Void Reaper: The Essence Apocalypse

Chapter 77 77: Julia

In the women's dorm, on the fourth floor, in room 417 - where a week ago there had been coffee mugs, open laptops, and piles of exam notes - everything now looked like a makeshift shelter built by people who hadn't planned for war, but had been forced into it.

The door was jammed with a wardrobe tipped on its side, a desk wedged under the handle, and a metal bed they'd shoved against the entrance together on the first day, when the first inhuman sounds had started echoing down the hallway.

Four girls sat on one bed, packed so tightly their shoulders and knees never stopped touching. In conditions like this, you clung to warmth and the presence of other people by instinct - even when the air was stifling and the position miserable.

The smallest of them, a slight brunette named Marta, who'd barely spoken since yesterday, finally leaned toward Karolina and whispered so softly it was barely audible.

"Karolina… I'm hungry… is there anything left?"

Karolina closed her eyes for a moment, like the question itself hurt.

"Marta… we ate the last two biscuits from that packet this morning," she whispered back, keeping her voice trapped within a few steps.

All four of them knew there was nothing left in the room. The last bottle of water had been split the evening before into four tiny sips - so small they irritated the throat more than they helped.

"Karolina…" Alicja spoke next, the one with the delicate face and big eyes that now looked too large in her gaunt features. "Do you think… we're going to die here?"

There was no melodrama in her voice. Just plain fear, growing heavier with every day of hunger and stillness, when you started thinking too much because you didn't have the strength to do anything else.

Karolina looked at her and tried to smile, but it came out more like a grimace.

"Don't say that. Someone has to be alive in the city. Someone strong. Maybe they're already clearing buildings," she said - though she wasn't sure she believed it.

Marta lifted her head slightly.

"I saw him from the window… that man… a few days ago. Fighting in the courtyard." Her voice trembled at the memory. "He was tearing those monsters apart like they were paper."

All four of them remembered it. They'd stood by the window then, hidden behind the curtain, convinced the fourth floor was safe, watching a powerful Evolver carve a path through the zombies.

For a moment, they'd thought the nightmare was ending.

Then something changed. Something made even him retreat upward into the building, and after that he vanished from view - like whatever was higher up had been too much.

"If even someone like that had to run…" Alicja murmured, eyes glassy with tears she was fighting not to let fall. "Then who would come for us?"

A heavy silence settled over the room. From the corridor came a long, uneasy sound - something between dragging and a low growl - and all four girls automatically stopped breathing, as if even air in their lungs could give them away.

A few seconds passed.

Silence again.

Then the last of them spoke - the one closest to the wall. Her name was Julia. Before the apocalypse she'd been one of the most recognizable girls in their year: tall, long dark hair, the kind of figure people noticed without trying.

Now she looked like a shadow of that person, but stubbornness still glowed in her eyes.

"I don't care who it is," she said quietly, but clearly. "If someone gets us out… if someone actually saves my life… I'm not going to pretend I'm proud. I can stay with him. I don't care who he is."

Karolina let out a faint snort, more habit than amusement.

"Well, look at that. Our campus star's already picking her next hero," she whispered.

Julia rolled her eyes, though there was more exhaustion in it than arrogance.

"Stop. In this world everything changed anyway. Pride won't fill your stomach."

It was true.

Before the apocalypse, Julia could've chosen from dozens of guys who tried to get her attention every day. Now she sat on a barricaded bed with an empty stomach and hope so thin it was almost transparent.

None of them said it out loud, but all four were thinking the same thing.

If someone really came.

If someone was strong enough.

Maybe this hell wouldn't be their grave after all.

Minutes crawled by, silence stretching into infinity, broken only by soft, uneven breathing and distant dragging somewhere in the corridor. Then Julia spoke again, this time more carefully, like she wasn't sure she should even bring it up.

"Do you think… Natalia is safe?" she whispered, barely lifting her head.

The other three looked at her automatically.

Karolina answered without hesitation this time, like she needed to believe in something just to keep from falling apart.

"Yeah," she whispered, firm. "Absolutely. It's Natalia. She's not the type to sit in a corner and wait to die."

Karolina had only known her since the start of university, but she'd understood quickly: behind that cool face and calm gaze was someone who always thought two steps ahead and didn't break easily. Natalia wasn't the type to panic. If the world collapsed, she'd stand on the rubble and figure out how to use it.

Julia exhaled softly.

"You're right…" she admitted.

She'd known Natalia longer, even before all of this. She knew her friend could be arrogant, could look down on people, could irritate others with that indifferent posture - but she also knew where it came from. A strict upbringing. A demanding family. Pressure to be the best. Constantly proving her worth. Natalia wasn't someone who gave up, even when she acted like nothing mattered.

"She's not sitting like we are," Julia added, quieter. "She's not waiting. If she's alive… she's doing something."

Marta nodded weakly.

"Maybe she's already far away… maybe she found somewhere safe."

"Or she's fighting," Alicja murmured.

All four pictured Natalia not as a terrified girl locked in a room, but as someone who could look a monster in the face without taking a step back. That image became a mental crutch - thin thread they could hold onto so they didn't drown in hopelessness.

"If anyone's going to survive this world," Julia said softly, "it's her."

And she believed it. Natalia's life hadn't been easy even before the apocalypse, so paradoxically this new brutal world might be the place where her coldness and determination stopped being flaws and became weapons.

Silence again.

And then…

Boom!

Something heavy hit the floor somewhere in the corridor.

All four girls went rigid at once.

They moved to the window as quietly as they could, each placing a foot like the floor might betray them with a single creak. Karolina eased the corner of the curtain aside by two fingers, leaving a narrow slit that revealed the courtyard between the buildings.

Fear was still in their eyes, but beside it something else appeared - something that had almost died over the last few days.

A spark of hope.

This building had become a prison that protected them from immediate death on one side… and slowly killed them with hunger and stillness on the other. So any change outside felt like proof the world was still moving.

"Look…" Marta whispered, unable to stop herself - then immediately bit her lip so she wouldn't speak louder. "There… that's a person."

In the courtyard, between abandoned cars and overturned benches, a figure really was moving. Not shambling like a zombie, not wandering aimlessly - moving with purpose, fast and sure.

"Is it possible help actually came?" Alicja murmured, feeling her heart start to race.

At the same moment, several zombies that had been almost motionless in the building's shadow reacted to the sudden noise from the courtyard. One lifted its head. Another began to move toward the sound, like something waking from a stupor.

Those silent, lurking shapes were why none of the girls had ever tried to escape through the window, even though from the fourth floor you could potentially climb down a pipe or drop onto the roof of a lower wing. Hunger pushed you toward desperation, but the knowledge that dozens of corpses loitered right beneath the building smothered every stupid idea.

Now, though, something had shifted.

The movement and noise pulled part of the zombies away, dragging them toward one spot and away from the dorm wall.

Julia held her breath, staring with wide eyes.

"He's… fighting," she whispered.

The figure below moved too fast for them to make out a face, but the way he slipped around grasping hands - the way one corpse suddenly collapsed - made one thing clear.

This wasn't an ordinary survivor.

This was someone strong.

Karolina felt a painful lump rise in her throat.

"Maybe… maybe it's someone like before," she whispered, remembering the man from days ago.

Marta and Alicja watched with shining eyes, and for the first time in a long time there was something in them besides fear and exhaustion.

They wanted only one thing.

For that person not to turn back.

Not to vanish.

For someone to finally come inside and open the doors that had separated them from the world for days.

Because if this was their only chance…

None of them intended to lose it.

***

On the roof of a four-story building overlooking most of the courtyard between dorms stood Leon, Natalia, Marek, and Adam. The wind tugged at their clothes and carried the heavy stench of rot - so constant after days that no one reacted with nausea anymore. They accepted it like part of the new world.

From below came dragging.

Not scattered.

Not chaotic.

Dozens of pairs of feet, moving toward them in irritating, uneven rhythms, as if the whole area were being drawn by an invisible signal someone had just sent.

Adam stood near the edge, an arrow already nocked, eyes focused - but there was tension in his movements he couldn't fully hide. Marek, leaning against the concrete wall, kept tightening and loosening his fingers around his weapon's grip, glancing down repeatedly as if trying to judge whether the number of zombies was still "manageable" or already tipping into something worse.

Leon said nothing.

He stood with his arms loose at his sides, watching waves of corpses react to noise and motion, converging in one direction as if someone were provoking them on purpose.

"He was the one most against this," Natalia murmured under her breath, eyes still on the courtyard.

Her tone wasn't spiteful.

More like irony.

"And now he's working the hardest."

She glanced left, toward the lower rooftop of the adjacent building, where Roland moved at a speed the human eye could barely follow.

His silhouette vanished and reappeared among the zombies. His cane flashed like nothing but a piece of wood - yet every strike was precise, and each one ended with another body dropping instantly.