Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

The moon bled red for the third night in a row.

The Crimson Halo cult had been waiting for this—an ancient prophecy carved into skin, not stone. It spoke of a night where the veil would thin, and the moon itself would drip life onto the dead.

High Priestess Severine, robed in black thorned silk, stood atop a mound of bones outside the ruins of Old Harrowhill, her congregation of masked zealots chanting in tongues only the stars understood.

Below her, arranged in a perfect sigil of rot and gore, lay thirteen zombie husks, heads split open, mouths agape—ready to receive the lunar blessing.

Meanwhile, Solomon Wraith and Gideon Moth watched from the broken bell tower of a crumbling church, binoculars trembling in Solomon's hand.

"They're trying to awaken something," Solomon whispered. "I saw this symbol once… scrawled on the walls of a girl who bled backward."

Gideon spat. "Cultists. Always thinkin' the sky's talkin' to them."

"It is, Moth. It just shouldn't be."

As the final chant echoed through the rotted valley, the Blood Moon surged, impossibly close, its surface writhing. Droplets of viscous crimson rain began to fall—burning holes into the earth.

Then, the dead screamed.

Not groaned. Screamed.

The thirteen husks convulsed, their mouths bubbling as their hollow skulls filled with blood from above. Their bodies cracked, mutated, changed. One grew spider-like limbs. Another fused with bones of unknown origin. One had no head, just a pulsing red eye in its chest.

They rose—not zombies anymore. Something else. Something blessed by the Blood Moon.

The Blood-Blessed.

Severine raised her arms, her eyes gone white. "Let the flesh of the forgotten be born again in the light of vile divinity!"

Gideon cocked his shotgun. "Time to ruin a sermon."

Solomon frowned. "No. We're too late. This… is just the opening act."

Below them, the Blood-Blessed turned their gaze to the sky. The moon pulsed. And in the clouds above, a shape formed—not a god, but the shadow of one. A colossal skeletal face, mouth open in eternal hunger, loomed over the valley.

It whispered. All who heard it bled from their ears.

Even the zombies in the distance dropped to their knees, as if sensing a new ruler.

Solomon clutched the sigil necklace beneath his shirt. "This moon isn't ours tonight. It belongs to something older."

As Severine knelt in worship, one of the Blood-Blessed turned to her—and devoured her whole. No scream. Just acceptance.

The cult had succeeded. And it no longer needed them.

Solomon and Gideon retreated into the woods, the Blood-Blessed now spreading in every direction, carried by moonlight and madness.

The blood moon smiled.

The world would not survive another night like this.