I ran.
Not like a human runs—with burning lungs and aching muscles and the fear of exhaustion. I ran like something between life and death, my feet barely touching the corrupted ground as fifteen thousand minds fed me their strength.
The entity's realm pressed down on reality itself. The sky had torn completely now—a wound in the fabric of existence stretching from horizon to horizon. Through it, I could see shapes that defied sanity. Eyes without faces. Mouths without bodies. Things that existed in angles that shouldn't be possible.
VESSEL, the entity's voice thundered. YOU RUN TOWARD YOUR DEATH.
I didn't answer.
Answering would cost time.
And time was the one thing I didn't have.
------------------------------
Alpha Team engaged three miles from the facility.
I felt it through Vanguard's eyes—Drake's fire erupting like a volcano against the entity's servants, Sarah flickering in and out of visibility as she guided Marcus toward weak points, a dozen other awakened I'd barely had time to learn the names of throwing themselves at creatures that shouldn't exist.
"Contact!" Rachel's voice crackled through the radio Morgan's people had distributed. "Eastern flank, multiple hostiles. Tier 2 equivalents. Maybe higher."
"Engaging," Drake replied. His mental signature blazed with power and barely-contained fury. "Keep them off Wei. That's the only thing that matters."
The entity's servants poured from the corrupted zone like a tide of nightmares. Not zombies—these had never been human. They were fragments of the entity itself, pieces of its infinite form given temporary substance in our reality. Some crawled on too many legs. Some floated without visible means. Some were just wrong in ways that made my inherited memories flinch.
My zombie army crashed into them.
Fifteen thousand minds moved as one. Vanguard led from the front, his enhanced body tearing through servants with brutal efficiency. Ursa flanked wide, his massive form bowling over creatures three times his size. The mutants—faster and smarter than regular zombies—targeted weak points with predatory precision.
Good, the first Zombie King whispered. But don't watch. Move. The distraction won't last forever.
I pushed harder.
------------------------------
Two miles from the facility.
The corruption intensified. Trees had become something else entirely—twisted amalgamations of wood and flesh that reached for me with branch-fingers dripping black ichor. The ground pulsed like living tissue beneath my feet.
A servant rose from the earth directly in my path.
It was massive—twenty feet tall, vaguely humanoid, with arms that split into dozens of grasping tendrils. Entity-light burned where its eyes should have been.
STOP, its voice echoed with the entity's power. THIS DEFIANCE ENDS—
I didn't slow down.
My will slammed into the servant like a battering ram. The entity's protection cracked. Shattered. The creature's borrowed consciousness evaporated as my power flooded into the void where its mind had been.
It collapsed, dead weight.
I jumped over its falling body and kept running.
------------------------------
"Wei, you've got incoming!"
Sarah's voice in my mind—she'd linked to my network through proximity, a trick we'd discovered during the Hive King battle.
"I see them."
A wave of smaller servants converged from multiple directions. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. The entity was focusing on me now, diverting resources from the main battle to stop my advance.
As we planned, the first Zombie King noted with satisfaction. Every servant it sends at you is one it can't send at your army.
I extended my power.
The claiming was faster now—almost instantaneous. The first Zombie King's ten thousand years of practice flowed through me like muscle memory. Three servants fell in the first second. Seven more in the next. A dozen after that.
But more kept coming.
And each claim cost energy.
Energy I needed for the anchor.
------------------------------
One mile from the facility.
The battle behind me had become apocalyptic.
Through my network, I witnessed Drake create a pillar of fire that incinerated a cluster of Tier 3 servants. Watched Sarah pull Marcus to safety an instant before something with too many teeth tore through the space he'd occupied. Felt Vanguard take a wound that would have killed any human but only staggered his enhanced form.
Alpha team is holding, Rachel reported. Barely. They're throwing everything at us.
Good, I sent back. That means they're not throwing it at me.
How close are you?
Almost there.
The facility loomed ahead—Morgan's research complex, now almost completely consumed by the entity's influence. The buildings had fused with organic matter. The concrete had become something that breathed. And above it all, the pit gaped open like a wound in the earth, light pouring up from depths that seemed to have no bottom.
The anchor was down there.
And so was the entity.
------------------------------
I hit the outer perimeter at full speed.
The entity's defenses activated instantly. Barriers of solidified darkness materialized in my path. Tendrils erupted from the corrupted ground. Servants that had been lying dormant surged to intercept.
I claimed them all.
The barriers shattered against my will. The tendrils withered under my power. The servants became mine in moments—then turned on their former master's other constructs.
IMPRESSIVE, the entity admitted. YOU HAVE GROWN STRONG. STRONGER THAN ANY VESSEL BEFORE YOU. BUT STRENGTH ALONE WILL NOT—
I reached the pit's edge.
And stopped.
------------------------------
The anchor was visible now.
A crystalline structure at the very bottom of the pit—massive, easily the size of a skyscraper, pulsing with otherworldly light. It wasn't just connecting the entity to our reality. It was becoming part of our reality. Growing. Spreading. Roots of crystal reaching through the earth like veins through flesh.
But that wasn't what made me stop.
Between me and the anchor stood something I hadn't expected.
A figure.
Human-shaped. Human-sized.
It turned to face me.
And I looked into my own eyes.
------------------------------
"Hello, Wei."
The voice was mine. The face was mine. Even the posture—the way the figure stood, the tilt of its head, the slight tension in its shoulders—was exactly how I held myself.
But the eyes were wrong.
Where mine had become amber and gold, this duplicate's eyes were pure darkness. Windows into the entity's infinite void.
VESSEL PRIME, the entity's voice echoed through the duplicate's mouth. MY FIRST. MY BEST. THE ONE WHO BECAME THE ZOMBIE KING AND THOUGHT HE COULD DEFY ME.
My blood went cold.
"The first Zombie King."
NO. The duplicate smiled—my smile, twisted with alien satisfaction. THE FIRST ZOMBIE KING SPLIT HIS SOUL. SCATTERED HIMSELF ACROSS TIME. BUT DID YOU THINK I WOULD SIMPLY LET HIM ESCAPE? I KEPT A PIECE. THE DARKEST PIECE. THE PART OF HIM THAT WANTED POWER MORE THAN FREEDOM.
The duplicate raised its hand.
Power gathered—familiar power. Necromantic power.
YOU FACE YOURSELF, VESSEL. THE SHADOW OF WHAT YOU WERE. THE ECHO OF WHAT YOU MIGHT BECOME.
It attacked.
------------------------------
The impact threw me back from the pit's edge.
I hit the corrupted ground hard, rolled, came up in a defensive stance. The duplicate was already moving—closing the distance with speed that matched my own, power blazing with intensity that rivaled the first Zombie King's memories.
It has the memories too, I realized. Not all of them. But enough.
More than enough, the first Zombie King's voice agreed grimly. This is the part of me I tried to destroy. The part that almost surrendered to the entity's promise of eternal power. I thought I'd eliminated it when I split my soul.
You didn't.
No. And now you face the consequences of my failure.
The duplicate's attacks came in waves. Necromantic energy, shaped into weapons I recognized from a hundred lifetimes. Shadow-blades that cut through my defenses. Death-chains that tried to bind my limbs. Commands that attempted to turn my own zombies against me.
I countered each one—but only barely.
We were evenly matched.
Maybe worse than evenly matched.
------------------------------
"Wei!"
Drake's voice, distant, strained. Through my network, I sensed his fire guttering as exhaustion took its toll.
"Alpha team is falling back! We can't hold much longer!"
GO, I sent. Retreat. Get everyone to safety.
What about you?
I'll handle this.
How?
I looked at my duplicate. At the twisted reflection of everything I might have become.
I don't know yet.
------------------------------
The duplicate circled me, its dark eyes gleaming with borrowed starlight.
YOU WILL FALL, it said. I AM EVERYTHING YOU ARE, PLUS EVERYTHING THE ENTITY HAS GIVEN ME. I HAVE NO WEAKNESS. NO DOUBT. NO LOVE TO DISTRACT ME.
"You're wrong."
AM I?
"You have one weakness."
The duplicate tilted its head—my gesture, corrupted. AND WHAT IS THAT?
I smiled.
"You're alone."
I reached through my network. Not just to my zombies—to everyone. To Vanguard and Ursa. To Drake and Sarah and Marcus. To Min-Tong, miles away, her healing light blazing as she tended the wounded. To Maya, whose silver eyes saw futures I couldn't imagine.
To Ghost, my first companion, who had reminded me to stay human.
Their strength flowed into me. Not power—purpose. The collective will of everyone who had chosen to fight beside me. Everyone who believed that the cycle could be broken. Everyone who refused to surrender to ten thousand years of inevitability.
The duplicate's expression flickered.
THAT IS NOT—
"That is exactly what I have that you never will."
I attacked.
------------------------------
The battle became something beyond description.
Two necromancers—two versions of the same soul—tearing at each other with power that had accumulated across millennia. The corrupted ground beneath us shattered. The facility's remains collapsed. The sky itself seemed to scream as our confrontation warped reality around us.
The duplicate was strong.
Stronger than anything I'd faced.
But it fought alone.
I fought with fifteen thousand minds supporting me. With friends who trusted me. With love that the entity couldn't comprehend.
And slowly, inevitably, I began to win.
------------------------------
NO, the duplicate snarled, its darkness flickering. THIS CANNOT— I AM PERFECT. I AM COMPLETE. I AM—
"You are a shadow."
I drove my will into its defenses like a spear.
"You are the part of me that chose fear over hope."
Cracks spread across its form.
"You are what I could have become if I'd let the darkness win."
The duplicate screamed—my voice, twisted with ancient rage.
THE ENTITY WILL NOT BE DENIED. EVEN IF YOU DESTROY ME, THE MANIFESTATION CONTINUES. THE ANCHOR—
"I know."
I gathered everything I had left. Every fragment of the first Zombie King's power. Every connection to every mind in my network. Every ounce of determination I'd carried across ten thousand years of failure.
"But you won't be here to see what comes next."
I struck.
------------------------------
The duplicate shattered.
Not physically—it had never been truly physical. But the consciousness inside it—the dark fragment of the first Zombie King that the entity had preserved—broke apart under my assault. Screaming. Fading. Returning to whatever void had birthed it.
WELL DONE, the entity's true voice rumbled. BUT YOU HAVE SPENT YOURSELF. YOU HAVE NOTHING LEFT. AND THE ANCHOR STILL STANDS.
I looked at the pit.
At the crystal structure pulsing with world-ending power.
At the thing that needed to be destroyed in the moment of manifestation—a moment that was happening now.
The entity was right.
I'd given everything to defeat the duplicate.
I had nothing left.
------------------------------
And then—
Wei.
Min-Tong's voice. Not through the radio. Through something deeper. Something that transcended distance and reality and all the barriers between.
I'm here. We're all here. You're not alone.
Light blazed across my awareness.
Healing light.
The Saint's light.
Power flooded into me—not necromantic, but something purer. Something that pushed back the exhaustion and the emptiness and the creeping certainty of defeat.
I wasn't full.
But I wasn't empty either.
Go, Min-Tong sent. Finish it.
I looked at the anchor.
At the moment of vulnerability.
At the choice Maya had predicted.
And I jumped.