The Dead - Blog Posts

-Gravebound-

Warnings: None

The damned came swiftly—gnashing teeth, blackened claws, hunger burning in hollow eyes. The man had no weapon. Only fear. He ran… and fell. As he hit the ground, the weight of dread pressed down on him, the shadows closing in like a shroud. He gasped for breath, heart racing, aware that escape was slipping through his fingers like sand.

The last thing he expected to see was her.

Shadows moved before she did—then bone cracked from the earth like spears. The corpses around him twisted, bones jerking upward like puppets, and in a flash of sickly green light, death turned on itself. The ghouls screamed. And died again.

When the silence returned, so did the cold. She stood over him. Cloaked in black, her hands still humming with necrotic power. Her eyes, pale as frost, watched him like something being measured—not saved.

"You're... not one of them," he breathed, half in awe, half in fear.

She said nothing. Just stared.

He coughed, struggling to sit up, blood on his lips. "You saved me."

Her voice was like wind over a tombstone—dry, low, certain.

"I preserved the balance. That is all."

But he saw something in her, even as she turned to leave.

Not mercy. Not warmth.

Something colder. Deeper. A soul that had buried its own softness to walk among the dead.

Still, as she disappeared into the mist, the man whispered into the emptiness:

"Even cold hands can pull someone from the fire."

And from afar, unseen, her steps faltered.