Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

The sun did not rise.

It hovered—trapped in a dull crimson ring—flickering like a dying candle behind a veil not made of clouds but of something older, something alive.

Throughout the crumbling remnants of civilization, those attuned to the spiritual, the cursed, and the long-dead knew the truth: this was the Veil Eclipse—a once-mythic convergence where the boundaries between the realms collapsed entirely. Spirit, shadow, and flesh would walk hand in hand... and no sanctuary would remain.

Mara Quinn awoke gasping in a circle of ash. Her eyes bled shadow; her breath fogged with whispers. Beside her, Iri Vance was still kneeling, the Reliquary of Hearts now cracked, its once-still glass swirling with screaming faces.

All around them, the world groaned as the Veil split wider, letting nightmares in.

The dead did not walk—they floated, their silhouettes flickering like static across the landscape. Children without faces danced in rings, whispering names not spoken in any human tongue. Wraithlike wolves with burning red ribs stalked from the treeline. Above them all, in the sky's bruised gloom, hovered the Chorus of What Comes After—eldritch figures wearing choir robes stitched from skin and fog, singing hymns of unraveling.

Mara knew they had reached the penultimate moment. The Ghoul King's empire surged in the east, Dreadroot stirred beneath the world's last forest, and even the Hollow Sermons now spilled freely from the mouths of newborns.

But it was the Eclipse that would crown it all—a cosmic signal flare, beckoning the Eldest God behind the Veil to emerge.

And She was listening.

Led by visions carved into her dreams by the Choirboy's Maw, Mara and Iri made their way to the Chapel Without Doors—a structure that bled architecture from every era, morphing every few minutes: spires became ribs, stained glass melted into bone, and pews reassembled themselves from screaming roots.

Inside waited the last Seer: Sister Dregna, her mouth stitched closed, eyes grown like mushrooms from her cheeks. She raised her withered hand, revealing the Veil Thorn, a weapon forged in the dream of a dead saint.

With no time to waste, the trio entered the sanctum's altar-chasm, descending into the dream-limned core of the Veil itself.

Reality frayed.

Thoughts bled into the walls.

Mara saw her mother's death, her own, and the world's—all overlapping in recursive agony. Iri saw the stars screaming. Dregna simply pointed.

There, at the heart, was the Tear. The original wound between realms, pulsing like an exposed nerve.

Around it hovered guardians of mind and sorrow—phantoms whose forms constantly changed, now children, now kings, now beasts.

As the Chorus above began their final note, Mara drove the Veil Thorn into the Tear.

The world screamed.

Light and shadow inverted.

And for one moment, all souls—living, dead, and forgotten—stood together beneath a sunless sky.

When the Tear closed, silence reigned.

But it was not peace.

It was the inhale before the final scream.