The Howler moved before any of them could reset.
It came across the lounge in a single bound, too fast for something that size, the wound in its neck tearing wider as it moved without slowing it down at all. Lucian's sword was still buried in flesh that no longer wanted to hold it — it ripped free of his grip as the creature surged past him.
He was unarmed for exactly one second.
That second was almost enough.
A clawed hand the size of his torso swept toward his head. He went low — not Void Step, just instinct, Sharpened Instinct screaming through every nerve — and felt the wind of it pass close enough to pull at his hair. He hit the floor and rolled.
"Lucian!" Ayesha's voice, sharp.
The eleven re-awakened zombies were closing from both sides now, faster than standard infected, moving with the same wrongness the Howler had taken on. Ivan met the first two at the doorway with the lamp base, swinging with everything he had, buying space.
Lucian came up without his sword.
He had Void Step. He had Shadow Bind, though it had cost him heavily the first time and he could feel the drain behind his eyes building toward something he didn't want to find the edge of. He had Howler's Wail — no. Not absorbed yet. He didn't have it yet.
What he had was his hands, and the floor, and a creature three times his size bearing down on him with black fluid weeping from its chest.
He used Void Step — not to escape, but to close distance. Half a meter through shadow, coming up inside the Howler's reach before its swing finished, too close for the long limbs to generate force. He grabbed the hilt of his sword where it still hung from the wound in its neck and wrenched.
The blade tore free in a spray of black ichor.
The Howler screamed — that same layered, wrong-pitched sound — and its head snapped down toward him, jaw unhinging wider than any jaw should.
Lucian didn't retreat.
He drove the sword upward, into the underside of its jaw, through whatever passed for its palate, and kept pushing until his arms shook and the blade found something that gave way entirely.
The Howler's body seized.
For a moment everything stopped — Ivan mid-swing against a zombie, Ayesha frozen with her rapier raised, the air itself seeming to hold still. The black fluid leaking from the chest cavity stopped flowing. The cracks in the green-white light went dark, then cold, then simply absent.
The Howler collapsed.
This time it didn't convulse. It didn't fold. It simply stopped being upright, all at once, like something had cut every string holding it together simultaneously.
The eleven zombies dropped where they stood — not stunned this time. Dead. Whatever had been animating them past their normal limits left with the same suddenness, and eleven bodies hit the floor of the lounge in a ragged, scattered rhythm.
Silence.
Real silence. The vibration that had pressed against Lucian's chest since they'd entered the building — gone. Not faded. Gone, the way a held breath leaves all at once.
He stood over the Howler's body, both hands still on the hilt of his sword, breathing so hard his vision pulsed at the edges.
"Lucian." Ayesha's voice, careful. "Are you hurt."
He checked. Shoulder ached where the first swing had nearly connected. Otherwise — intact. "No," he said. "You?"
"Cut on my arm. Shallow." She lowered the rapier slowly, looking at the Howler's corpse. The green-white light was gone entirely now — the body had already started to break down into the same dark mist every kill left behind, faster than usual, like something eager to finish dissolving.
Ivan picked his way over from the doorway, lamp base hanging from one hand, staring at the eleven scattered bodies. "Okay," he said, voice slightly unsteady. "Okay. That was — that got worse before it got better. Can we agree that got worse before it got better?"
"It got worse," Ayesha confirmed.
"Thank you. I just needed someone to say it." Ivan exhaled hard, then looked at the dissolving Howler. "Is it actually dead this time?"
"Yes," Lucian said.
He could feel it. The absence of the vibration wasn't just sound — it was something his body had adjusted to without realizing, and now that it was gone, the relief of it was almost physical.
The drops appeared a moment later.
Three orbs first — smaller than he expected after everything. He focused on each one in turn, the way he had back in Ivan's dormitory on that first long night, letting the panel show him what they were.
[Strength Attribute Orb (D-rank): +4]
[Vitality Attribute Orb (D-rank): +4]
[Perception Attribute Orb (C-rank): +8]
He absorbed them one after another. The D-ranks hit with the now-familiar deep warmth, settling into his shoulders and chest. The C-rank was different — sharper, more total, like a held breath of clarity flooding behind his eyes all at once. His vision sharpened noticeably even in the dim lounge, edges suddenly crisper, motion at the periphery easier to track. That one alone was worth more than both of the others combined.
He didn't ask whether to share them. Neither did Ayesha or Ivan.
They'd talked about this two nights ago, sitting around the coffee table with the candle between them — Ayesha had been the one to say it plainly. Lucian was the frontline. Whatever made him stronger made all of them safer, faster than spreading the same gains thin across three people. It wasn't sentimental. It was math, and all three of them had agreed to the math.
Then the last item appeared.
Not an orb. Not a skill book.
A sword.
It hovered a foot above the Howler's dissolving remains, longer than Lucian's current blade by half, double-edged, the metal a pale, bone-white that seemed to hold light rather than reflect it. The hilt was wrapped in dark leather, long enough for two hands.
Lucian reached out and took it.
The weight settled into his grip immediately — heavier than his current sword, but balanced in a way that made the weight feel like an asset rather than a burden. He focused on it.
[Hollow Fang]
[Rank: D]
[Type: Weapon — Greatsword]
[Strength: +4] [Vitality: +3]
A blade carved from the calcified remains of something that commanded the dead. Its edge does not dull against flesh or bone. Designed for two-handed use.
Lucian held it up. Even in the dim lounge light, the blade seemed to glow faintly white, like moonlight given a physical edge.
He looked at his old sword — the deformed cosplay blade that had killed Sir Hank, that had carried him through every fight since the Lightfall, blunted and scarred and held together by Ivan's careful rewrapping.
He set it down gently against the wall.
Then he gripped Hollow Fang with both hands and tested its weight properly — a slow practice swing, then another, feeling how the balance moved through a wider arc than his old blade had ever allowed.
"That," Ivan said, "is a significant upgrade."
"It's two-handed," Lucian said. He swung it again, slower this time, paying attention to the mechanics. "I've never fought with a two-handed weapon."
"You'll learn," Ayesha said. She was already looking at him with the particular focus she got when she was filing away a training plan. "We have time now."
Lucian looked at the blade. White, long, heavier than anything he'd held — and somehow, holding it, he felt steadier than he had with the old sword in months.
He checked his panel one final time.
[Lucian Morales] [Class: N/A]
[Age: 20]
[Strength: 24]
[Agility: 21]
[Mind: 16]
[Perception: 27]
[Vitality: 23]
[Skill(s): Shadow Steed (B) | Shadow Bind (F) | Sharpened Instinct (F) | Void Step (F) | Perception Pulse (F)]
Perception had jumped the most — eight points from a single orb, more than any other gain he'd had at once. The world around him felt marginally but distinctly sharper, the kind of difference he suspected he'd only fully appreciate the next time something tried to sneak up on him.
He thought about the number Ayesha had floated days ago, around a coffee table that felt like it belonged to a different life. Thirty, across the board, for whatever the system decided that meant.
He wasn't there yet. But for the first time, it didn't feel impossibly far away either.
"Let's go tell the others," he said.
They went down together — slower than they'd come up, checking each floor properly now that there was nothing left organizing resistance against them. The building felt different already. Bigger. Possible.
By the time they reached the ground floor, the morning sun had fully risen over Intramuros, and for the first time in days, Lucian let himself believe that something good was actually, finally, happening.
He didn't yet know how short that feeling would last.