***
(Kim Si-Hon days ago)
The further north we pushed, the more the city stopped being a city.
It didn't happen all at once— it crept in gradually, building by building, block by block, the way something takes over when nothing stops it long enough.
The vines I'd been ignoring for hours got thicker first, no longer just threading through window gaps but wrapping the entire floors in dense layered coils, pulling facades apart at the seams.
Then the roads started disappearing underneath root systems that had grown wide enough to crack the asphalt clean through and keep going.
Trees pushed up through the centers of buildings that couldn't hold them, their canopies bursting out through upper floors like the structure was just something to grow through on the way up.
And the zombies were just— gone.
Not dead. Just replaced. Different things moved through this part of the city now, and they weren't interested in us the way the horde had been.
