THE BONE TEMPLE – JUNE 6TH, 2030 – 3;36 A.M.

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Jimmy Crystal didn’t feel the nails anymore; only the distant, hollow echo of them, like something that had happened to a different man in a different body.

The world had narrowed to heat, rot, and the thick copper taste pooling in his throat. His head sagged forward against the bottom of the wooden stake, breath shallow, vision blurring at the edges as the infected writhed below him, clawing, shrieking, desperate to tear into what little life he had left.

Somewhere nearby, Ian and Samson’s voices rose; shouting, then breaking, then swallowed entirely by chaos.

Jimmy tried to laugh, or maybe scream, but it came out as nothing more than a ragged exhale.

Then, something shifted.

Not the frantic, mindless violence he’d come to expect, but something sharper, something controlled.

The snarling mass below him fractured, bodies dragged back, cut down, silenced with brutal efficiency. Figures moved through the haze, too coordinated to be infected, too merciless to be anything but human.

Jimmy forced one eye open, barely catching glimpses between the blood and sweat clinging to his lashes; silhouettes marked by ritual, by purpose, by something disturbingly deliberate.

Hands, real hands, reached for him, not to tear him apart, but to pull him free.

Pain returned all at once as they wrenched him down.

It hit like a tidal wave, ripping a broken sound from his throat before everything inside him seemed to collapse. The world lurched violently, tilting sideways as he was carried, no, taken, through the aftermath of whatever had just unfolded.

The screams were different now.

Jimmy tried to focus, to understand, to fight if he needed to, but his body had already made the decision for him. His head lolled uselessly, vision dimming to shadows and indistinct shapes as he lost consciousness.