Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

The pines stood like sentinels along the edge of Greybridge, where the city's decay gave way to a stretch of silent forest. No one crossed into those woods willingly anymore—not since the Watcher began to appear.

A robed figure, tall and still.

No face, no movement—just presence.

Always there.

Watching.

The forest had once been a sanctuary during the first wave of the Spiral's madness. Refugees fled the dying city and tried to build new lives among the trees. But one by one, their fires went cold. Their voices silenced. Their shelters empty.

Now only Marlen Keene remained.

A former priest turned hermit, Marlen lived in a crumbling chapel beneath the pines, scrawling prayers on rotting bark and speaking to no one but the wind. He knew the Watcher well—it had stood outside his chapel every night for the past twelve years.

It never moved.

Never spoke.

But Marlen felt it.

It watched through the world.

On the thirteenth anniversary of his self-exile, the bells in Greybridge rang—the first sound he'd heard from the city in over a decade. Something had stirred. The Spiral was shifting.

That night, the Watcher took a step forward.

Just one.

But the earth groaned. The trees bent. The stars blinked.

Marlen fell to his knees. "What are you?" he whispered.

The forest answered with silence.

But in his mind, he heard it—an image more than a voice: a circle of pines surrounding an ancient pit, roots twisted like veins around something buried. Something breathing.

The Watcher turned.

And began walking.

Marlen followed.

Compelled, not by faith, but by the certainty that if he didn't, the forest would swallow him whole. The path twisted and bent time. Hours became seconds, then years. He walked past skeletons of homes, of people, of thoughts forgotten before they were born.

Finally, they arrived.

The Hollow Ring.

Twelve pines surrounding a black pit, older than the chapel, older than the city. From within the pit rose a faint hum, like wind through bone chimes.

The Watcher stepped to the edge.

Marlen wanted to speak, to scream, to pray. But he could only kneel.

Then the Watcher raised its hand—thin, pale, with fingers like needles—and pointed into the void.

"Something is waking," Marlen whispered, as the pit began to breathe.

From the depths, an eye blinked open.

Massive. Unblinking. Rooted in darkness.

And it watched him back.

A wind swept through the Hollow Ring, and Marlen felt his thoughts unravel—memories erased and replaced with visions: a future drowned in bark, sky torn by roots, people speaking only in sap and silence.

The Watcher turned to him.

"You are chosen," it said, not aloud but inside his blood.

And then—it vanished.

Marlen remained.

Alone.

Marked.

No longer himself.

The Watcher had passed on its purpose.

And now, from the edge of Greybridge, he would watch.

Until the Hollow bloomed.