Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

The moon was a red coin in the sky—bleeding light across the old ruins of the Hollow Temple.

Beneath its gaze, thirteen figures stood in perfect formation. Cloaked in ash-grey robes, their faces hidden behind featureless white masks. Each bore a symbol carved into the mask's forehead: a spiral, a flame, a fang, a fang in flame, and more—glyphs older than language.

This was the Masked Circle, and tonight, they were to swear the Oath of Binding.

Madame Grin watched from behind a cracked pillar, breath held like a coin in her throat. Her tavern walls had long whispered rumors of this night—a once-in-a-decade ritual where the cult renewed its covenant with the Hollow One. But no witness had ever lived to tell what truly happened.

She wasn't here to watch.

She was here to kill one of them.

Among the circle stood her brother, Tomas Grin, taken by the cult seven years ago, when he vanished from her doorstep in the rain. She had tracked him, learned the symbols, whispered the false prayers, and finally infiltrated their silence.

Now, with the dagger of ashbone in her boot and her old name forgotten, she waited for the moment.

In the center of the circle stood the Ash Prophet—his mask gold, his robes stitched with human hair. His voice, when it came, sounded like breath in a crypt.

"We are the mouth and the hunger. We speak not for ourselves, but for the Hollow One, who waits beneath the weight of forgotten names."

Each cultist raised a hand.

"We bind our blood to the ash. We abandon flesh and fear. We become less—so the Hollow may become more."

A girl was brought forward—no older than twelve. Hooded. Shivering.

Tomas Grin stepped from the circle. He knelt before her, whispering something before taking the ceremonial dagger.

Madame Grin stepped from the shadows, too slow to stop it.

The girl's throat was slit.

Not for death. But for the voice.

Her blood poured onto the stone, carving glowing lines that formed a single eye. The girl's body convulsed—then rose again, eyes gone silver, mouth moving in a chant that echoed from nowhere.

Madame Grin screamed.

Tomas turned. Recognition flickered behind the mask.

"Anna…?" he whispered. "What have you done?"

She drew the ashbone dagger. "I came to bring you home."

But the Prophet only laughed.

"He was never yours. He belongs to the silence now."

Tomas hesitated. The dagger in his hand trembled. The eye on the floor blinked.

And in that moment, Madame Grin struck—not Tomas, but the Prophet.

The blade went through the mask, through flesh, through memory. The Prophet collapsed, bleeding smoke.

The chanting stopped. The girl dropped.

And the circle broke.

The eye on the floor closed.

Madame Grin and Tomas fled into the night, no longer masked, no longer bound.

But far beneath the temple ruins, something stirred in disappointment.

The Oath had been broken.

And the Hollow One does not forget betrayal.