"Less than ten days since the dam and now a fucking zombie horde, huh?"

Damon stared at the array of monitors flickering before him, his jaw tight enough to crack teeth.

He sneered. The investigation into rifts kept stalling because the rifts had been industrialized. Too much resource and benefit could be harvested from the rifts, connecting corrupted worlds together.

So far, they could still hold the corruption back. But what if one day...

The command control had been thrown together in under two hours. It was what happened when you gave competent people unlimited funding and a genuine apocalypse to work with.

The main tent was a military-grade mobile operations center, its canvas walls lined with soundproofing material and rigged with enough cabling to make an electrician weep.

Three rows of workstations dominated the interior, each station manned by personnel in headsets, their faces illuminated by the cold glow of monitors displaying real-time tactical overlays.

A massive central screen had been mounted on the far wall, split into a dozen feeds, drone footage, satellite imagery, thermal scans, communication logs and Damon was scanning it all.

After deep consideration and days of meetings, he had decided to grade the dam disaster an S-rank calamity. But this was different. Any kind of undead rift outbreak was an automatic S-rank, no deliberation required.

Corruption wasn’t built the same everywhere. The infestation adapted.

He knew the theory.

Monsters were easier to corrupt because they already had the hunger for ruin and disaster baked into their nature. The corruption didn’t have to work very hard. It just had to point them in the right direction and watch them go.

But humans were trickier.

Normal humans with no mental or physical training could be infected by corruption more easily, yes. Even human corpses had some resistance, depending on how long they had been dead or on the conditions of their burial.

But once a human corpse marinated in corruption for long enough, it could rise.

And the corruption that had learned how to infest a human corpse, adapted and evolved, would find it far easier to corrupt living humans compared to normal corruption.

It learned.

It could even change living humans into zombies after the humans die from corruption.

That was why human undead outbreaks were automatic S-rank. Because they converted people.

Damon uncrossed his arms and stepped forward.

"Check on the surrounding wall of hunters around the quarantine zone. Make sure there’s no gaps as per usual protocol."

A communications officer nodded and began relaying orders, her voice a rapid-fire murmur into her headset.

"The line should start pushing inward toward both rifts now," Damon continued, pointing at the central map, where two angry red markers pulsed.

"Twin rifts, same signature as the dam... but this time, both actually active..." he muttered.

He shook his head. "No matter. We’ve seen this before."

The dam was a surprise. This one, he actually already had enough experience for.

He turned to another station.

"Update me on civilian evacuation. Drones, I want exact counts on how many zombies and survivors. I want you to give me how many unknowns. Five minutes."

The drone operators acknowledged, their fingers flying across their controls. On the central monitor, a dozen drone feeds shifted and refocused, thermal signatures blooming in shades of orange and red against the cold blue of the rural landscape.

"Local beasts are already scouting," an officer reported. "Wereowls have air coverage. Weredoves are doing precision sweeps along the treeline. We have eyes everywhere, sir."

"Good." Damon nodded, his gaze sweeping across the feeds. "Keep them there. We rotate the human hunters to the back line if any start showing symptoms."

On land, the beasts moved in teams. Werebears took the heavy front, roaring across the fields as they cleared paths through the shambling hordes.

Werewolves flanked in packs of six, claws tearing through corrupted flesh, while Weredoves circled above, relaying positions back to the command center in real time.

They moved faster than they had at the dam. That disaster had been unpredictable, but this was familiar. There were perfected procedures, and every beast clan and hunter had trained for undead outbreaks, knowing the protocols by heart.

The corruption infestation had a pattern, and patterns could be countered.

Then one of the drone operators spoke up.

"Sir, I’ve got three civilians on the rural road. One man, two women. They’re... not evacuating."

Damon’s eyes flicked to the feed. The drone camera zoomed in, the image resolving into three figures walking along the dark road.

The man was tall, broad-shouldered, clutching a shovel and cowering behind one of the women. The woman in front was blonde, impossibly beautiful, and appeared to be dragging the man forward by sheer force of will, making sure he didn’t fall behind.

The other woman was—

Eh?

"WHY IS THE LESSER GODDESS IN A DANGER ZONE AGAIN?!"

***

Almost 9 PM, and the second hand of the clock ticked loudly, filling the silence of the apartment.

Three men sat on the rug around the living room table, their phones placed before them like offerings at an altar. The group chat sat open on all three devices, the last message still Cecilia’s thumbs-up emoji and her promise, "I’m with friends. Will go home after finishing dinner."

That had been a while ago.

Eastiel broke the silence first. "Hmm. Should we call her, after all?"

"I want to call her so bad," Arkai groaned, dragging a hand down his face. "But we need to show her that we trust her and won’t overreact..."

"Ever since she said we’re being all over her..." Oathran crossed his arms, his biceps flexing with the tension he was trying very hard not to show. "It’s been rough trying to balance it."

A hesitating pause...

"But if she feels suffocated..." Arkai sounded more uncertain.

"We shouldn’t," Eastiel said.

His brothers turned to him.

"After the dam..." Eastiel’s gaze was fixed on his phone, his expression unreadable. "I kinda feel like she’s actually stronger than us."

Arkai inhaled sharply through his teeth, his hand pressing against his chest as though he’d been physically struck. Oathran made a low, wounded sound in the back of his throat, his arms uncrossing and recrossing in restless agitation.

It was true. They all knew it was true. That didn’t make it hurt less.

A beat of wounded masculine silence.

"Eastiel," Oathran said, his voice recovering some of its command, "that live location app... she agreed to install it, right?"

"At least we should see the news and compare her location," Arkai said, already lunging for the TV remote like it was a lifeline. "Just to be safe. Just to make sure nothing happens around her. That’s not overprotective. That’s just... responsible."

"On it," Eastiel said, grabbing his phone and swiping to the location app.

Arkai’s phone rang. He glanced at the screen, and it was Damon. He tossed the remote to Oathran, who caught it without looking, his eyes already fixed on the TV, and snatched up his own phone.

"Arkai here—"

Oathran hit the power button. The TV screen flickered to life, the news channel already tuned in from earlier.

Eastiel’s location app loaded. A red circle pulsed on the map.

"BREAKING NEWS—UNDEAD RIFT OPENED NEAR—"

Damon’s voice exploded through Arkai’s speaker—

"ARKAI! THE GODDE—"

"—RIFTS DETECTED ALONG THE RURAL ROAD—"

BEEP—BEEEP—BEEEEP—DANGER ZONE! DANGE—

The three men stared at their respective screens. The TV showed a map with red markers exactly where the location app was pulsing. Damon was still shouting through Arkai’s phone. The danger alert was still screaming from Eastiel’s device.

They looked at each other.

The silence lasted exactly half a second.

"We’re going," Arkai said, already on his feet.

"Not overreacting," Oathran agreed, grabbing his coat.

"Just... being supportive," Eastiel added, snatching the keys.

The door slammed behind them, and from the floor-to-ceiling window, a white dragon could be seen flying away in the sky with two men sitting on its back.