbled with his keys twice before getting the door open.
His sister was crashed on the couch, one leg hanging off, hoodie twisted around her neck. Fell asleep watching the news. Her laptop sat on her chest, probably homework she'd been doing when the world went sideways.
She looked like a kid.
Damian stood there watching her breathe.
Blood under his nails. Coat stiff with dried gore. The mask hanging from his hand like a spare face.
He could wake her. Tell her he was home. Let her see he was okay.
But he wasn't okay. Wasn't sure he'd ever be okay again. And she didn't need to know her brother had spent the day butchering things that used to be people.
That he was getting good at it.
He went to the kitchen, grabbed water from the fridge, sat at the table in the dark. Outside, the world kept spinning and screaming for answers.
The water had no taste. Nothing had taste anymore.
But for a few minutes, he just sat. Let the mask stay on the table. Let himself be Damian again instead of whatever he turned into when he put the thing on.
But for the first time in days, he let himself breathe.
[System Notice]
New Global Quest Approaching…
Time Remaining: 145 Hours
He knew what was coming..
[Level: 7]
STR +10 | DEX +11 | INT +15
[User: Damian Voss]
[Passive ability: V̶o̶i̶d̶] (Overloaded)
[Ability: Shadow Step]
[New Global Quest: Approaching…]
[Time Remaining: 145 Hours]