Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

The swamp whispered like a dying breath, thick with fog and rot. Beneath the surface, something ancient stirred—its coils brushing against the reeds like a prayer in reverse.

They said the Serpent King was a myth.

A god made of scales and sorrow, sleeping beneath the mud where forgotten rituals soaked into bone.

But when Mara stepped into the mire, lured by a dream she did not own, she found him waiting.

Towering. Coiled around a throne of drowned skeletons. Eyes gleaming emerald with hunger and promise.

"You seek power," the Serpent King hissed, his voice slithering into her mind. "I offer remembrance."

Mara was dying.

Bitten by a corpse-walker. Veins blackening. Skin paling. Her breaths had become shallow hymns.

She knelt before the Serpent King.

"Then make me something more."

He flicked his tongue. The swamp boiled.

He did not grant life. He gifted transformation.

Scales split from her back. Her limbs elongated. Venom pooled beneath her tongue. The infection burned out, but something else took its place—reptilian and reverent.

Back at the camp, Kade and the others were already mourning her.

When she returned, her eyes shimmered green under the moon, and she no longer bled like a woman.

She bled prophecy.

With every whisper, she brought truth.

With every bite, she delivered visions.

One by one, the survivors began to kneel—not out of fear, but devotion.

And the Serpent King smiled through her.

They built shrines of bark and bone.

Lit candles with snake fat.

Recited prayers older than scripture.

But devotion had a cost.

Those who resisted began to… change. Not like Mara. Slower. Painful. Their bodies writhed in sleep. Their spines cracked.

Their jaws widened.

Eyes turned sideways.

One morning, Gideon awoke with a forked tongue.

"We've made a mistake," Esmé whispered, clutching the last holy relic they had—the Lantern Man's burned-out wick.

"This isn't resurrection. It's infestation."

But Mara—no, the Voice of the Serpent—called it evolution.

"The old gods are dead. This one remembers us."

And the Serpent King did.

He remembered every lie, every betrayal, every ounce of blood spilt in his name—and he returned it tenfold, through his children.

Through Mara.

Through the ones who kissed her scales.

At night, the swamps pulse with green light.

Eggs hatch beneath blackened water.

Chants echo, not from mouths, but from the throats of those who no longer speak words.

Only hisses.

Only hymns.

Kade disappeared last.

They found his boots on the edge of the muck.

And beside them, a new shrine—wrapped in scales, warm and pulsing, with his name inscribed in gold.

The gift had been accepted.

The swamp took him whole.

The Serpent King's gift was never life.

It was return.

To the beginning.

Before men.

Before gods.

Only fangs.