The Dead Zone Protocol

When the sky splits open and the System descends, it does not offer humanity salvation. It offers terms. Cities become hunting grounds, suburbs mutate into corpse-lit labyrinths, and every survivor receives a class, a level, and a timer counting down to the next wave. For Jonah Vale, a disgraced paramedic haunted by the people he failed to save, the apocalypse begins in the back of an ambulance surrounded by screaming patients, impossible monsters, and a blinking prompt only he can see: ERROR: SOUL CONTAMINATION DETECTED.

Jonah awakens as a Plague Warden, a forbidden class capable of absorbing corruption from monsters, terrain, and infected humans. His power can heal the dying or turn them into weapons, but every use drags him closer to becoming the thing he fights. As safe zones rise behind blood-forged barriers and factions carve up the ruins of Denver, Jonah must lead a group of survivors into the expanding Dead Zone, where the System’s first failed experiment is still alive—and it remembers Earth.