Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

They found him near the ruins of an abandoned schoolhouse in the drowned quarter of Gloam's End—kneeling in the flooded hallway, surrounded by open books that bled ink instead of words.

He didn't speak.

He didn't blink.

His face was entirely blank, smooth like porcelain, with black ink slowly seeping from where his eyes, nose, and mouth should've been.

"We shouldn't have come here," muttered Kade, gripping the iron-bladed axe tighter. "This place was part of the Purge Zones."

But the boy just turned his faceless head toward them—and the books around him slammed shut.

The team was looking for shelter.

Instead, they found a haunting.

Lora approached him first. Her fingers trembled as she reached out.

"What's your name, sweetheart?"

The boy reached up and placed a hand on her chest.

In an instant, her skin paled, her eyes rolled back, and her mouth opened—but not her voice.

A new one spoke through her.

A chorus of whispers, layered and ancient.

"He is the Collector. We are the Forgotten. You read us, now we write you."

Ink poured from Lora's mouth, her fingertips, her eyes.

She collapsed.

And where she fell, a new book formed—pages flipping on their own, inscribing her story in real time.

Kade swung his axe.

But before it struck, the boy vanished into a blink of static—as if he were never flesh, but memory.

"He's not a ghost," said Gideon Moth, kneeling over Lora's body. "He's a binding spell made flesh. Someone conjured him with forbidden language—arcane ink—probably using those eldritch tomes from The Monastery of Grief."

"And now he's rewriting the world," murmured Esmé. "Page by page."

That night, they set fire to the schoolhouse.

But flames do nothing to cursed ink.

The fire danced, yes—but within it, figures moved, twisted and jerking like marionettes—black silhouettes forming scenes from their pasts. Regrets. Losses. Deaths they never spoke of.

They saw the Ink-Faced Boy again—walking through the fire unharmed.

Carrying the book that now bore Lora's name.

And he was smiling.

Not with lips—but with the curve of his inky void where a mouth should've been.

They ran.

But their names were already being written.

Esmé awoke that night with pages stapled to her skin, fluttering with her pulse. She screamed as she tore them off—only to find her childhood memories erased with each rip.

"He's editing us," she gasped. "Soon we won't be."

Gideon offered one last gamble: a counter-ritual using mirror ink and reversed language—a linguistic exorcism.

It worked.

For a moment.

The boy was pulled apart, his body unraveling into letters, sentences, fragments.

But one final phrase echoed in the air before he disappeared:

"Stories never die. They wait."

Now, every time the survivors find a book, a scrap of paper, or hear the scribble of a pen, they freeze—because they know he's still out there.

Still writing.

And one day, he'll finish their story.