The adrenaline left slowly, the way it always did — not all at once but in stages, each one revealing a new layer of exhaustion beneath it.
Ivan had not moved from the floor beside Lira's sofa. He had his head tipped back against the cushions and his eyes closed and his arms hanging at his sides like someone had removed the bones from them. Rhea had stopped crying and was now simply sitting in the armchair staring at the middle distance with the expression of a person performing the act of existing and finding it sufficient for now. Lira had fallen asleep almost immediately, her bandaged ankle propped on a rolled jacket, her face pale but finally still.
Ayesha knelt beside the sofa and checked the bandage — rewrapped it properly with supplies from Ivan's bag, tighter, cleaner, the kind of compression wrap that actually did something. Lira didn't stir. Ayesha sat back on her heels and looked at the ankle for a moment longer than necessary.
"She can't run," Lucian said from across the room. He had positioned himself near the tinted window, looking through a gap in the iron grates at the street outside. His voice was quiet, analytical. Not cold — just honest.
"I know."
"Rhea isn't far behind her."
"I know that too."
"Which means we aren't moving again today unless we have to."
Ayesha stood up. "Then we use the day." She looked around the café — the thick walls, the shuttered windows, the shelves of old books and coffee display jars, the long oak tables they could use for barricading. A defensible space with room to breathe. She had already been cataloguing it. "We need to understand exactly what we have and what we don't. All three of us."
Lucian looked at Ivan. Ivan opened one eye. "I'm listening," he said, without moving.
"Up," Lucian said.
Ivan opened both eyes, looked at the ceiling for a moment as though negotiating with it, then pushed himself off the floor and dragged a chair to the small circular coffee table in the center of the room. Ayesha took the seat across from him. Lucian sat last, setting his sword on the table between them, and for a moment the three of them were simply three people sitting around a table — the same configuration they had occupied a hundred times in the university cafeteria, except that none of them were quite the same people who had sat there last.
"Food," Lucian said. "What do we have."
Ivan reached into his backpack and laid it out on the table. A few packets of biscuits. Two bags of chips. Three bottles of water. A small first aid kit, partially used. He looked at the spread with the expression of a man who had no illusions about what it represented.
"A day," Ayesha said. "Maybe two if we're careful."
"We'll need a supply run before tonight." Lucian looked at the shelf behind the café counter — old stock, display items, some sealed bags of coffee that weren't food but suggested there might be a storage room. "This building might have something in the back. We check that first before going outside again."
Ivan nodded. Then he pulled his own panel up — the interface that had appeared the moment he absorbed the Steady Hands skill book back at his dormitory — and looked at it with the expression he got when he was reading a schematic he found confusing.
"Can I ask something," he said.
"Yes," Ayesha said.
"My stats." He frowned at the floating text that only he could see. "They're just. Numbers. That haven't changed since the start. Meanwhile you two have been absorbing orbs and fighting things and presumably getting stronger, and I have—" he paused, "—Steady Hands."
"It'll be useful," Ayesha said.
"It sounds like something you say to a child who drew a bad picture."
"Ivan."
"I'm just saying. It's called Steady Hands." He leaned back in his chair. "I'm not complaining. I'm contextualizing."
Lucian pulled up his own panel and read it aloud so they could all work from the same information.
[Lucian Morales] [Class: N/A]
[Age: 20]
[Strength: 17]
[Agility: 16]
[Mind: 14]
[Perception: 15]
[Vitality: 14]
[Skill(s): Shadow Steed (B) | Shadow Bind (F)]
"The orbs I absorbed from the creature in the stairwell pushed Strength and Agility up by four each," he said. "The ones from before that added to Agility and Perception. And the courtyard outside gave me two more — Strength and Vitality." He paused. "There was also a skill book. Shadow Bind, F-rank. I absorbed it on the walk here." He looked at his hands for a moment — turned them over, then back. The strength in them felt different than it had two days ago. Denser. More settled. "Every stat increase is felt physically. It isn't gradual. When it happens you know."
"How do we get more," Ivan said, and the joking tone was gone now. He was an engineer. He understood systems.
"Kill things. Collect drops. The orbs increase specific stats. Skill books give new abilities." Lucian set his hands flat on the table. "The stronger the thing you kill, the better the drop. The creature in the stairwell dropped D-rank orbs. Something stronger drops higher."
"And the panel just — shows you everything."
"It shows you what it shows you. Stats. Class when it unlocks. Skills." Lucian paused. "It doesn't explain itself. It doesn't warn you. It doesn't announce anything. It's an interface, not a guide."
Ivan absorbed this with the quiet, systematic attention he brought to complicated problems. Then he looked at Ayesha. "Your turn."
Ayesha opened her panel.
[Ayesha Villacruz] [Class: N/A]
[Age: 21]
[Strength: 9]
[Agility: 10]
[Mind: 14]
[Perception: 12]
[Vitality: 13]
[Skill(s): Conquer (S) — Passive | Keen Hearing (F) — Active]
"The rapier adds three to Agility and two to Mind while I'm holding it," she said. "I can feel the difference." She looked at Lucian. "My base stats are low. I'm not a fighter by build."
"You killed three things last night," Ivan said.
"Technique compensates for stats up to a point." She folded her hands on the table. "Past that point, stats win. Which means I need orbs the same as anyone else." She paused. "The Conquer skill concerns me more, honestly. I don't fully understand what it does yet. It suppresses panic. It seems to slow weaker things down. But S-rank is—" she stopped.
"Rare," Lucian said.
"I was going to say that the gap between what it does now and what it's capable of is probably very large. And I don't know how to close it."
The three of them sat with that for a moment. Outside, the city made its quiet, terrible sounds — distant and muffled through the thick walls, but present.
"The class," Ivan said eventually. "When does that happen."
Lucian and Ayesha exchanged a glance. The panel had been showing N/A since the beginning and hadn't offered a single word of explanation. No conditions. No progress bar. Nothing.
"We don't know," Lucian said.
Ivan stared at his panel for a moment. "Great."
"It probably has something to do with how you've been fighting," Lucian said. "What skills you use. How your stats develop. The system seems to be observing rather than announcing." He paused. "That's a theory. Not a fact."
"A theory," Ivan repeated flatly.
"The only one we have."
"You start fighting today," Lucian said. It wasn't negotiable and didn't sound like it. "Your Strength is thirteen. That's higher than either of us started. Find a stray zombie, isolate it, kill it. Your first drop could be anything. Your stats need to grow before this situation gets more complicated than it already is."
Ivan looked at the kitchen knife in his belt. Then at the heavy steel lamp base from Ayesha's room, which had survived the night despite being thrown through a window. "Could I have that?" he asked, nodding toward it.
Ayesha slid it across the table.
Ivan gripped it. Tested the weight. Nodded to himself with the expression of someone accepting an assignment they intend to complete. "Fine," he said. "I'll kill something. I've handled worse. I once fixed a misfiring industrial press with a piece of wire and seventeen minutes to spare."
"That is not the same as—" Ayesha started.
"It is, philosophically."
Lucian stood and moved back to the window. The sun was fully up now, hard and bright over the old rooftops of Intramuros, the smoke from the eastern gate still visible as a faint gray haze on the horizon. The winged creatures were no longer circling — they had settled somewhere, or moved on, or simply became patient.
"The eastern gate is blocked," he said. "Those creatures are nesting near the exits. No military response. No helicopters. No sirens." He let that sit for a moment. "The walls of Intramuros were built to keep invaders out. Right now they're keeping the dead in with us. But they're also the only thing keeping whatever is outside from getting in." He turned from the window. "We don't try to leave. We clear inward. We establish this building as a proper base and we start expanding from here."
The café was quiet around them — the thick adobe walls, the dust motes moving in the early light, the smell of old coffee and older paper.
"So this is home now," Ivan said.
"For now," Lucian said.
Ivan looked around at the café — at Lira sleeping, at Rhea staring at nothing, at the lamp base in his hand and the kitchen knife at his hip and his two best friends sitting across from him in a city that had eaten itself overnight. Then he exhaled through his nose, long and slow, and something in his face settled.
"Alright," he said. "What's the first move."
Lucian's eyes had already returned to the window.
"We get you your first drop," he said. "Then we start making this city ours."