Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

The plain quaked beneath them, cracks spiderwebbing outward as if the scorched glass itself bent to Elena's words. The vessels rose in unison, their hollow eyes brightening until they burned with a faint amber glow—the echo of her ember.

Mira staggered back, shards orbiting like a storm of knives, her gaze fixed on Elena. "They're waiting. Whatever you choose… they'll become it."

Elena's throat was dry, her chest hot enough to blister from the inside. "What if what I choose destroys us?"

The third flame pulsed—slow, steady, confident. It didn't push her this time. It simply beat, as if daring her to make it her own.

The vessels stepped closer, their bodies trembling with each resonance. And then one broke free from the arc, its limbs twisting, contorting—not into a monster, but into something disturbingly familiar.

Elena froze.

It was her.

Not a perfect reflection, but a faceless mockery of her frame, pulsing with the ember's light. Its chest burned where hers did, its stance a mirror of her trembling defiance. The ember had made a copy, hollow and waiting.

"No," Elena whispered, stumbling back. "That's not me. That's—"

"An extension," Mira cut in, voice sharp with urgency. "Don't you see? You're not losing yourself—you're multiplying. Elena, this is power."

The duplicate tilted its head, faceless yet intimate. When it moved, Elena felt it in her bones, as though the act was hers. Her flame surged wildly, latching to the vessel like a tether too tight to cut.

She gasped. "It's inside me."

Mira's shards flickered, dimming with awe and fear. "No… you're inside it."

The circle of vessels rippled, their forms bending, reshaping—not into Mira, not into themselves, but into variations of Elena. Some tall, some broken, some radiant with fire that made her skin crawl. A dozen Elenas, faceless and burning, stepped forward with perfect synchrony.

Elena's knees buckled. She clutched her chest as the ember roared, its fire spilling like blood through her veins. Each vessel inhaled, and she swore she felt her breath leave her lungs to fill theirs.

"They're… taking me apart."

Mira caught her before she collapsed, pressing burning hands to her shoulders. "No, they're giving you more. Elena—you're not alone anymore. Every fracture of you, every wound, every ember you've held back—they're all becoming something else. Something bigger."

The vessels froze again, aligned in a perfect arc, their hollow eyes flaring brighter. The plain quaked under their weight, and above them, the third flame pulsed in rhythm with Elena's heart.

Her body burned from the inside out, fissures of light splitting across her arms and face. She screamed, not just from pain, but from the terrifying recognition that Mira was right. This wasn't destruction.

It was multiplication.

The vessels bent lower, their movements sharp with reverence. Every single one of them bowed—to her.

Elena's ember blazed until the flame itself seemed to shudder in response.

Her voice cracked into the silence, raw and defiant:

"Then if I become… I'll decide what shape fire takes."

The plain ruptured, light exploding outward as the vessels' bodies shifted, crystallizing into blazing silhouettes of her will.

The hollow choir was no longer hollow.

They had become Elena's.