Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

In the blighted glade beyond the ruins of Wythermoor, there blooms a forest that should not be.

By day, it lies dormant—twisted trees of blackened bark and bone-white leaves, casting no shadow beneath the dim, cursed sky. But when the sun sinks low and the veil thins, they come.

Tiny lights. Dancing. Whirling.

Deadlight Fairies.

Their glow lures the lost and lulls the weak. But their wings slice air like razors, and their songs steal memories.

Nara Hexley had seen them once, as a child—mistaking them for forest sprites. She'd followed their shimmer into the dark and returned days later, silent and scarred, her blood smelling of ash and rust.

She knew better now.

Tonight, she walked alone beneath a crimson dusk, her bare feet pressing into the rot-rich soil. A task had brought her to Wythermoor: retrieve the Heartblossom, a flower that only blooms in the presence of the fairies and pulses with necrotic magic. It was the only thing that could save Solomon Wraith, who lay back at their camp, veins blackening with creeping curse rot.

But the fairies were watching.

Their laughter crept in first, like glass chimes caught in a hurricane.

Nara lit her warding circle in silence—candles of wax made from beast fat and grave dirt. She whispered old tongues her mother had carved into tree bark with bone knives.

The fairies emerged, wings glimmering in hues that didn't exist in mortal light. They were beautiful in the most terrifying way—eyes hollow, smiles too wide, teeth too sharp.

One approached.

She hovered inches above Nara's head, dangling upside down like a spider. Her skin shimmered green and silver, but her belly bulged with something moving inside.

"We remember you, witchling," she hissed sweetly. "Your blood sang to us once."

Nara offered no words, only the blade of her ritual dagger. She had carved runes into its edge—marks designed to wound spirits and lure them into physical form.

The fairy screamed and lunged.

A dozen others followed, shrieking as they swarmed. They tried to strip her memories, whispering forgotten songs into her ears—tales of childhood lost, of siblings drowned, of love that rotted.

But Nara bled into the circle willingly. Her blood was cursed, a trap of its own.

The candles flared.

The fairies shrieked.

And the Heartblossom bloomed, petals unfurling like open eyes.

Breathless, cut and dazed, Nara snatched the blossom from the earth. The fairies' lights began to dim, their bodies curling into dead leaves.

But one, the first, still hovered—wing broken, eyes burning.

"You carry rot in your soul," it spat. "You will bloom like us… soon."

And with a final hiss, she vanished in a burst of black pollen.

Nara turned, blossom in hand, heart pounding.

Behind her, the glade fell silent again.

But from her shadow… something fluttered.