Zephyr laid Dianna gently on the ground, his gaze lingering on her pale, beautiful face. "I'm sorry... I can't repay you for saving my life." His voice was barely a whisper.
Then, he turned to face the approaching horde. A wall of rotting flesh and lifeless eyes, slowly closing in. Their guttural moans echoed through the night, a dreadful chorus of death. The stench of decay filled the air, thick and suffocating.
Zephyr's mind raced, grasping for a solution, a way to turn this hopeless battle into something other than a slaughter. But there was nothing. No escape. No salvation.
And then, a thought surfaced. A thought that had lingered in the back of his mind since the first moment he had learned what Willpower could do.
A nuclear explosion.
The ultimate release of energy. The power to erase everything in an instant.
Of course, Zephyr had never seriously considered it before. Who in their right mind would? Unleashing such destruction would mean his own death. But now…
Now, he had nothing to lose.
His mind flickered through the fundamentals. He had studied nuclear reactions, learned about them in another life. A nuclear explosion did not require vast amounts of energy from the one who triggered it. It was simply about setting the conditions. A chain reaction, the splitting of atoms, an inferno born from the smallest spark.
And Willpower…
It was not bound by complexity, only by scale.
The larger or heavier the object he wished to create, the more Willpower it required. But a nuclear explosion? That only needed a small sphere, barely 10 kilograms of Plutonium-239.
And complexity was merely a test of imagination.
If he could shape a sphere of Plutonium-239 and trigger it with a single neutron, the first atom would split, releasing energy and additional neutrons. Those neutrons would strike other atoms, setting off a rapid chain reaction. Like a row of falling dominoes, the process would escalate within a fraction of a second, unleashing an immense surge of energy in an instant.
It is possible. I could doit.
Zephyr closed his eyes, reaching deep inside himself, summoning every last drop of Willpower. His body felt hollow, drained, but he pushed past the pain. He had nothing left to hold back.
His mind became the core of a warhead, his Willpower the mechanism to ignite it.
In the space before him, an object began to take shape. A small, dense sphere, no larger than a grapefruit, its surface smooth and dark, pulsing with something unseen yet immeasurably potent.
He pictured the neutron initiator, the precise moment when fission would begin. He imagined the chain reaction, the violent, unstoppable cascade as atoms split, each one unleashing more energy than the last, releasing devastation beyond anything this world had ever seen.
A heat unlike anything he had ever felt began to rise, warping the space around him. The wind howled, the trees groaned, and for the first time, the undead hesitated. Their heads tilting, as if sensing the impending doom.
He had done it.
He had reached the point of no return.
His mind screamed at him to stop, but it was too late. The reaction had begun, an invisible pressure coiling within the space around him, a force waiting to detonate, to consume everything in a blinding flash.
Then.
A whisper echoed in the depths of his mind.
Stop.
It was as if time had rewound itself. The immense energy he had gathered did not explode, it simply ceased to exist. The Willpower he had drained to trigger the blast flowed back into him, filling the hollow void it had left behind. The burns on his hands, seared by the heat of his own creation, mended before his eyes, returning to their unscathed state.
Zephyr gasped, his knees buckling. The overwhelming force vanished, leaving only the cold night air and his heaving breath. He stared at his hands, trembling, unable to comprehend what had just happened.
Had he failed? No… it wasn't failure. Something had stopped him. Something beyond his understanding.
Zephyr stood frozen, his breath unsteady as he stared at the undead horde. His mind raced.
Should I try again? Should I restart the nuclear fission?
But then, something strange happened.
The undead were looking at him, not with mindless hunger, not with the vacant emptiness of the dead, but with something else. Fear.
He did not know how rotting, lifeless eyes could hold such emotion, yet he felt it. A shudder rippled through the horde. Their groans turned uneasy, their stiff, decayed limbs trembling. Then, as if some invisible force had shattered their will, they turned.
One by one, they fled.
The monstrous creatures, once relentless, once unstoppable, scattered into the darkness like panicked beasts. Some stumbled over themselves in their haste, others let out low, mournful wails as they vanished into the night.
Zephyr had no idea what had just happened. No idea what force had denied his Willpower or what had struck fear into the heart of the undead.
But at that moment, none of it mattered.
They were still alive.
For now.
Zephyr lit a campfire, its warm glow flickering against the dark. He placed Dianna's hands near the flames, hoping to chase away the biting cold that clung to her. Her skin felt icy, her breath shallow.
He looked at her pale face, still beautiful as ever, but now carrying a fragile stillness that unsettled him.
Zephyr sat beside her, helpless. He had no healing magic, no way to restore her strength as she had done for him. All he could do was wait and hope.
A deep unease gnawed at him. What if she had drained all her Willpower? What if, when she woke, she was no longer herself? If she had lost all humanity, would she turn on him the moment she opened her eyes?
The thought chilled him more than the night air.
Time stretched endlessly as he sat in silence, the fire crackling softly.
Then, as the first light of dawn pierced the fading darkness, Dianna's fingers twitched.
Her eyes fluttered open.