Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

The roar rolled across the wasteland like an earthquake, rattling the bones of the fallen and shaking loose stones from the tower's spine. It was not the voice of a beast—it was the groan of the earth itself remembering something it had buried long ago.

Damien staggered to the broken window, his breath fogging the crimson air. The dead outside convulsed in unison, their heads snapping toward the source of the sound. The fog churned, parting like a sea under invisible hands.

From the abyss below, something vast stirred.

At first, only the ground shifted—gravestones cracking, soil splitting, mausoleums collapsing as if swallowed whole. Then a shape rose from the rift, scales glistening like wet obsidian. A head emerged, long and serpentine, its maw bristling with teeth that seemed carved from stone. Eyes burned in the mist, twin lanterns of hunger.

Zara's scream echoed through the chamber. "That's no dinosaur… that's—"

"Older," the Keeper interrupted, his voice a strained whisper. "Far older. Before flesh, before bone. A wyrm of the deep earth, chained since the dawn."

The wyrm's roar split the fog, its body coiling upward in impossible length. The dead outside shook violently, their forms snapping into contortions as Damien's binding strained against the awakening. His chest felt as though hooks were tearing him in opposite directions—his army bound to him, and through them, tethered to the ancient thing rising from the earth.

Damien fell to his knees, clutching his skull. "It's… inside me—its hunger—"

Zara knelt beside him, gripping his shoulders, desperation in her eyes. "Fight it! You can't bind that thing—it'll consume you!"

The Keeper stepped forward, his face pale but resolute. "If he does not, it will consume all. The dead are chains, yes, but too few remain. The wyrm rises because the bindings weaken. He is the last link strong enough to hold it."

The wyrm's coils smashed against the ground, sending shockwaves through the cemetery. Corpses flew like broken dolls. The air thickened with dust and rot.

Damien's eyes flared crimson, veins burning like molten fire. He thrust his arms wide, and the horde outside rose again, climbing over one another, forming a grotesque wall of bodies that hurled themselves onto the wyrm's scales. Their claws scraped, their teeth shattered, but their sheer mass dragged at the monster like weights on an anchor.

Every strike of its tail sent agony through Damien's chest. He coughed blood, his body convulsing as though crushed under the wyrm's coils. Still, he pushed more of his will into the swarm, forcing them into its jaws, its eyes, its wounds.

Zara's sobs cut through the thunder. "You're killing yourself!"

Damien's voice came through gritted teeth, guttural, half-human. "If it takes me… it won't take the world."

The wyrm reared high, blotting out the moon, and the horde clung to it like shadows. The ground shook with each thrash, stone splitting beneath the tower.

The Keeper raised his arms, his voice a chant drowned by the roar. "Hold it, boy! Bind the abyss itself!"

And Damien screamed—not in fear, not in surrender, but in defiance—as the wyrm's burning eyes locked with his own.

The binding flared like a star about to collapse.