“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”

  — Albert Camus

  Sloane climbed up from the damp, lung-like darkness of the earth toward a sinister daylight, and with every step, she was not merely ascending a staircase but climbing the final page of reality itself.

  If the pitch-black below was a silent womb formed of concrete and fear, then what awaited above was the last dusty theater where humanity’s tragedy had been staged.

  When the safe, cold breath of the metro was left behind, the sky greeted her with a wounded purple hue, like a painter’s suicide note. The city was no longer a home; it was the vast, rusted skeleton of a civilization that had devoured itself. The wind whispered an ancient lament as it passed through torn signs and abandoned dreams.

  For an author, this was not a landscape but the bleeding wound of a story that had slipped out of control. Every collapsed building stood like a missing paragraph; every lifeless shadow like a sentence without a period. In the metro, the apocalypse had been a fear whispered in darkness. On the surface, it was a brutal and aestheticless truth screaming in full display.

  Sloane squinted her aching eyes, long accustomed to the dark, and gazed at the horizon. Where life’s pulse once beat through asphalt veins, now there was only silence—and from within that silence, a new and savage narrative was beginning to sprout.

  Simply put, what had happened in the metro was only a fragment of the apocalypse. The true disaster had unfolded above, on the surface.

  With every step she took on the cracked asphalt, Sloane felt as though she were walking on the broken spine of a massive book. This brief walk on the surface was the most merciless exposition ever written for an author. The silence around her was not peaceful; it was the echo of thousands of screams abruptly cut off and trapped inside clouds of dust.

  A thought that did not belong to her echoed in her mind—among countless filthy consciousnesses, this one was sorrowful and human.

  The world would be a better place without humans.

  Another mournful thought followed.

  Nature kept giving, and we kept taking, yet we were never satisfied.

  Sloane had believed that only the most twisted minds were trapped inside her head. She tried to suppress them into silence, but as she experienced the scale of the catastrophe on the surface, she allowed them to flow—and to mourn with her.

  As the thoughts poured out their grief one by one, Sloane joined them.

  I hope my family is safe.

  She wrapped herself tightly in the long coat she had earned as a reward. The air above was cold. It’s mid-May… where did this winter chill come from? She was startled when she saw white flakes falling. A snowflake landed on her palm and melted. Some did not melt.

  Ash.

  Snow mixed with ash was falling.

  A sentence she could not remember where she had read surfaced in her mind: ‘It snows where too many people have died.’ She had not believed it when she first read it. Now, she knew it was true. In a city reduced to ruins, reaching home would take time.

  She took the first step of her long journey.

  She passed through wreckage, corpses, and split-open roads. Alongside police cars, she also encountered military trucks. All of them had been shattered helplessly before the apocalypse. The ways they were destroyed were strange—one had been struck from the side by an unimaginable force, another looked as though its door had been punched in.

  A few streets ahead, she mistook what lay in the middle of the road for debris at first. As she drew closer, the shape gained meaning.

  It was not a car.

  Not an animal either.

  More precisely, it had once been an animal.

  Its body resembled that of a dog, but its proportions were wrong—its spine was too long, its ribs visible from the outside. Patches of skin were missing. The exposed flesh had hardened into a rust-colored crust, as if it had burned and then cooled again. Where its head should have been, a bony protrusion rose upward—no jaw, no mouth, only a hollow black cavity.

  One of its legs was completely torn off. It had not been cut cleanly—it had been ripped. Drag marks streaked across the asphalt. It seemed to have tried to flee for a while before collapsing. Around it pooled a dried, dark fluid. It was not blood. It did not smell like blood. It smelled more like… metal mixed with rotten fruit.

  Sloane involuntarily stepped back. One of the voices in her mind whispered:

  We will pay for our sins.

  Another replied:

  Not enough.

  There were deep gashes on the corpse. They were not claw marks. Not bite marks either. They looked more like… deliberate strikes. Something had hunted it. Or someone.

  Sloane stared into the empty sockets where its eyes should have been. She expected to find fear. There was none.

  Only frozen hatred—as if it had died resenting the world itself.

  “So things like this roam the surface now…” she murmured.

  It was not the only corpse. A little farther ahead lay another. Its body had been split in two. It was smaller, but stranger—bone-like spikes jutted out from its back. Creatures that had once breathed now lay along the road like signposts of death.

  As she walked, the number of monster corpses increased. If she had been on the surface when the apocalypse began, would she have survived? There had been no monsters in the metro—but humans had taken their place.

  There had been fear in the metro. On the surface, there was reality.

  As Sloane continued walking, a simple but heavy thought crossed her mind: If these are dead… then what about the living ones? She could see bullet holes in some of them. Others bore clean, precise cuts.

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  Humans had killed them. The same hands that killed each other had killed the monsters too.

  When Sloane spotted the crowd gathered at the intersection ahead, she instinctively pressed herself against the wall. There were about fifteen, maybe twenty of them. No children. No elderly. It was as if the world had already eliminated those it deemed useless.

  They carried clubs, knives, and a few old rifles. Some even wielded swords and axes. Sloane wondered where they had found them. But their posture was not that of a gang. They looked more like… animals waiting.

  Three monster corpses were lined up in the back of a pickup truck. Their bloated, darkened flesh attracted flies. The stench churned Sloane’s stomach.

  A man she assumed to be the leader stood in the middle of the group, speaking. Sloane stepped closer to hear more clearly.

  “Before the next mission arrives, we have a few hours. Everyone rest. Their numbers will increase in the next wave.” The group nodded. No one smiled. No one celebrated victory.

  Sloane studied their faces. Hunger was there. Fear was there. But madness was not. She wanted to approach them, but her trauma held her back. The system remained silent. No trust factor appeared, unlike with Evan. The conversation continued. She stepped closer.

  Crunch.

  The sound dropped into the silence like a bullet. All eyes turned toward her. “There’s someone there!”

  Sloane reflexively pulled back, but her hiding place had lost its meaning. Slowly, she stepped out, raising her hands to shoulder level. Her heart beat in her chest like a broken clock.

  “I’m unarmed,” she said. Her voice came out weaker than she expected.

  The man who seemed to be their leader stepped forward. He did not lower his rifle. He motioned for the others to hold their fire. “Aram!” he shouted. A woman flinched and hurried to his side. “Didn’t you say there was no one else around here? Where did this woman come from?”

  Aram calmly looked from the man to Sloane. “First of all, stop acting like a boss. Just because we made you a leader due to your class doesn’t mean you get to climb on our heads, Dirhan.”

  Dirhan’s face darkened.

  “I know, I just—” Aram cut him off, pointing at Sloane.

  “Does my skills mean I have to know everything happening around here?”

  As Dirhan tried to defend himself, Sloane realized her raised arms were beginning to ache. I’m still here, hello?

  Dirhan cleared his throat. “Anyway. Where did you come from?”

  “From the metro,” Sloane answered simply.

  “The metro? Are there still people alive down there?” Aram asked, joining the conversation.

  “Aram, can you let me talk?” Dirhan said, trying to assert authority.

  “Whatever.” Aram walked off and sat down. Dirhan repeated the question as if it had never been asked.

  “There were many survivors,” Sloane said. She had no idea how many remained now. “You look different. You didn’t try to kill me the moment you saw me.” Her voice cracked at the end.

  “Kill you? Why would we?” Dirhan said, surprised. “The monsters are already tearing us apart. If we killed each other too, we’d have been dead long ago.”

  Sloane’s passive ability confirmed he was telling the truth.

  “What happened down there?” he asked.

  “Below,” the woman said. “There were no monsters. People were killing each other… just because they could. Like they’d gone mad.” Then she added, confessing she came from there too: “Not all of them. But most of all.”

  Dirhan seemed lost in thought. “What do you think, Aram?” he asked.

  The woman slammed her fists on her knees and stood up. “First you tell me not to talk, now you want my opinion?” Her resentment was clear.

  “Come on, Aram! Everyone here knows we’re alive because of you. Of course I want to know what you think.”

  “Fucking Christ. Fine. Let me think.” Sloane watched the woman the group trusted so deeply. Aram rested her hand on her chin, appearing thoughtful—but in truth, she was staring at a system window. Sloane wondered about her class. A Guide? A Strategist? “We’re in the apocalypse. Anything is possible,” Aram said. “Just because the system hasn’t given us quests to kill each other yet doesn’t mean it never will. We should be prepared. We need defensive and construction-type classes. What’s your class?” she asked Sloane.

  Sloane lowered her arms. No one had told her to. “Author,” she said.

  Useless.

  What use were words in this world?

  Aram fell silent again. Sloane was certain she was reading a system window. “Fine. You can join us. You definitely know things we don’t. At the very least, you can provide useful information in this hellhole.”

  Sloane hadn’t expected that. Being accepted meant survival. But joining a group meant moving together. They wouldn’t help her find her family just like that. “What’s wrong? You don’t want to join us?”

  “That’s not it. I need to find my family first.” Sloane noticed Aram’s eyes flicker. What is the system telling her?

  “We can turn our route that way.” Suspicion crept in. Why were they so eager for her to join? The system remained silent. Even her passives weren’t working. She was sure she wasn’t on cooldown. Could someone in the group have an ability that suppressed classes?

  “Then… let’s go,” she said without thinking further.

  “First, we finish the mission,” Dirhan said, reclaiming authority.

  “What mission? I don’t have any.”

  “Don’t you have the standard apocalypse quests? Kill monsters, survive, all that?”

  Sloane shook her head. Her quests had been different. Run from the Stalker. Conquer fear… “I only encountered an Anomaly.”

  Dirhan stared at her blankly. He turned to Aram, but for the first time, she admitted she didn’t know. “What anomaly? There are only monsters here.”

  Sloane explained what an anomaly was—what it looked like and what it did. She did not say she had defeated it.

  “Interesting,” Aram said. “You’ll definitely be useful.”

  Sloane felt a flicker of pride. She stepped toward the group.

  Then the system window appeared. Her steps slowed.

  [Reality Check triggered]

  [Your Charisma stat is higher than targets’]

  [Initiating 1d6 roll]

  She didn’t understand why her ability activated. They weren’t enemies. She heard the dice roll.

  [Rolled: 6 → Critical Success!]

  [Due to critical success, intimidation affects deeply.]

  No—cancel it! They don’t need to be afraid! It was already too late. She saw their expressions change. Most of them raised their weapons at what they saw.

  “Wait! Whatever you’re seeing isn’t real. Please—”

  A bullet cut her sentence in half.

  “It’s a monster in human form!” Dirhan shouted. “Everyone takes positions!”

  “It’s another trick of the system!” Aram supported him. “It must be a hidden boss!”

  Sloane ran, realizing that this world would not give her a second chance to be human.