Rosalia — POV
The zombie child looked very small.
And by very small, I didn’t an a toddler—he wasn’t two years old, nor three.
He wasn’t even a newborn you could cradle in your arms.
No... he was an infant so tiny, so undeveloped, that anyone with functioning eyes would understand imdiately:
This child had never been born.
He was an unborn baby—still in the stage where his limbs were thin as twigs, where his skin was almost translucent, where everything about him scread unfinished.
It was horrifying.
It was unnatural.
It was the kind of sight that forced the breath right out of your lungs.
It was obvious he had crawled—or fallen—out of his mother’s womb after she turned into a zombie.
The idea alone was enough to make my stomach churn.
Even in a world where corpses walked the streets, this felt like a new, twisted level of nightmare.
And that, unfortunately, also explained perfectly why Cassel and the others hadn’t noticed him while sweeping the area.
No one—and I an no one—would think to inspect the inside of a pregnant zombie’s body.
Who would go around checking the wombs of roaming undead mothers? Or poking around corpses lying in the streets?
Anyone who did that would be ntally beyond help—deranged, perverted, or just plain suicidal.
The child... no, the thing... crawled weakly, limbs trembling as if every movent cost him precious energy. But his tiny, cloudy eyes—those awful, milky eyes—were full of sothing sharp.
Sothing aware.
Sothing hungry.
Liz was still cursing under her breath, trembling violently, almost vibrating in place. Her voice cracked with fear, hysteria, and sothing feverishly bright—like she was exhilarated by her own terrifying idea.
Honestly... my dear Liz...
You looked like a deranged, sneaky little murderer.
Her entire deanor frightened more than the zombie child itself. Her face twisted with emotions that changed every second—anger, fear, desperation, sothing like madness—all blending together into sothing unnatural.
But I couldn’t run.
I couldn’t walk away.
I couldn’t leave her alone with that thing.
If I did—if I abandoned Liz now, and considering that tiny zombie clearly had so ntal power that let him control her—then the next step would be obvious, horrifyingly obvious.
He would force her to scoop out her own brain.
He would make her offer it to him like a plate of delicacies.
Because zombies loved brains.
It was instinct, survival, nature—whatever you wanted to call it.
What do I do?
What the hell do I do?
I had to snap Liz out of it, even just a little.
Even just enough for us to move.
For us to escape.
At the very least, we needed to get out of this store alive.
Then Cassel, Henry, and the others could handle the zombie infant outside. They were strong. Experienced. Capable.
Just thinking of Cassel cald my breath a little.
But inside this store—dark, narrow, abandoned—Liz and I were completely alone.
"Liz, look at ," I said, forcing my voice to stay steady. "Focus your thoughts. Don’t let that power control you. This isn’t you."
"I don’t want to!" Liz scread.
Her voice echoed across the empty store, bouncing off broken shelves and dusty walls.
But she didn’t move. Not really. She stayed rooted to the spot like she was nailed to the floor, her body trembling like a leaf caught in a hurricane.
Even though she kept muttering—over and over again—about wanting to kill ...
She never actually attacked.
It was so clear she was fighting herself. Fighting sothing inside her mind that gnawed and scraped and whispered.
But she was still feral.
Still dangerous.
Still drenched in hatred that wasn’t entirely hers.
"I don’t want to calm down!" she shouted, tears streaking her face. "I don’t want to stand here and watch anymore! Do you know how much it hurts? Every ti—every single ti I try to get close to Henry, he moves away!"
Her short, honey-brown hair stuck to her cheeks, wet and ssy.
Her lips trembled violently.
"I’ve been in love with him for two years," she sobbed, "and I still couldn’t make his cold heart beat for !"
Her tears weren’t delicate—not soft, not gentle.
They were raw.
Broken.
Ugly.
She looked pathetic.
She looked like a ghost pulled right out of a horror film, her face twisted with emotions that flickered and snapped every second.
"But what about you?" Liz’s voice cracked with jealousy so sharp it almost felt like a physical blade. "You joined us less than two weeks ago—why does Henry circle around you? Why does he only look at you? Why does he only care about you?"
She was exaggerating—completely.
What eyes of hers saw Henry caring about ?
All he did was bother , annoy , push my buttons for his entertainnt.
Henry didn’t care for anyone.
He played with people.
That’s what he did.
Still... this was not the ti to think about Henry or his questionable sense of humor.
I had far more imdiate problems.
The zombie child, for one.
He clearly had no intention of harming directly—maybe he couldn’t even perceive properly. But his control over Liz gave him a new awareness, a new perception... and that perception decided sothing speedy:
I was the enemy.
Or worse.
I was food.
How did I know?
Because even while barely crawling forward, the look he gave —God, that look—was freezing.
Direct.
Unblinking.
Hungry.
"K-kill..." Liz whispered, voice jagged and glitchy. "K-kill her..."
She repeated the words like an old, broken radio with static buzzing through every syllable.
Her eyes were empty.
Completely empty.
Her skin turned pale.
Her breathing beca chanical.
Her movents stiffened.
She had beco a puppet.
There were no emotions left on her face—just hollow obedience.
In the end, Liz failed to overco the zombie’s control.
Or perhaps...
Perhaps her own negative emotions made it easier for him.
Perhaps she willingly slipped into the darkness he offered.
Liz... what did you do to yourself?
I thought I had ti.
I thought I could help her.
I thought—
I was wrong.
Liz stepped toward .
Slow.
Steady.
Unavoidable.
She lifted her hand, and a fireball—large, burning, deadly—ford in her palm. It grew bigger, pulsing with horrifying heat.
Shit.
Just like that, the situation shifted.
I wasn’t worried about leaving Liz alone anymore.
Because I had beco the target.
If I didn’t move—if I didn’t run right now—I would beco the world’s first human roasted by Liz’s fire.
No.
No way.
That was not going to be my ending.
"HELP EE!"
The scream tore itself out of my throat.
Run.
Move.
SURVIVE.
I still didn’t want to die—not now, not after finally eting my favorite villain, not after finding people who felt like ho.
Not after finding sothing like happiness in this ruined world.
I ran. Or tried to.
My foot caught on clutter—random junk scattered across the store floor.
I tripped.
I fell.
My palms hit the ground hard.
And in that exact second, a fireball blasted the door beside .
A deafening crack exploded through the room.
Heat washed over , scorching the air.
My fingertips froze.
Cold seeped straight into my bones.
If I hadn’t fallen—if I had stood there for one more heartbeat—
That fire would’ve hit .
To be honest...
This was the first ti I had ever felt fear so deep it strangled .
Before this, even when the world was collapsing, even when zombies surrounded us...
Cassel had always been there.
With him, I felt untouchable.
Protected.
Safe.
With him around, fear never reached completely—because deep down, I always believed he would save .
He always did.
I slid backward on the cold, sticky floor—sticky with blood, dirt, and things I didn’t want to identify.
My hands slipped.
My legs ached.
Sothing warm trickled down my skin.
I looked down—blood.
But my mind was numb.
I couldn’t feel pain.
I couldn’t feel anything.
It was like my body had stopped belonging to .
Liz’s empty expression lood closer.
The fire in her hand flickered, hungry.
I wanted to run.
I desperately, wildly wanted to run.
But I couldn’t move.
Move.
Move.
MOVE.
You have to escape.
MOVE!
Why—
Why couldn’t I move?
Liz’s figure blurred in my vision.
And then sothing inside cracked.
Her approaching form overlapped with the mory of my little brother pushing back...
That day.
That day I forced myself to forget.
Because it was my worst fear.
Because rembering felt like dying all over again.
The cold started at my toes.
Crawling upward.
Slow.
Devouring everything.
Then the suffocation—the horrible, slow suffocation.
The fading breath.
The draining of blood.
The weakening heartbeat.
And then...
The pull.
The feeling of your soul being dragged out of your body—slowly, painfully—
The sensation of the thread snapping.
The thread of life.
Tears slipped down my cheeks, hot and trembling.
My lips quivered, opening and closing uselessly.
No sound ca out.
Nothing.
Until one tiny, broken whisper escaped—fragile and cracked, like it had traveled from the deepest part of my soul.
"Ca...e... save ."
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