Weapon System in Zombie Apocalypse-Chapter 125: A Prophet in Ashes

The fire crackled beside him.

Elias Montano sat alone on the high balcony of the Crimson Cathedral, watching smoke drift lazily across the night sky. The air was still, heavy with the stench of old blood and burnt wood. Below, the courtyard was quiet. The faithful had long since gone to sleep. Even the Red Choir's bells had stopped their endless ringing.

This was his favorite time.

Not because it was peaceful—but because it reminded him of the world before.

Before the flames.

Before the screams.

Before the lie of salvation was finally stripped away.

Elias leaned forward in his chair, staring down at his hands. Scarred knuckles. Calloused palms. Lines of age and dirt that never quite washed away. He didn't look like a prophet. He didn't feel like one either.

But they believed in him.

And that was enough.

He was still Father Elias back then.

Not the "High Father." Not the Prophet. Just a weary priest stationed at a run-down parish in Ilocos Norte, barely keeping the roof from collapsing. Sunday attendance had dropped to ten, maybe eleven if the old woman who walked with a cane made it on time. Most of his flock had either moved to the city, lost their faith, or simply stopped caring.

And then the sickness came.

It started with the radio. A warning. Then TV stations went dark. Sirens. Curfews. Panic. The military arrived in trucks, set up checkpoints and tents, said they would "protect the civilians."

For a while, they did.

Then the infected got in.

He remembered the sound of it all—gunfire, screams, the roar of helicopters above. But most of all, he remembered the silence afterward.

It lasted two days.

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He hid inside the church, boarded the doors with pews, and waited for someone to come back. Anyone.

They never did.

"I should've died there," Elias whispered to himself, the flames flickering in his tired eyes.

But he didn't.

What came instead were the survivors.

Half a dozen at first—people who had escaped the camp on foot, broken, bleeding, terrified. A mother carrying a child who had stopped breathing. A wounded man missing three fingers. A teenager who hadn't spoken a word since the night of the massacre.

They gathered at the church. Because it was the only place left standing. Because it was the only place that still had walls. And for a time, Elias tried to care for them. Feed them. Bandage wounds. Say prayers.

But faith couldn't stop infection.

The child turned first.

And Elias made the mistake of hesitating.

By the time he acted, the wounded man was dead. The mother was screaming. The blood had already soaked into the stone floor of the chapel.

That was the night something in him broke.

Elias rose from his chair now and walked slowly across the balcony. He looked out across the sleeping ruins of Santa Candelaria, his new congregation resting below. Fires burned in neat circles. Scourged chained near the walls howled into the night air.

He felt nothing.

Not guilt. Not sadness.

Only clarity.

It had come to him during the second week, when the food ran out and only three survivors remained. He'd wandered into the forest, thinking of ending it all. A quiet death. Just lie down and let it happen.

But then he saw it.

A young infected girl, no more than seven, standing in the middle of the trail. Her eyes were pale. Her mouth bloody. But she didn't attack.

She stared at him.

And he stared back.

For what felt like forever.

Then she turned and walked away into the trees.

She spared him.

That was the moment Elias stopped seeing the undead as monsters.

He started seeing them as messengers.

He preached his first sermon to five people.

Not from scripture. Not from the Bible.

But from pain.

He told them that the old world had failed because it was arrogant. Because it put its faith in technology and money and government. Because it saw sickness as a problem to be solved—not a message to be heard.

He told them that the dead were not cursed.

They were chosen.

That God had not forsaken them—he was testing them. Burning the world clean so something better could be born from the ashes.

The survivors listened.

One man cried.

Another asked for forgiveness for everything he'd done before.

They knelt.

And that was when the Crimson Dawn was born.

"You see," Elias whispered, gripping the railing, "they didn't want a leader."

"They wanted a reason."

And he gave it to them.

Over the months, their numbers grew.

Survivors wandered in from the wilderness. Some came by accident. Some came because they'd heard the stories—a priest who wasn't afraid of the infected. A village where people didn't hide behind walls, but walked among the dead without fear.

Elias welcomed them.

But not all were believers.

Some resisted.

Some tried to flee.

Some refused to accept the truth.

Those became the first cleansings.

And when the rest watched the infected tear into their doubting kin—and then saw those same bodies rise again—they began to understand.

The virus wasn't a punishment.

It was a baptism.

Elias had never been a violent man.

But in this new world, mercy had no place.

People needed purpose.

They needed order.

And in a world stripped of all logic and law, there was only one thing that made sense: faith in transformation.

He turned back from the balcony and stepped into the cathedral. The altar was dark now, the candles burned low.

Sister Teresa—the first Ascended One—remained chained near the altar, gently rocking.

She'd been a nurse once. Tried to save a wounded man who was already turning. When she got bit, she begged Elias not to kill her. Said she wanted to "see what comes next."

So he let her.

Now she was a symbol.

A warning.

A promise.

Elias knelt beside her and touched her cold forehead.

"They fear you, Sister," he murmured. "But they will learn."

He stood, walked slowly to the center of the chapel, and looked up at the half-shattered cross above.

"Soon," he whispered.

"Soon the fire will spread beyond these walls."

He had no intention of simply surviving.

No plan to hole up in the ruins and wait for the world to fix itself.

Because the world was already fixed.

It just didn't know it yet.