He rose and the World fell

I should've stayed dead…

It woke in a ruined room, the world spinning in shades of red and grey. Its body felt alien—stiff limbs, claw-like hands, a gnawing emptiness deep inside. Hunger ruled Its senses. It stumbled toward a mirror and froze.

The face staring back was monstrous—skin pale and torn, teeth bared, eyes lifeless. Yet something stirred behind those eyes, a flicker of... a memory. A woman’s face. Dark hair. A smile. Her lips moved, forming words it could not hear. Then, nothing. The hunger pulled it forward. In the street, it found a man, his back turned. It lunged, tackling him to the ground. The man screamed, but as Its claws tore at flesh, something inside whispered, "Stop".

The man escaped, and It sat there, trembling. Blood dripped from Its fingers, and the hunger raged, but the whisper lingered.

The days blurred into each other as It wandered the streets. Survivors screamed and fled, while the dead sensed Its difference.

Fragments of memory surfaced—a name, almost remembered. The woman in Its mind became clearer, her voice stronger: “Find me.”

One day, It found a message scrawled on a wall: “Salvation is in the east.” Without knowing why, It began to walk.

The journey east was fraught with danger. It watched as a horde devoured their prey in a back alley, tearing into the screaming woman without hesitation. It felt the pull, the instinct to join them, but something else held Him back.

He met others like itself along the way—creatures caught in the in-between state, neither fully human nor fully dead.

One was a gaunt, limping figure who spoke in broken sentences, calling itself "Rye." They spoke in halting words of memories they couldn’t hold onto and a lab to the east where the infection had begun.

Rye gave Him a map and a name for the lab. “Truth there.” 

As it travelled, His name surfaced from the fog, along with memories of Anna. She had been a scientist. Her voice called his name: “Harrow, I’ll fix this. I’ll save you.”

But save Him from what?

Survivors banded together in armed groups, hunting anything that moved. Harrow barely escaped.

The hunger grew unbearable. Harrow fought it, but he couldn’t always resist. One night, he stumbled upon a survivor, an injured young man.

Harrow fed.

The lab stood in ruins, surrounded by skeletal trees and corpses. Inside, Harrow found old equipment and a series of video logs that were unlocked by his fingers. Anna’s face appeared on the screen, weary but determined. She spoke of the serum, and how it was meant to save humanity from disease and death.

“We tested it on him. On Harrow. I had no choice—he was dying. But it mutated. It spread…” Her voice broke. “Honey, if you see this... I’m sorry.”

He watched, numb, as the pieces fell into place.

Scavengers arrived, seeking to plunder what was left of the lab. They found the monstrous figure standing guard.

The fight for the vial was brutal. Hunger and rage consumed Harrow as he tore through the looters, but not before one set the building ablaze. 

In his hands was the last vial of the substance. He smashed it, ensuring no one could continue the work that had destroyed the world. Harrow went after them while they were fleeing and packing notes and computer parts, but his wife's faint voice anchored him.

As the fire spread, Harrow’s last thoughts were of Anna. Her laugh. Her smile. The life they’d had before.

For the first time since he was awake, Harrow felt at peace.

Epilogue

The scientist stumbled through the forest, smoke and ash clinging to her clothes. Her hands trembled as she clutched a charred notebook—the only fragment of years of research salvaged from the devastation. Behind her, the skeletal silhouette of the burning lab loomed like a tombstone for humanity's last hope.

She dropped to her knees by a stream, splashing cold water onto her face. Her colleague, an older man with a limp, finally caught up, panting. On his back was a hastily packed satchel of scorched notes and salvaged parts of an old computer.

“It’s gone,” he said hoarsely. “Everything... gone.”

She looked at him, her face pale and streaked with soot. “Why?” Her voice broke, the question hanging in the air like the smoke curling from the ruins. “Why would that mindless creature... protect it?”

The older man shook his head, his expression grim. “It wasn’t ... Did you see its eyes? There was something there. Something... I don't know.”

She shivered, remembering the way the creature—no, he—had stood between them and the vial. The defiance, the rage. Not the blind fury of the infected, but a deliberate, almost protective instinct.

“It knew,” she whispered, the realization sinking in like a stone in deep water. “It wasn’t trying to destroy us. It thought it was saving us.”

The man slumped against a tree, his face lined with exhaustion and despair. He gestured to the satchel. “We still have some of the data, fragments of what’s left. But the vial... that was everything.” “Can we start again without it?”

She stared at the stream, watching the ripples distort her reflection. “Can we start again without it?” she asked barely audible.

He was miles away. "What if we’re the ones repeating the mistake?” said to himself.

Silence stretched between them, broken only by the distant crackle of the fire. The faint hum of the salvaged equipment in the satchel seemed almost mocking. They had escaped the blaze, but the future felt no less bleak.

The image of the creature’s eyes haunted her. Perhaps there was no way back to the world they once knew. The hope of restoring humanity, of reclaiming old lives and old ways, felt fragile—like ashes in the wind. Maybe the world was no longer meant to return to what it had been. Perhaps they were merely witnessing the end of one era, making way for something entirely new, and unrecognizable, something they could not hope to control.