He advanced in small steps.
"I'm here. Don't be afraid."
The man against the wall did not answer. The murmurs had fallen silent, as if the mere presence of another voice had soothed them. Raven continued forward, his hand slightly outstretched before him, palm open.
At five meters, he stopped.
His body had obeyed an instinct older than reason. Something was wrong. The air itself seemed denser, harder to breathe.
Then the silhouette moved.
The head swiveled abruptly on the neck—a mechanical, jerky motion, at an angle that defied normal anatomy. The face entered the flickering beam of the streetlamp.
Raven stepped back.
What he was seeing made no sense. The flesh of the face was in an advanced state of decay. The skin, where it remained, had taken on a grayish hue and shrunk back against the bone. The eyes were merely two empty sockets oozing something dark. A stench of putrefaction reached him, acrid and nauseating.
A zombie.
The word imposed itself with terrifying clarity. The creature straightened up with jerky movements, then lunged.
It was upon him in a fraction of a second. Skeletal arms extended, bony fingers with blackened nails gripped his shoulders, and the dead weight of the thing nearly slammed him to the ground. The smell was suffocating. The jaw snapped open and shut with dry clicks, seeking to bite.
Raven regained his senses.
He drove his palms into the creature's chest, feeling the abnormal texture of dead flesh beneath his fingers. Muscles straining, he pushed with all his might to keep a distance between his face and the zombie's. But the thing possessed extraordinary strength. It was gaining ground inch by inch.
By instinct, he bent his leg and kicked his foot into the creature's lower abdomen.
The zombie was hurled backward, its limbs flailing weakly, before crashing to the ground with the sound of breaking bones.
Raven turned and ran.
Behind him, he almost immediately heard the scraping of a body rising again, then footsteps—fast, far too fast for a body in that condition. The creature was gaining ground. Without his physical training and the spiritual liquid still in his veins, he would already be down.
His gaze swept the alley.
An iron bar lay against the wall.
He rushed for it. His hand closed around the cold metal—about a meter long, two centimeters thick, slightly rusted but perfectly rigid. He pivoted just in time.
The zombie was coming at him, arms outstretched, jaw gaping.
Raven swung and struck the head.
He had never fought in his previous life. Nicolas Bar had been a doctor, not a soldier. But he had watched hundreds of horror movies. He knew where to hit. Always the head. Always.
The first blow made the creature stagger.
He gave it no time to recover. The bar rose and fell. Again. And again. A steady, mechanical back-and-forth motion, fueled by adrenaline and something akin to cold fear.
The final blow met less resistance. A crack deeper than the others. The gaunt figure slowly toppled backward and collapsed onto the ground with a dull thud.
It moved no more.
Raven sat down on the ground.
His legs would no longer carry him. All the tension of the fight released at once, leaving him empty, the iron bar still clutched in his right hand. His breathing was ragged, jerky. He stared at the body stretched out before him.
He had killed before, in both of his lives—not in the same way, but he had killed. Apart from a slight unease that faded almost as quickly as it had appeared, he felt nothing else.
He looked up.
Before him, suspended in the air of the dark alley, a blue interface had appeared.
Raven blinked. It did not disappear. A luminous rectangle, perfectly sharp, vibrating slightly like a surface of water lit from below. Empty for now—no text, no symbols. Just that motionless presence waiting.
Something had just changed.