Agony. It clawed its way through Ethan's suffocating darkness, a searing, all-consuming fire that ripped through every fiber of his being. He gasped, a ragged, choked sound, his eyes flying open to a blurry, spinning canopy of unfamiliar trees. The coppery scent of blood, his own, was thick in his nostrils.
He tried to move, but a fresh wave of agony shot through his chest and side, forcing a cry from his lips. Memories, raw and brutal, crashed over him: the desperate diversion, Glenn's scream as the monstrous UBE tore into him, the blinding flash of his System's sacrifice. Glenn is gone. The thought was a fresh wound, twisting in his gut.
And then, another torrent of memories, sharper, clearer, utterly bewildering. Images flashed: a glowing screen, endless lines of code, the faces of actors, the strategic maps of video games. The Walking Dead. Dead Island. Zombies. Fictions. Yet here he was, bleeding out in a forest that was terrifyingly real.
I know this world, a detached, analytical voice in his head confirmed, startling him. Not just as Ethan Miller, but as someone else. Someone who knew this was all a story. I'm... a reincarnation. And this isn't just TWD; it's got elements of Dead Island now too. The revelation was a cold, alien calm amidst the storm of pain. It didn't make the pain less, but it gave it context. He knew the players, the threats, the potential paths. He knew the eventual destinations.
His constant companion, the System interface, flickered erratically before his eyes, then solidified into something horrifyingly… empty. Gone were the mission logs, the detailed environmental scans, the ever-present Survivor's Exchange, the comforting weight of his sub-dimensional inventory. All that remained was a stark, brutally simple text display.
Host Status: Ethan MillerHealth: 2/10 (Critical – Severe lacerations, blunt force trauma, significant blood loss).Stamina: 1/10 (Critical – Extreme exertion, shock).Strength: 3 (Temporarily weakened – injury).Agility: 2 (Temporarily impaired – injury).Perception: 4 (Diminished – pain, trauma).System Core: Damaged. Advanced functions: Offline (Permanent). Current mode: Safe – Biometric monitoring only.
Offline. Permanently. The words hit him with the force of a physical blow. His System, his edge, his secret weapon, had sacrificed itself. That last, desperate surge of power, the blinding flash that had driven the UBE away… it had cost him everything. But then, the influx of old memories. Was this the trade-off? The System gone, but his true self, his past life, now fully accessible?
He was dying. Health: 2/10. Lily. The thought of her, safe with Rick's group, he hoped, was the only thing that pierced through his despair. He had no idea where Rick's group had gone, or even if they were still together. They would have been forced to move on, perhaps even believing him and Glenn were dead. Hershel's Farm. That was the next major waypoint in the story, he remembered. He didn't know the exact route, not without his old System's map function, but he knew the general direction and what to look for. He had to survive. For Lily.
A rattling cough tore from his chest, sending fresh jolts of pain through his ribs. If he didn't get water, real water, and treat his wounds soon, this shallow depression would be his grave.
Just then, when the fever seemed to recede slightly, leaving him weak but lucid, the simple text of his System flickered. A new line of text appeared, faint and wavering, something it hadn't shown before since its catastrophic failure.
Vestigial Survival Protocol Active: Anomalous energy concentration detected. Proximity: Very near. Direction: Indicated (faint pulsing arrow appears, pointing slightly deeper into the rock cluster). Nature: Unknown. Potential for minimal system stabilization or host benefit: Low, but non-zero. Investigate at Host's discretion and extreme risk.
Anomalous energy. The words, though clinical, resonated with a desperate hope. His System, even in its broken state, was trying to guide him, offering one last, faint lifeline. With a groan that tore through his raw throat, Ethan began to move.
It wasn't walking, not even crawling. It was a desperate, agonizing drag of his broken body over the rough forest floor. Every movement sent shards of fire through his wounds. His System's Stamina display flickered, threatening to drop to zero. But the faint, directional prompt from the System pulsed in his vision, a single, wavering arrow, pulling him onward.
He pushed through tangled undergrowth, over sharp rocks, his vision blurring, subsisting on a primal will to live fueled by the image of Lily's face. Walkers. The standard shamblers occasionally passed nearby, their groans a familiar, terrifying chorus. He lay still during these moments, too weak to fight, too broken to even attract their dulled senses beyond the general scent of decay in the woods. He knew their weaknesses, their slow, predictable movements. But he also knew about the Infecteds—the fast, screaming ones—and the hulking Thugs that could smash through walls. He was praying he didn't run into any of them in this state.
Finally, as his strength utterly gave out and darkness threatened to claim him for good, he tumbled down a short, mossy embankment into a place that felt… different.
It was a small, unnaturally quiet grove. Ancient, gnarled trees, their branches intertwined like skeletal fingers, formed a tight canopy, filtering the sunlight into an eerie, green-tinged gloom. No birds sang here. The air was still, heavy, and carried a faint, almost metallic scent. In the center of the grove, half-embedded in a moss-covered outcrop of black, volcanic-looking rock, was a stone.
It was not large, perhaps the size of a human heart, and it was unlike any rock Ethan had ever seen. It was a deep, obsidian black, yet it seemed to absorb the dim light rather than reflect it. Deep within it, a faint, almost imperceptible violet light pulsed with a slow, rhythmic beat, like a slumbering heart. It radiated a subtle warmth that cut through the damp chill of the grove.
Anomalous energy source confirmed. Intense concentration of unidentified geothermal and bio-organic resonance. Recommend cautious physical interaction for potential system resonance.
With the last of his strength, Ethan dragged himself towards it. His hand, trembling and caked with dried blood and dirt, reached out and touched the strange, warm stone.
The moment his skin made contact, a jolt, not painful, but like a powerful current of pure, raw energy, surged up his arm and through his entire body. The System interface in his vision flared brilliantly, then went momentarily blank, causing his heart to stop.
Then, it flickered back, text scrolling rapidly, stabilizing.
Anomalous energy source integrated. System Core partially stabilized at minimal operational capacity.New Protocol Unlocked: Attribute Enhancement via Battle Point (BP) Allocation.Objective: Neutralize hostiles (Walker-Class or higher) to acquire Battle Points (BP). BP can be allocated to core attributes (Strength, Agility, Endurance, Perception) via Host interface to enhance survival probability.Current BP: 0Host Health Status Improvement: Health now 3/10 (Stabilized – Wounds no longer actively bleeding, infection temporarily suppressed, minor regenerative effect initiated from stone's residual energy). Fever reduced slightly.Stamina: 3/10 (Low – minor restoration).
The change was immediate, if small. The raw edge of his pain dulled slightly. The shivering lessened. His Health had ticked up from 1 to 3. His Stamina also saw a minor boost. It wasn't a miracle cure, far from it, but it was the difference between actively dying and having a sliver of a chance.
He stared at the new System text. Attribute enhancement. Battle Points from kills. It was a shadow of his old System, a pale imitation. But it was something. A way to fight back, a way to earn his survival, to perhaps even regain some of what he had lost, one brutal step at a time.
A new, grim resolve settled in his heart. He would not die here. He would get stronger. He would find Lily. He would find his way to the Greene Farm, using what he knew.
He lay there for a long moment, clutching the spot where the stone still rested, the faint warmth lingering on his palm. The pain was still immense, his weakness profound, but now there was a path, a brutal, bloody path, but a path nonetheless.
His Perception, though still low at '3', registered a sound just outside the narrow entrance to his rocky alcove: the slow, shuffling drag of feet, accompanied by a low, guttural groan, from a single, standard Walker, perhaps drawn by the faint scent of his earlier bleeding. It was close.
The System, true to its new, limited function, displayed:
Hostile detected: Walker (Standard Class-I). BP potential upon neutralization: 1.
One Battle Point. Ethan looked at the approaching horror, then at his own pathetic stats displayed by the System. Killing this thing in his current state would be an agonizing, dangerous battle. He had his knife, and his bat was nearby where he'd dropped it during his desperate crawl. This first kill, for this first, precious Battle Point, would be a fight for his very next breath.
It would be agony. It would be a fight for his life.
But it was a start. It was the ember in the ash.
He took a ragged breath, the faint warmth of the now-inert stone still clinging to his palm, and prepared to meet his first challenge on this new, brutal path.