Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

The ground buckled as though the world itself strained against its own skin. The fissures, once frozen in the survivors' grip, shuddered violently, cracking wider with every pulse from the storm above.

Kael's body shook as the scars along his arms blazed molten red. His teeth ground together, the taste of iron flooding his mouth. "Hold it—hold it!" he roared, though his knees threatened to give way.

Elara knelt over her son, her body shielding his glow as if her flesh could muffle it. The boy writhed in her arms, threads of light wriggling up his neck and face. She pressed her lips to his ear, whispering over and over, "Stay. Stay. Stay mine."

The widow swayed on her knees, blood running freely from her palms into the sigils she had carved. Her lips moved silently, but the ground heard—stones quaked, fissures groaned, the sigils flared as if her very lifeblood fueled their grip. Yet her body dimmed with every pulse, her face hollowing into shadow.

The scarred woman staggered toward another vein, her charred arm useless at her side. She jammed her teeth around the haft of her shattered spear and drove it into the glowing vein with her good hand. The weapon snapped, sparks cascading over her burned skin, but the vein recoiled. She spat out the wood, grinning through blood. "Not so unbreakable, are you?"

The farmer beat his drum with failing arms, rhythm faltering, then recovering in jagged bursts. Each mistake echoed through the fissures like a scream against order, fraying the Unborn's hold. He coughed blood over the drumhead but kept striking, voice ragged: "Fall apart, you bastard. Fall like we have."

The sky thundered with rage. The voice spread through the storm, deeper now, each syllable striking like stone against bone:

"You are threads, weak and frayed. I will weave you into myself. Your scars, your blood, your love—they are all mine."

The boy arched in Elara's arms, his mouth opening in a soundless cry as light burst from his chest. The threads binding him to the storm thickened, tightening like ropes. Elara screamed, clawing at the glowing cords, burning her hands raw. "You don't belong to it! Tear free, my son—tear free!"

Kael slammed his fists deeper into the fissure. His scars split open, glowing like molten cracks in stone. He bellowed, voice breaking into a raw howl: "Take me instead! Bind me, not him!" The fissures surged at his call, light flooding outward, wrapping around his body like chains.

The widow collapsed, her final drops of blood spilling into the earth. Her eyes flickered with a silent vow: If he falls, I fall with him.

For a heartbeat, the cage held. The veins recoiled, the boy's glow dimming back into his chest. The storm shrieked, torn, its body splitting apart into fragments of molten sky.

But the fissures screamed as well, splitting deeper, swallowing the widow whole. Her voice vanished, leaving only trembling light where she had been.

Elara's scream cut through the silence. The binding had held—yet it had claimed one of their own.

Kael raised his blistered face to the sky, eyes burning with fury. "It cost her. It will cost all of us before the end."

Above, the storm began to knit itself back together, its laugh fractured but unyielding.