Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition
Chapter 942 - 942: Story 942: Beneath the Pale Sky

The world was wrong.

Draven could feel it in the air—thick, stale, humming with something unnatural. The Hollow Junction was gone, but what lay beyond was no better. The land stretched endlessly, a barren wasteland of cracked stone beneath a sky that churned with slow-moving tendrils of pale mist. The stars above seemed too close, as if watching.

Mira adjusted her grip on the Cursed Book, its pages still warm from the unnatural forces at work. "I don't like this."

Elias exhaled, watching the vapor curl from his breath. "Ain't exactly a tropical paradise." He nudged a skeletal hand, half-buried in the dirt. It twitched before turning to dust.

The Forsaken Girl stood ahead, staring at something unseen, her starless eyes reflecting nothing.

"We're close," she whispered.

Draven stepped beside her. "Close to what?"

She turned those empty eyes on him. "The Rotting King."

A low groan rumbled beneath them. The ground shuddered.

Zara swore, stepping back. "That… didn't sound like the wind."

Then the earth split open.

Hands—hundreds of them—clawed out from beneath the cracks, grasping, writhing, snapping. Some were fresh, others skeletal, but all crawled toward the sky. A horrible, wet noise followed, like something pulling itself from the womb of the world.

A massive figure rose. Its flesh sagged, stitched together from countless corpses, its face a twisted patchwork of stolen features. A crown of rusted bone jutted from its head, and in its hollow chest, something moved—a pulsing, rotten heart, beating with a sound like wet thunder.

"The Rotting King," Elias muttered, stepping back. "Hell."

The thing opened its stitched mouth and spoke without a voice, its words crawling into their skulls like insects.

"Kneel."

Draven raised his shotgun. "Not happening." He fired, but the Rotting King didn't flinch. The pellets sunk into its flesh, disappearing into the shifting mass.

It lunged forward, an impossible speed for its size. Its hand crashed into the ground where Draven had stood, sending splinters of bone and stone flying.

Mira flipped open the Book, chanting something in a voice not her own. The sigils glowed, casting an eerie blue firelight across the wasteland.

The Forsaken Girl simply lifted her hand.

And the Rotting King hesitated.

For the first time, its stitched eyes locked onto her. Its heartbeat stuttered.

It recognized her.

The girl took a step forward, her whisper like the wind before a storm.

"You were supposed to stay dead."

The Rotting King screamed, the force of it shattering the sky. The land itself buckled, and a new horror began to rise from beneath the surface.

And this time, there was nowhere left to run.

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