I stood alone on the cracked road, wiping black blood from my dagger.

  Corpses circled me—mutated cats, dogs, things that had once been pigeons. The fog clung to their fur like wet ash. Flake gnawed a parasite from a cat's skull, tail flicking with satisfaction.

  A shape burst from the haze—dog-sized, charcoal hide, ribs showing through stretched skin.

  I sidestepped, katana flashing. The body split, hit the ground in two perfect halves.

  It twitched. Threads of black tissue lashed out, sewing flesh back together. Claws lengthened. Jaw unhinged until it scraped the asphalt.

  I remembered Shahzad's words: "They don't die unless you break the driver, not the steering wheel."

  I rotated the shorter dagger in my left hand—the one I had never unsheathed since the forge.

  One breath.

  I rushed, slid under a swipe, and drove the blade up through the lower jaw and into the brain-stem.

  The threads withered. The corpse stayed in two pieces.

  I exhaled.

  Zam-Zam coating, I realised. This edge still carries the blessing.

  The other blade had been scrubbed clean by over-use; its holiness had evaporated with the blood.

  I glanced at the almost-empty flask.

  "The most important thing is ending," I murmured, corking it.

  The fog ahead thinned; pale sunlight painted broken storefronts. I swapped weapons, slid the holy dagger home, and advanced.

  A mutated hawk dived, talons like sickles. I split its breast-bone mid-air, felt the tip nick my index finger.

  "Still need practice," I muttered, sucking the drop of blood away.

  The building groaned. A vending machine toppled. I threw up both arms, caught six hundred pounds of metal and plastic. My boot snagged in loose cables—immobile.

  Flake sat, tail curled, watching.

  "What the hell, instructor?" I growled, struggling for an hour until the wires slackened. I collapsed beside the cat, lightly bopping his head. "Zero help. Shame."

  Rest. Breathe. Stand.

  Staircase down. Basement dark.

  Two shadows rushed—pipes swinging. I parried, blades sparking.

  "Name!" I barked.

  Silence. Then a blade pressed to my throat.

  "Mask off," a cracked voice said. "Prove you're not wearing one."

  I removed it slowly. Fourteen-year-old face. Purple bruise from Chapter 7. Fresh scab from my father's wiper.

  The man—Jack, bearded, eyes dulled by loss—saw the scars. Lowered his blade.

  "You're just a kid."

  "No." I sheathed my mask. "I'm just not dead yet."

  They dragged me before their fire. A dozen survivors stared at the white mask, the blood-stiff cloth, the silhouette.

  Jack told their story: no holy water, only Bismillah and brute force. Their leader dead to a scythe-armed humanoid. The rest hiding in this mart, waiting for rescue that would never come.

  I listened, calculating.

  I didn't ask their names. I didn't ask who mourned. I counted them: twelve bodies, maybe six useful in a fight.

  "I'm heading to that mart," I said.

  Jack blocked the exit. "Kid, you die there."

  "Beat me, I'll turn back."

  Pipe versus twin daggers. I ducked, rolled, came up behind Jack, steel kissing his throat.

  "You're agile," Jack wheezed. "We'll help."

  The super-mart. Aisles of dust and silence. They looted in pairs—quiet, quick.

  A scream.

  "It's HERE!"

  I vaulted a shelf, Zam-Zam dagger already sailing. It missed.

  I threw a plain dagger instead—distraction—slid beneath the creature, katana dragging sparks across tiles.

  Spikes erupted from its back. One caught my left thigh, drove through, pinned me to the tile.

  I didn't scream.

  Neck twisted ninety degrees. Katana lodged. Blood pooling in my boot, hot and wrong.

  One blade left. The holy one.

  I ducked behind shelving, poured the last Zam-Zam along the edge.

  Whispered: "Bismillah."

  Not to God. To the water. To the system.

  Words are code. Code doesn't care who wrote it.

  The shelf exploded inward. Spikes everywhere.

  I leapt back, throat slashed open, and charged anyway—cutting through bone-spires, flinging water. Smoke rose where droplets touched black flesh. The humanoid shrieked, berserk, blind.

  I scaled a wall-pipe, vaulted, flipped above the flailing scythes, and brought the blessed katana down in a perfect vertical line—head splitting to the sternum.

  I landed in a crouch.

  Raised the blade.

  Not for them. For the fog. For whatever watched.

  See me. Come test me.

  Then the world tilted, colour draining to grey.

  I fell.

  Darkness.

  Silence.

  Invitation—and the price of it—written in blood on the supermarket floor.

  Later—how much later, I didn't know—I woke to firelight and the smell of iron.

  My thigh burned. I reached down, felt bandages stiff with dried blood.

  Jack sat nearby, whittling wood. "Spike's out. You cut it yourself. Don't remember?"

  I didn't.

  "Screamed into your mask," he said. "So no one heard. Including you."

  I sat up. The holy dagger lay beside me, cleaned. The wound had closed to raw pink, still weeping. Fast, but not instant. The water giveth, the water taketh.

  "You didn't check if we were safe," Jack said quietly. "You checked if we were useful."

  I said nothing.

  I checked my blades. Counted my spikes. Drank water that tasted of copper and stone.

  "You're not human," Jack said. "You're protocol."

  I looked at him. At the survivors. At Flake, grooming himself by the fire, indifferent to my waking.

  Even loyalty has limits.

  The fog waited outside.

  Systems don't rest.