Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

Draven awoke to the sound of whispers—soft, distant murmurs echoing through decaying wood and ash-drenched air. He was no longer in the Rootvault.

He stood before an old house, deep in the woods, its windows like hollow eyes watching him approach. Blood smeared the porch. The sky above pulsed red, flickering like a dying heartbeat. Behind him: silence. No Mira. No Elias. No Zara. No Forsaken Girl. Only the house.

It called to him.

Inside, dust blanketed every surface, but the place was warm… familiar. Portraits hung crooked on the walls—each one of people he recognized, but shouldn't. His old squad. His family. Mira, younger. Even the Hollow Man, smiling in a photograph where no one ever smiled. This place wasn't a memory. It was a lie built from truths.

In the upstairs hallway, a door creaked open on its own. Draven entered, heart pounding. A child's room. Toys lined the shelves, all of them twisted in design—flesh dolls, stuffed crows with human eyes. And sitting in the center was a little girl with long, tangled hair. The Forsaken Girl.

Only, this wasn't her.

"I'm what's left of her," the child said. "When the page burned, I shattered. This house caught one of my pieces."

Draven knelt. "Where are the others?"

"Scattered. In places that remember. This house remembers you. That's why you're here. It's rebuilding you."

The floor groaned. Shadows leaked from the walls, rising into shapes—zombies, wraiths, echoes of every enemy he ever fought. They stood motionless, staring, waiting.

"If you don't face them, they'll become you," the girl said.

One of the shadows stepped forward—it wore Draven's old combat armor, his own scorched face grinning back at him.

"You left them to die," the echo rasped.

Draven clenched his fists. "I didn't have a choice."

"They didn't either."

More shadows advanced, taunting him with past failures—his sister's scream, his squad's final breath, Mira's tearful eyes as she begged him not to run. Each word chipped at his will. But then, a sound—a heartbeat—beneath the floorboards.

It pulsed in rhythm with his own.

The Forsaken Girl placed her hand on his. "The house remembers, but it doesn't define you."

Draven closed his eyes and stepped into the echo of himself, embracing the pain, the guilt. The shadows howled—then crumbled like ash. The room brightened. The girl vanished.

And in her place, the Book appeared, stitched shut by roots.

A whisper in his mind: "Find the others. Before the Hollow Man does."

The house door opened behind him.

Outside, the world had changed again—skyscrapers curved like thorns, the moon was cracked, and screams echoed in every direction.

But in Draven's hand was a compass made of bone, pointing east.

Somewhere, they were waiting.