The moment Vonjo felt the tingle on his skin—the kind of primal sensation that whispered ambush—he stepped sideways without hesitation.

A crashing noise followed, then the screech of metal bending and drywall shattering.

He didn't flinch, didn't blink.

The world slowed around him as the corner of the apartment erupted in debris and dust, a grotesque hand-like shape made of concrete and bone scraping past where his throat had been a second ago.

They were already here.

Vonjo landed lightly on the floor, knees bent, hand already reaching back—not for a blade, not for his gauntlet. But for the old longbow strapped diagonally across his back.

The weapon clicked into his palm like it was born there. He grinned.

"So you guys are that desperate to get a kill?" he muttered, flicking his fingers and drawing an arrow.

Another reanimation burst through the door, followed by three more—mismatched limbs, faces sewn together from the recently deceased, glowing eyes, brittle and twitching. There was no ceremony. They charged.

But Vonjo didn't absorb their attacks.

Where was the fun in that?

Where was the challenge?

He could feel his innate ability humming beneath his skin, eager to activate, to neutralize. But no. He wanted to see how far he could go with archery alone.

Just a bow, and the thrill of hitting moving death with pinpoint precision.

He ducked behind a pillar, kicked off it, and sprinted to the window.

The frame shattered as he dove through it, rolled mid-air, and landed on a lower balcony with his bow already nocked and drawn. Distance. He needed more of it. He needed the room to breathe, to turn the battlefield into a playground.

And then—he fired.

One arrow sliced through the head of a reanimation peering through the hole he'd just made. The creature fell, its body toppling like a marionette with its strings cut.

Then another.

Then another.

The arrows came in a rhythm that quickly abandoned anything human.

Vonjo moved and shot like a living storm—leaping from balcony to balcony, spinning, twisting mid-air, drawing arrows that shimmered in the moonlight.

Each shot bore a purpose. Some pierced skulls. Others ricocheted off surfaces, bouncing in perfect geometry to hit necks, chests, eyes.

He tried something insane—fired an arrow into a fan unit, let the recoil shoot it into the reanimated creature's jaw. It worked. He laughed.

He kicked a chair into the air, fired an arrow that hit the leg of the chair, redirecting the bolt into a zombie's temple. It worked again.

"Okay, okay, that was sick," Vonjo whispered to himself, eyes wide.

He launched another—this time wrapping the arrow in the end of a ripped curtain to create drag, slowing its flight enough to time it with his movement.

When he jumped, the arrow met him midair and redirected, slicing downward into the chest of another corpse.

Below, pieces of the apartment collapsed from the absurdity of it all—chunks of rebar and drywall tumbling down like dominoes. Each shot echoed with velocity and ingenuity. He wasn't just shooting. He was playing with physics, experimenting with mayhem.

Behind the line of collapsing undead, a voice finally roared out—hoarse, angry, ancient.

"HALT!"

The sand man had arrived.

A tall, draped figure emerged from the rising dust cloud, dragging with him a trail of scorched sand and brittle bones. His body wasn't solid—always shifting, face half-formed, parts of his torso filled with flowing particles instead of organs. He looked like a man made from the afterlife itself.

His hand lifted—and the dead obeyed.

"Spread," he rasped.

The reanimations stopped charging. Then moved like a formation of ants, crawling onto the walls, climbing across the ceiling, surrounding the building.

"Strike from angles four and six. Pressure him to the west balcony. He favors forward momentum. Cut it off."

The sand man's voice was thunderous but methodical. As if he were reciting instructions to old comrades from a war long past.

"Unit six, distract with feints. If he reloads, take a limb. Don't aim to kill—aim to scatter his precision. Wear him down."

Vonjo stopped, crouching on a rooftop pipe, bowstring tight. His eyes narrowed.

"…He's commanding them?" he muttered, eyebrows lifting. "You're not just a necro-freak. You're a tactician."

The next volley of corpses moved with more intelligence. One acted as bait. Another ducked. A third threw debris to block his vision. Vonjo barely dodged a spinning chair aimed straight for his head.

He fired three shots in retaliation. Only one hit.

He laughed in delight.

"Oh, this is getting fun."

The sand man observed quietly. His form rippled, one hand extended forward like a conductor. Occasionally he paused, analyzing. Watching Vonjo's firing pattern, his stance, his breathing.

"His draw slackens at the twenty-third second. Exploit that delay."

Vonjo heard it.

He heard the bastard calling out the flaws in his archery like a chess master with a microphone.

That was it.

He grinned, pulled another arrow, and yelled, "Hey, Mummy-Daddy! If you're gonna narrate my every move, at least compliment my form!"

He fired.

A double shot—two arrows intertwined mid-flight, one spinning to act as a shield for the other. The first got knocked down by debris. The second pierced the gut of the lead corpse.

Sand man tilted his head. "He adapts. Mid-air redirection. Predictive behavior."

Vonjo clicked his tongue. "Predict this."

He aimed upward, not at a corpse—but at a hanging light fixture. The arrow sliced the chain, causing the huge chandelier to swing across the hall like a pendulum. It smashed into five corpses in a row, scattering bones like confetti.

Vonjo flipped into the hall, landed with style, and winked at the sand man.

The general of the dead was not amused.

But his forces were dying, one by one. Not in slow intervals—no. They were collapsing in waves. Falling apart from Vonjo's unpredictable shots, his use of the environment, the tempo of his counter-offensive.

The sand man lowered his hand. Silence fell. Even the corpses seemed to halt.

Vonjo stood in the flickering hallway light, surrounded by the fallen. He flicked the dust off his sleeves.

"What? Out of puppets?" he said, voice cocky. "Got any more tricks, old relic? Or are you just here to give inspirational speeches?"

The sand man didn't move for a few long moments.

Then, his voice dropped to a whisper, barely heard over the wind.

"You… boy…"

His eyes glowed.

"You are worthy. Worthy to face the era that sleeps beneath the ash. Let me summon… my comrades."

Vonjo's smile froze.

From the shadows behind the sand man, the floor cracked.

Something stepped out.

Armored. Taller than a man. Plated in dark obsidian bones fused with metal. Its jaw cracked open with an echoing creak, as if unused for centuries.

Then another emerged. This one with six arms and a rusted lance. Its chest bore ritual carvings that still bled black fluid.

And another—twice the size, carrying the skulls of beasts Vonjo had never seen before. A banner of war stitched from skin hung behind its back.

One by one, they came.

Each more terrifying than the last. These were not mere reanimations.

They were ancient warriors, entombed relics from long-forgotten wars. Sand-encrusted legends forced back into motion.

Vonjo's grip on his bow tightened.

His breath quickened.

And then he smiled.

A big, wide, cocky, damn-near delighted grin.

"…Now that's more like it."