The once-thriving town of Black Hollow had become a mausoleum. Streets littered with the dead, buildings overtaken by creeping black mold, and an eerie silence that stretched through the ruins. But silence did not mean absence. Something still moved in the dark.
General Kruger stood at the town's edge, his grip tightening around his rifle. The mission was simple—assess the situation, retrieve survivors, and burn the infected. Yet, as he surveyed the desolation before him, he knew they were already too late.
"This wasn't just a plague," murmured Sergeant Vale, his second-in-command. "Something unnatural happened here."
Kruger nodded. He had seen outbreaks before—zombie hordes ripping through villages like wildfire—but this? This was precise, deliberate. The bodies of the dead weren't simply victims; they had been transformed. Black veins ran like twisted roots beneath their skin, their faces locked in silent whispers, lips moving in unison as if caught in an endless prayer.
A chill ran through him. He had seen battlefields, horrors beyond reckoning, but he had never seen anything .
Then, the whispers grew louder.
Kruger raised a fist, signaling his squad to hold position. The murmurs slithered through the air, a dozen voices speaking in unison, their words distant yet suffocatingly close. A single figure emerged from the mist, moving with an eerie grace.
Kruger's stomach twisted. Aldric had been stationed in Black Hollow three weeks ago. They had assumed he was dead. But the man standing before them was not the Aldric they had known. His eyes gleamed an unnatural silver, his skin was stretched tight over blackened veins, and his lips moved in silent reverence.
Kruger leveled his weapon. "Aldric… what happened here?"
The former captain smiled, though it was a hollow, joyless thing. "She has shown me the truth," he whispered. "She has freed me."
Sergeant Vale took a cautious step forward. "Who?"
The answer came not from Aldric's lips, but from the darkness behind him.
"She has many names," a voice cooed, smooth as silk and sharp as broken glass. "But you, General Kruger… you may call me the Pale Widow."
From the shadows of a collapsed church, Selene Nocturna emerged, her midnight cloak flowing like liquid. The scent of rot and sweet decay clung to her, her presence as alluring as it was terrifying.
Kruger's soldiers raised their weapons, but Selene only smiled. "Fire if you wish," she said, tilting her head. "It won't save you."
The ground trembled. Black veins split the cobblestone streets, and the corpses littering the town began to rise. Eyes glowing with spectral light, they moved not with the clumsy stagger of the undead but with something far worse—purpose.
Kruger knew a battlefield when he saw one.
And this… this was her domain.