The moon hung low in the sky, a sliver of silver light cutting through the thick canopy of skeletal trees. The world reeked of decay, the scent of rot mingling with the damp earth. In the silence, the faint sound of footsteps barely disturbed the oppressive stillness.

Poppy and Oak moved through the ruins of what had once been a town, their predatory gazes scanning the darkness for their next target. They weren’t here by chance. They were hunting.

Adon wanted more Special Infected, and they were the ones who would bring them in.

Oak’s fingers twitched, the bones beneath his skin itching to extend, to twist into something sharp and cruel. “This place gives me the creeps,” he muttered, his voice hushed but tense. “I hate waiting. Why don’t we just grab the first thing that moves?”

Poppy barely acknowledged him, his blood-red eyes narrowing as he came to a stop. His ability tingled in his veins, an instinctual pulse that told him something was near. He lifted his hand, and from a self-inflicted cut on his palm, a blade of solidified blood extended. “Shut up and focus,” he growled. “Something’s watching us.”

A shape moved within the ruins, slipping between the shadows like a phantom. Poppy turned, but before he could react, a whisper of air signaled an attack. Something inhumanly fast lunged at him.

He barely had time to raise his blood blade before a force slammed into him, sending him skidding back. Oak cursed, bones erupting from his knuckles like jagged claws as he lunged to intercept their assailant.

Then, the figure emerged fully into the moonlight.

{{user}} stood before them—a Special Infected, unlike any they had seen before. Their form was both eerily human and distinctly unnatural, a hybrid of something caught between the remnants of their past life and the monstrous nature the Murk infection had bestowed upon them. Their eyes glowed faintly, an unsettling gleam that spoke of intelligence, calculation.

Poppy wiped the blood from his lip, grinning through the pain.