I knew Aurora was good with a sword. She was a kendo martial artist, after all. She had trophies, medals, the whole deal. I'd seen her compete once, the way she moved with such effortless precision, each strike calculated and controlled. The judges had called her a prodigy. Other competitors had whispered about her with equal parts admiration and envy.

  But this?

  This wasn't humanly possible.

  She had cut apart those things. Not with technique, not with skill honed over years of training, but with sheer, unstoppable force. These zombies—these things—weren't just your shambling horror-movie fodder. They were fast. Strong. Their movements were erratic, unpredictable, like puppets with half-broken strings, twitching and lunging with something far more dangerous than mindless hunger. They moved like predators, silver eyes tracking our movements with a terrible intelligence that shouldn't exist in the dead.

  And she had butchered them.

  The silver sword in her hand had sung through the air, leaving only dismembered limbs and gory smears in its wake. With each swing, it left a trail of ethereal light, like the afterimage of a sparkler on a summer night. The sound it made was otherworldly—a high, crystalline note that vibrated in my chest and set my teeth on edge. It had carved through them like a blade through mist, like they were made of something lesser, something that had no right to stand before her. One strike had cleaved through three of them at once, their bodies separating along impossibly clean lines, the cuts cauterized by that strange silver energy that pulsed from the blade.

  Blood spattered across her face in a fine mist, droplets that caught the flickering fluorescent lights like macabre diamonds. It mixed with sweat, trailing down her cheek in thin rivulets of diluted crimson. And yet, even covered in gore, she looked almost transcendent—a warrior goddess descended from some lunar pantheon, dealing judgment with each swing of her impossible weapon.

  And yet—

  Aurora was breathing hard.

  Her chest rose and fell in quick, uneven bursts, each exhale carrying a small, almost imperceptible whimper. There was a faint tremor in her grip, the knuckles white against the hilt of her sword. For all that power, for all the ease with which she had cut them down, it had taken something out of her. Her eyes, normally such a deep, steady blue, were wide with a mixture of awe and horror at what she had just done.

  Of course. She had limits.

  That was all I needed to know.

  ' can analyze the system later,' I thought, my mind racing. The academic in me wanted to understand every facet of this new reality—the mechanics, the rules, the implications. But survival trumped curiosity. 'We need to get out of here now.'

  Aurora grabbed my wrist and pulled me forward, her grip iron-tight. I could feel her pulse hammering against my skin, racing in perfect counterpoint to my own frantic heartbeat. She moved like a force of nature, carving a path through the chaos, her sword still glowing as it tore through flesh and bone like they were paper. Even with one hand, she wielded it like a reaper. The blade seemed to anticipate her thoughts, moving almost independently, catching light that shouldn't exist in the dim corridor.

  Behind us, more of them poured through the doorway—former students with silver eyes and porcelain-cracked skin, hungry for whatever life essence still flowed through our veins. The sounds they made weren't quite human anymore—not quite growls, not quite screams, but something in between that scraped against the primitive part of my brain and triggered every flight response evolution had ever gifted us.

  But I noticed it.

  Her fingers, just slightly—shaking.

  Not from fear. Not yet. She was still in the moment, still running on the raw adrenaline of battle, pupils dilated, breathing controlled despite its rapidity. But her body knew what her mind hadn't caught up to yet—this wasn't just another fight. This wasn't sparring in a controlled dojo with padded floors and referees and the comforting knowledge that the worst injury might be a bruise or a sprained wrist. This was real.

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  And she was killing people.

  People we had sat beside in lectures just this morning. People who had dreams and families and futures, all erased by whatever cosmic horror had descended upon us. The silver glow in their eyes marked them as something other, something infected or transformed, but the faces were still recognizably human. Dr. Martinez from the Physics department. Jenny from the coffee cart. The quiet guy who always sat three rows back and wore band t-shirts.

  I squeezed her hand, hard. Just enough to ground her. Just enough to remind her she wasn't alone in this nightmare, this surreal distortion of reality that had swallowed our ordinary lives whole. Just enough to say without words: I see you. I know what this is costing you. Keep going anyway.

  She didn't say anything. But her grip tightened in return, a silent acknowledgment of the unspoken message, of the bond forged in blood and terror that now connected us more surely than years of casual acquaintance ever had.

  We pushed through the last wave of bodies, slipping past clawing fingers and bloodstained desks, the air thick with the copper-penny smell of spilled blood and the sharp, electric scent of whatever energy now animated these former humans. A hand snatched at my jacket—I felt fabric tear, felt nails scrape against my back, hot and sharp. Aurora pivoted, her sword flashing in a silver arc that separated the hand from its owner. I didn't look back to see who it had been.

  Until—finally—we reached the emergency exit. The heavy metal door with its glowing red sign looked like salvation itself. I slammed my shoulder against the push bar, the impact jarring through my bones. The door flung open under our combined weight, the metal slamming against the wall with a loud clang that echoed down the stairwell like a gunshot.

  Aurora didn't hesitate. She followed as I took the lead, bolting down the stairs two at a time, my sneakers slipping on the concrete, my hand gripping the railing so hard the metal bit into my palm. My lungs burned, each breath a desperate gasp. Behind us, the door slammed shut again, cutting off the sounds of pursuit—at least for the moment.

  "Basement," I panted, forcing my brain to work through the panic, through the white noise of terror that threatened to drown all rational thought. "Nobody should be there. No people, no danger."

  Aurora didn't argue. She just ran. Blood had dried on her face in dark streaks, her ponytail half-undone, dark strands plastered to her sweat-soaked neck. Even disheveled, even terrified, there was something leonine about her movements—controlled power, banked strength.

  The stairwell was eerily empty, the sounds of carnage muffled behind us as we moved lower and lower, fluorescent lights flickering overhead, casting jagged shadows that seemed to reach for us with each step. The further we went, the colder the air became, raising goosebumps on my skin and carrying the musty scent of rarely-disturbed spaces. The distant hum of the building's generators grew louder, filling the silence where screams had been just minutes before, a mechanical drone that was somehow both reassuring and unnerving in its normalcy.

  Then—a door. Heavy, industrial, with a small wire-reinforced window. The kind of institutional portal found in buildings everywhere, suddenly transformed into the threshold between life and death.

  I shoved it open, hinges protesting with a metallic shriek that made us both flinch.

  Dark. Empty. Safe.

  We staggered inside, the afterimages of the bright stairwell temporarily blinding me in the gloom. My hand found a switch, flicking it upward. A single bulb sputtered to life, casting sickly yellow light over what appeared to be a maintenance room—concrete walls, pipes running along the ceiling, a workbench, tools hanging from a pegboard. We slammed the door shut behind us, the solid thunk of metal against frame like the final note of a funeral dirge.

  I fumbled with the lock—a simple deadbolt that seemed laughably inadequate against the nightmare upstairs, but better than nothing. The click as it engaged was the most satisfying sound I'd heard all day.

  The moment we secured the door, it was like gravity doubled.

  Aurora dropped first, knees hitting the floor with a sound that made me wince, as she braced herself against it, fingerprints of blood leaving smudged marks on the gray concrete. I collapsed right after, my back hitting the cold tile as my lungs burned, each breath a desperate effort to replace the oxygen debt my body had accumulated during our flight.

  We sat there for a moment, just breathing. The sound filled the small room—harsh, ragged gasps that gradually slowed as our bodies remembered that survival, at least for now, was possible. Dust motes danced in the beam of the single light bulb, undisturbed by the apocalypse happening above our heads.

  Aurora was the first to break the silence.

  "What the fuck was that?" she whispered, her voice raw, shaking, barely audible over the distant hum of machinery. The profanity sounded strange coming from her usually measured speech, like a crack in a perfect facade.

  I turned my head, just in time to see her sword fade.

  It didn't clatter to the ground. It didn't vanish in a shimmer of light like some RPG animation with carefully rendered special effects. It just ceased to be, dissolving into silver mist that momentarily illuminated her still-outstretched hand before dispersing into the stale basement air, as if it had never existed in the first place.

  "I don't know," I admitted, the words inadequate even as they left my mouth. My throat felt raw, scraped by screams I didn't remember uttering.

  And then I noticed.

  Her shoulders.

  They were trembling.