Prologue

In the blink of an eye, the world as we knew it vanished. 

One moment, life carried on as usual; the next, corpses filled the streets. At first, they staggered like zombies from the movies, dragging their feet and slurring what they spoke like brain-dead individuals; we thought they were. But with time, we were proven wrong. 

In weeks, society, laws and norms turned their heads as desperation and survival seemed to be at the forefront of everyone's minds. Spouses turned knives on their spouses as they exploited themselves. Siblings betrayed each other, wives killed their husbands, men butchered themselves, women offered themselves, and friends became enemies, as gangs, syndicates and various organisations, including religious and cult-like ones, became the government. Soon, cannibalism became the norm as the government kept silent.

…

Various world governments crumbled beneath the weight of panic and betrayal, from fourth-world countries to even the Second World countries. Several hospitals and clinics shut their doors, leaving the injured to bleed in the corridors. 

Pharmacies were looted; ventilators abandoned alongside various other medicines and kits. In the chaos, common ailments became immediate death sentences—an asthma attack, a cancerous tumour, even a simple fall from a ladder could kill. 

Within days, starvation and disease claimed millions more lives than any bite or scratch could. By week's end, nearly sixty million souls had perished without ever seeing the living dead. Then came the deeper rot. As the plague of shambling bodies spread, something else stirred beneath the earth. Forests erupted in violet‑tinged spores, and animals swelled into nightmarish colossi. 

The tiny insects that once skittered at our feet now buzzed overhead in frantic swarms, their mandibles dripping acid. Entire fields died of a blight that glowed like radiation. Stories passed among that nature was calling.

Looming from the surviving media networks were images of a single, gargantuan canopy of willow branches, stretching over the Pacific, as many took it as an AI generation of the advanced kind that had recently emerged.

But that was only the beginning, merely the start of the end. The zombies grew and multiplied, spreading like a plague and engulfing everything. Cities and towns crumbled as rural areas became flooded with people fleeing to safety. Everything began to change—some argued it was for the good of nature, while others believed it signalled the downfall of mankind. People were no longer the same, and our reality and society became fragmented. Despite all the advancements in science and technology, nothing could stop what was happening.

After the initial catastrophe, it all became hell.