Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

The crown did not fall—it detonated.

Flames erupted outward in a ring of light, searing across the glass plain. The shockwave threw Mira to her knees, her shards screaming as they rattled back into orbit. The vessels staggered as one, their flames guttering, their hollow forms bending like trees in a storm.

Elena was at the center of it all.

Her body glowed brighter than the fire itself, fissures running deep through her skin as if she were nothing but molten marrow stitched together by will alone. The shattered fragments of the crown spun around her like broken teeth, each piece still burning, each tether still clawing to rejoin.

The vessels wailed. One collapsed outright, its ember sputtering out in a hiss of smoke. Where it fell, nothing remained but shards of blackened glass. The others convulsed, caught in the collapse of their bond.

"Elena!" Mira stumbled to her feet, fighting against the torrent of heat. She reached out, but her hands blistered before they even touched her. "You have to hold on—don't let them rebuild it!"

Elena's head snapped toward her. For the first time, her eyes weren't hollow—they were hers. But they burned with terror.

"I'm not… holding it together. It's holding me."

Her ember pulsed violently, a heartbeat that didn't belong to her alone. The shards of the crown clattered, dragged by invisible threads back toward her skull. She screamed, clutching at her head, nails tearing her skin as if she could dig the fire out.

Mira's shards swirled around her, forming a cage between Elena and the crown fragments. Sparks hissed each time a shard intercepted one of the flaming teeth, knocking it away. But the crown fought back, flame arcing like lightning toward its broken pieces.

The vessels began to rise again. Their forms twisted, jerking with unnatural spasms. Where once they bowed, now they lunged—faceless, desperate, their flames stretching like spears toward Elena's chest.

Mira's rage burned hotter than her fear. She hurled her shards outward, slashing into the vessels. One split open, spilling molten fire that dissolved into smoke before it hit the ground. Another wailed, its ember torn in two. But for each she struck down, the others surged forward, relentless.

Elena staggered toward Mira, her body flickering like a lantern in the wind. Every step she took sent waves of molten light spilling from her fissures. "Mira—I can't fight them. I am them. If they die—so do I."

Mira's throat tightened. She wanted to deny it, to scream that Elena was more than the hollow choir, more than the crown—but the vessels' wails echoed in her bones. She knew Elena wasn't lying.

The last fragments of the crown shrieked as they tried to fuse. Mira caught Elena's shoulders, holding her upright even as the heat scorched her flesh raw.

"Then we find another way. You're not their prison—you're not their fire. You're you."

Elena's ember flared wildly, caught between collapse and defiance. Her fissures widened, her body trembling like it might burst apart.

And then—sudden silence.

The vessels froze, their flames bending toward Elena in a final, desperate bow.

She whispered, voice breaking like glass:

"Then help me… unmake them."

The plain shuddered. The vessels screamed.

And the last fragments of the crown ignited into a storm.