RSAsilver

Ch22:Pay Back

Aiden hunched low over his map once more, crouched inside the dim shelter of an abandoned tailor's shop, the broken glass of the front window webbed like ice behind him. The flickering flame of a scavenged candle danced gently across the page as his sharp eyes scanned every street, alley, and marked zone.

Four alleyways.

Four possible escape routes for Merle once he broke free from the cuffs and descended into the chaos of the city, likely disoriented, panicked, a...

Ch21: Now I'm pissed

Aiden crouched low once more, hidden in the shadows near the roof's edge of the neighboring office building, binoculars steady in hand. The dying sun had slipped fully below the horizon, casting the city of Atlanta in a hazy blend of orange and steel gray. The streets below still groaned with the weight of the horde, but his focus was no longer on them—it was on the rooftop across the way.

There, the chaos was unraveling in real time.

Merle Dixon. Loud, unstable...

Ch20:Observer

The orange and violet hues of the evening sun spilled across the ruined skyline of Atlanta, casting long, war-torn shadows between the skyscrapers and over the husks of forgotten cars. The air was cooler up here, the wind gentler, brushing past cracked concrete and rusted AC units like a whisper. From his perch atop a five-story office building, Aiden sat with one leg bent and the other hanging loosely over the ledge, his posture calm but alert—an apex predator at rest.

The streets be...

Ch19: Shopping Spree

Aiden sat on a rusted metal bench, his back against a cold pillar inside the dead heart of the mall.

The fluorescent lights above had long since flickered out, leaving only the natural grey light that poured in from the shattered skylights high above, dust drifting slowly like falling ash in the stillness. The mall had gone quiet again. Too quiet.

In front of him, laid out in a grotesque, macabre sprawl, were sixty-five walker corpses, stacked and arranged like co...

Ch18:Killing spree 2

The scent of fire still lingered in the corridors of the old mall.

It clung to the air like an aftertaste of violence—smoke curling from melted ceiling tiles and scorched mannequins. The last few embers from Aiden's Molotov flickered weakly against the broken tiles, casting twitching shadows that danced along walls painted with soot.

But Aiden was already gone.

He'd vanished before the smoke had even begun to settle, slipping into the winding service corridors behind the s...

Ch17:Killing spree

The apartment's main stairwell creaked beneath his boots as Aiden descended the last flight. Dust puffed from the crumbling corners, and the scent of rotting drywall mingled with the metallic sting of the outside air drifting in through fractured windows. Each step was measured, calm, but heavy with purpose. He wasn't running anymore. He wasn't hiding.

He was prepared.

The moment he reached the busted front doors of the building—half blown out, half boarded up with scav...

Ch16:Rest day

Aiden awoke to the pale shafts of sunlight filtering through the slatted blinds of the apartment's cracked windows, casting dusty golden lines across the peeling wooden floor and over his motionless form. The silence was uncanny—thick, almost unnatural—broken only by the occasional creak of the old building settling and the distant echo of a siren fading into the heart of a sleeping city. Atlanta, once a bustling, vibrant metropolis, now lay in quiet decay. The apartment complex he had fo...

Ch5: Planning

After Aiden had finished boarding up the storefront—hammering in the last crooked nail with a heavy sigh—he stepped back, wiped the sweat from his brow, and cautiously approached the dusty window. Peeling back a corner of the weather-worn curtain, he peered outside.

Night had fallen completely. The once-bustling little market area lay cloaked in heavy darkness, eerily silent and still. The only illumination came from the full moon hanging high in the sky, its pale silver light casti...

Ch15: Silent night

As dusk settled over the skeleton of Atlanta, painting the ruined cityscape in shades of ash and fire-orange, Aiden sat silently near the cracked window of the apartment he had secured earlier. His eyes scanned the streets below—once alive with movement, laughter, noise—now a graveyard of silence and stillness. The wind carried the occasional distant groan or the scuffle of a walker shuffling over loose debris. But this part of the city was mostly quiet now. The predators had already move...

Ch14: Deadly City

As Aiden continued driving, the city skyline of Atlanta began to peek over the horizon, hazy through the heat and distant smoke. The once-vibrant metropolis now loomed like a silent monument to a fallen world, jagged with broken buildings and haunted by memories of what it used to be.

He stayed on the right side of the divided highway, the asphalt cracked and overgrown in places but mostly clear—eerily so. The road stretched ahead like a desolate artery leading straight into the heart...

Ch13: Time to move

After completing the quest, Aiden remained motionless for a moment, his chest heaving with every breath. Sweat dripped from his brow and soaked through the back of his shirt, his lungs burning from the non-stop hour-long sprint that had tested the very limits of his endurance. The harsh rhythm of his breathing echoed faintly in the silent, desolate street around him. Every muscle in his body ached with exhaustion, his legs felt like dead weight, and his heart pounded like a war drum in his ch...

Ch12: Home Invasion 2

Aiden bolted from the side of the garage, sprinting low and fast across the narrow suburban street. His boots hit the cracked pavement with barely a sound, each step measured to avoid broken glass or loose gravel. The neighborhood around him was still silent, but that silence in this world was always deceptive—walkers had a way of hiding in the folds of shadow, in forgotten doorways or behind overturned vehicles. Any noise, any movement, could draw them like moths to flame.

The house ...

Ch11: Home Invasion

Aiden stood at the edge of the hospital entrance once more, his silhouette outlined by the dim light bleeding through the overcast sky. Before him stretched a haunting tableau: rows upon rows of black body bags, lined with grim precision across the cracked courtyard pavement. They hadn't moved since he first saw them. Death had a way of freezing time. The wind tugged at the edges of a few, flapping the plastic like faint whispers of the past. The air was thick with a metallic tang, a bitter m...

Ch10: Returned

After what felt like an eternity wrapped in the comforting darkness of sleep, Aiden stirred beneath the tousled covers, eyes fluttering open slowly, reluctantly. The room was now dimly lit by the muted gray of early morning, the kind that bleeds in softly through the curtains before the sun has fully committed to rising. Dust motes hung motionless in the pale light like flecks of memory suspended in air, and everything was still, save for the occasional groan of distant pipes or the soft whis...

Ch9: The Old ways

The heavy metal door creaked as it slowly swung open behind Aiden, whispering its long-forgotten warning into the silence of the ruined library. He stepped inside like a predator entering the den of something larger than himself—silent, alert, every movement controlled and deliberate. His eyes darted across the ruined lobby, scanning every corner and darkened corridor for the glint of movement or the faint drag of an undead footstep.

Shadows crawled across the cracked marble floor, th...

Ch8: Cleaning up

After completing the quest, Aiden wandered back toward the edge of the abandoned parking lot, where an old, dust-covered sedan sat quietly beneath the shade of a twisted oak. He caught his reflection in the cracked side mirror, pausing for a long moment to take himself in.

The man staring back at him looked more like a shadow than a survivor—clad in a black canvas tactical jacket, fitted snug across his broad shoulders, the material rugged and worn from travel, yet still resistant to ...

Ch7: Loot Run 2

The moment Aiden stepped out of the home goods store, the air hit him — sharp, dry, and laced with a scent he had come to recognize instantly: rot.

He froze.

Four figures were staggering toward him from the adjacent alley, their limbs twitching with jerky, unnatural movements. Sunlight spilled across their half-decayed forms — grey, mottled skin stretched over bone, patches of flesh missing entirely. Their hollow eyes locked on him in unison, and they let out a wet, guttural m...

Ch6: Loot Run 1

Aiden stepped through the doorway of his one-time shelter, his boots crunching lightly on the cracked concrete as he emerged into the morning light. The cool air hit his face, fresh but laced with the scent of dust, rust, and distant decay. He paused just outside, eyes scanning the street with disciplined caution.

His hand hovered near the handle of his crowbar, ready to react at the slightest sound. Walkers had a habit of showing up when least expected—drawn by movement, by scent, by...

Ch4: Bunkering Down

Aiden stood motionless over the final corpse, his breath escaping in slow, ragged pulls that misted faintly in the evening air. The body beneath him twitched once, then lay still, its skull cracked clean from the force of his strike. The silence that followed was oppressive, like a curtain falling at the end of a grim performance.

It was done.

Four hours. That was how long this operation had taken—four painstaking hours of stalking, waiting, and striking. The sun had begun its d...

Ch3 : Scavenging

Aiden stepped beyond the hospital gates, the crunch of broken glass and debris underfoot giving way to the dull thud of his boots on cracked pavement. Behind him, the building loomed like a mausoleum, its shattered windows staring blankly into the open sky. The courtyard of body bags was already fading into the past—an ugly memory in a world filled with them—but the smell still clung to his jacket, and the weight of it lingered in his mind.

He paused for a moment just outside the pe...

CH2: Bloody start

After Aiden slipped through the stairwell door, he descended one flight, the metal steps creaking faintly beneath his weight. The air grew colder and heavier with each level, the scent of dust, rust, and something fouler settling in. He was heading for the bottom floor—toward whatever waited in the shadows of the hospital's lower levels.

His grip tightened around the pocket knife at his side. It wasn't much, but it was better than being empty-handed. Down there, in the silence and the...

CH1 : New world

Aiden Smith died alone. But not forgotten.

He never had many friends. Not in real life, anyway. He was the kid who sat in the back of class with a hoodie up and earbuds in, lost in his favorite RPGs — Ebonvale, Hollow Light, Dead Souls. In those worlds, he was strong. Brave. Needed.

In the real world, he was invisible. A loner. The kind of person people didn't even notice until he was gone.

That night — the night the house caught fire — he was walking...