The voice was faint. A rasping whisper, frayed with pain and something darker.
"Help… please…"
Kael froze mid-step, his bloody notepad still dangling from his hand. Clara tightened her grip on his arm, her wide eyes sweeping the ruined street. Fires licked the gutted remains of a nearby sedan, its metal frame buckling in the heat. Ash drifted like snow across the cracked pavement, and beyond the smoke, a figure staggered into view.
It was a woman.
She wasn’t like the others. Her skin wasn’t yet corpse-gray, her eyes still had some faint trace of clarity beneath the fever-gloss. But veins of black spiderwebbed up her neck, pulsing faintly as if alive. Her clothes were torn, blood crusting her side where the bite had sunk deep.
Kael’s jaw tightened. He could read it instantly: half-infe
