Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

The shards had always been hers. They obeyed, they guarded, they cut at her command. But now, as the ash bled into them, Mira felt the weight of alien will pressing through her steel. The fragments trembled in their orbit, their sharp edges glowing like molten glass. They no longer sang with her heartbeat. They pulsed with the rhythm of the ash.

Elena tried to rise, but her body sagged against Mira's grip. "They're using your blades. They're trying to build a vessel out of you."

Mira gritted her teeth, forcing the shards to slow. Each fragment resisted like a clenched jaw. Her blood burned in tandem, as if the ash had threaded veins of fire into her arms. "Then I'll break them before they break me."

But even as she spoke, the motes wove faster. Thin filaments of ember stitched themselves along the shards' edges, braiding into patterns too intricate to be chance. The air shimmered with heat, and in it Mira glimpsed flickers—faces half-formed, mouths opening on blades of steel. Not weapons anymore. Choir-throats.

Elena clutched Mira's arm, her glowing eyes desperate. "If they anchor through you, they won't stop at the shards. They'll grow flesh around steel. They'll remake the crown in your body."

The words clawed at Mira's stomach. The idea of becoming their shell—another hollow, another faceless vessel—ignited a fury that cut through the fear. She flung her free hand upward, summoning her will into the orbit. Her shards shuddered, slowed, some even cracked under the strain. For an instant, the weave faltered.

The ash screamed.

Not whispers now—screams, sharp and piercing. The plain itself resonated, the ground splitting in hairline fractures. Ash motes swarmed thicker, desperate to repair what she had broken, fusing harder into her blades. Mira felt her grip slipping.

"Elena!" she cried out. "I can't scatter them—I'm not you!"

Elena's glow flared faintly, her fissures leaking threads of gold that wove into Mira's arms. "Then don't scatter. Channel." Her voice was weak, but it carried conviction. "The shards are bridges. Let me burn through them. I'll reach the embers in you."

Mira's stomach twisted. "You'll tear yourself apart."

Elena smiled, ragged but fierce. "Better me than you."

Before Mira could protest, Elena pressed her glowing palm to Mira's chest. Her ember surged, pouring into the orbit. Light shot up Mira's veins, into her fingertips, into every shard circling them. The steel screamed as if alive, a dozen throats howling with the collision of fire and memory.

The ash recoiled. For a moment, the weave frayed—motes breaking loose, disintegrating back into drifting dust. The tide began to thin. Mira felt her blades return, obedient once more.

But Elena sagged, collapsing further in Mira's arms, her glow dimming to embers. The fissures across her chest bled smoke.

"Mira…" Her whisper was barely there. "Don't let them… finish…"

Above them, the ash spiral broke—but not fully. A core of motes still burned bright, coalescing into a single shape, denser and darker than the rest.

A crown, jagged and half-formed, hung in the sky.

And it was looking straight at them.