Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

The battlefield stood still, caught in that trembling pause where even the ash refused to fall. The fissures glowed faintly, the widow's echo thudding like a heart deep beneath the stone. For a moment it seemed they had starved the storm.

Then the sky split.

From the roiling clouds peeled back a shape—no limb, no beast, but a mask vast as the horizon. Hollow eye sockets burned with shifting ash, and its mouth was a cavern without end. The storm had given itself a face.

Elara clutched her son tighter, shielding his gaze. But the boy squirmed, whispering hoarsely, "Don't hide me. I need to see it. It's how it binds." His glow flickered, fragile yet defiant, as though daring the hollow gaze to meet him.

Kael staggered forward, molten scars dripping fire across the cracked earth. His jaw locked against the weight pressing from the mask's presence. "So that's you. Not unformed. Not formless. Just hungry enough to wear our fear as skin."

The mask's voice rolled across the land, each word a grinding avalanche:

"You name me hollow. Yet you pour yourselves into me—blood, fire, vow. I am not born. I am gathered. You are my marrow."

The scarred woman spat into the ash, her grin savage. "Then choke on what you've stolen. Choke till your hollow splits." She raised her sparking arm, the stolen ash-fire erupting in arcs that seared the mask's outline. The storm-face rippled but did not break.

The farmer pounded his drum, though each strike seemed to sink into silence. He leaned close to the cracked hide, whispering between beats: "Widow, guide me. Strike where it echoes." And from the fissures, a faint rhythm answered, aligning with his. The drumbeat came back stronger, heavier—like stone against stone.

Elara pressed her forehead to her son's. "If it gathers from us, then give it something it cannot hold. Give it love it cannot devour." She raised his glowing hands toward the mask, their joined light trembling upward. It struck the hollow sockets, not as fire but as warmth, a pulse that made the ash-face flicker.

For the first time, the voice faltered.

"This… burns differently."

Kael seized the moment, plunging his hands into the fissure. His scars blazed, feeding into the widow's echo, weaving fire with vow, drum with glow. "Then take all of it—the marrow you cannot own."

The fissures erupted, light surging upward like chains woven from blood and ash. They coiled around the mask, biting deep into its hollow mouth. The storm-face convulsed, screaming not with rage but with something nearer to pain.

The boy gasped in Elara's arms, his glow nearly extinguished. "It's not hollow," he whispered. "It's full of everything it's stolen. And if we hold—if we burn—it breaks from the inside."

The mask twisted, its edges cracking like pottery under fire. For a heartbeat, the survivors saw through the fractures—swarms of stolen faces, voices, and lives, writhing in the hollow.

And then the storm screamed again, louder than before, as if to drown its own breaking.