Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

In the heart of the Moonwood, where no paths remain and even the wind forgets to blow, there lies a grove untouched by time. The trees there are tall and silent, their trunks pale and smooth as bone. Locals call it The Rootgrave, and none who've entered have ever returned unchanged—if they returned at all.

Mira Dalwyn had no fear of such tales. She was a herbalist, trained in the old ways, and believed the forest whispered only to those who listened. So when her mother fell ill and the village healer spoke of a cure that grew in the Rootgrave, Mira packed her satchel, braided charms into her hair, and crossed the threshold at dawn.

At first, all was still. The deeper she walked, the quieter the forest became, until even her heartbeat sounded too loud. The air thickened. Shadows lengthened. The trees changed—no longer covered in bark, but smooth, hard, and ivory-colored.

Then she saw them: bones—not scattered remains, but grown into the trees.

Femurs entwined with branches. Skulls nestled like fruit in the canopy. Ribs curved around trunks in haunting symmetry.

It wasn't a grove.

It was a burial site that had grown hungry.

She approached one tree with caution. Something pulsed beneath the surface of its "bark." Embedded within, half-consumed, was a human hand—fingers curled, still twitching.

Mira stumbled back.

And the forest groaned.

The ground cracked beneath her feet, roots breaking the soil in twisting spirals. They reached toward her—not to ensnare, but to offer. A pale flower bloomed from the base of a nearby root, glowing faintly blue.

The cure.

Mira stepped forward to pluck it.

The moment her fingers brushed the petals, the ground opened.

She fell—tumbling into a hollow chamber beneath the grove.

Bones. Everywhere.

Not scattered, but arranged. As if a mind—an intelligence—had built a cathedral of marrow and silence.

In the center stood a towering figure of fused root and bone. It had no face, only the twisted remnants of skulls pressed together in a terrible mask.

"You seek to take," it rasped, its voice like cracking wood. "Do you offer in return?"

Mira, trembling, held out her satchel. "I have herbs, charms—"

The figure raised a limb.

"Not objects. Memory. Blood. Name."

She hesitated.

Then remembered her mother's breath, shallow and rasping. The nights filled with prayers unanswered.

She nodded.

The roots rose and pierced her palm.

Pain seared through her. Visions poured out—her childhood, her mother's lullabies, her first kiss, her first grief. The grove took them all. Fed on them.

When she awoke, the flower was in her hand, her blood glistening on its stem.

She left the Rootgrave before nightfall, her steps guided by whispers in the leaves.

Mira saved her mother.

But from that day forward, she remembered nothing of her life before the forest. Only the ache in her palm and the feeling that something beneath the earth still grew in the shape of her soul.

The forest always takes root.

Even in you.