The creature that had come at the summons of the Lord of the South filled the entire doorway. It didn't have a shape so much as a mass—a black tangle of branches, rags, and rotting skulls fused into one grotesque body. From its center stretched a face—not human exactly, but more like something trying to remember what a human face looked like.

Massive horns, twisted from bones turned inside out, scraped the trailer's ceiling. Puddles hissed beneath it where rain met scorched black flesh.

The ground moaned. The metal walls began to split apart, groaning like a walnut crushed in a fist.

"Goddammit!" William roared as something—some monstrous hand made of mud and bones—lifted him clean off the floor. The claws dug into steel, leaving deep scars. The grip tightened until the metal groaned. "Lettie! You mind doing something about this!?"

Letecia didn't answer—not right away. Her eyes were closed, her lips murmuring words not meant for human ears. The air around her shimmered with a fading barrier, thin as breath but still holding.

The creature hiccupped—a choking sound. Out from its chest tumbled a doll's arm, small and limp, hanging by a vein. Tendrils, slick and veined like swamp roots, whipped across William's back, coiling around his chest like snakes.

He groaned, his muscles bulging, tendons straining.

"Hold on four more minutes!" Letecia's voice was no longer human—it rolled like thunder over a swamp.

"I've got this damn snake demon crushing my ribs, and you're talkin' minutes?!" he roared, tearing at the vines. His claws sliced through the slick cords, spilling rancid fluid that stank like decay and stagnant water.

The zombies came next—pouring into the trailer through walls, through ceiling seams, crawling like spilled maggots. They moved uncertainly, as if their bones had forgotten the dance of walking. One hung upside down from the ceiling, his eyes sprouted with fungus, jaw missing. He opened his mouth and hissed—a wet, burbling whisper.

The first lunged; William met it mid-leap, claws flashing. The blow split its skull like rotten fruit. Another seized his leg—he howled, slammed it aside, and felt the sick tear of his own flesh going with it. The chunk hit the floor with a dull, wet slap.

"Ah, goddamn it!" He winced, blood streaming down, the reek of iron buried under rot.

"Don't lose focus!" Letecia gasped, kneeling now. She carved symbols into the floor with her own blood, her fingers shaking. The air thickened, became syrupy, heavy. Her skin had turned pale—leached, as if life were draining out of her with each word. "If I stop now, more'll come! The Lord of the South calls 'em all—he's hungry for our souls. I gotta cut him loose. Burn down the coven that feeds him!"

"That's great and all," William growled, ripping through another corpse, "but they're not pausing! You realize we're in Pennsylvania, not some goddamn bayou—how you plan to reach 'em, telepathically? You got a rocket made of witchcraft I don't know about?"

"I don't need to get there, sugar," she snarled, blood spurting from her palms as it hit the symbols like acid. The wood hissed and boiled. "Ah'll walk straight into their heads. They chant together—one mind, one mouth—and right now, they ain't expectin' me knockin'."

William couldn't catch his breath. The vine around his chest was tightening again, crushing bone. With a guttural roar he ripped himself free, flesh tearing, black slime splattering across the floor. He dropped to his knees, gasping—just in time to see the monster looming over him.

The Lord of the South looked down through sockets filled with infinite darkness. The voice that followed came from everywhere and nowhere—it crawled through the air, through his ears, through the marrow in his bones.

"Don't make this brave. You ain't no warrior. You're meat—meat for the field, meat for the earth."

"Try me."

William lunged—his body low and fast, all predator. His claws sank into the thing's gut, rending the chain of bodies that made up its torso. Heads and arms spilled out, writhing, clutching at him as they fell. He tore and clawed and screamed, feeling his throat shred with the sound. The black ichor sprayed over his face—hot, stinking of mud and death.

The creature's howl rattled the metal walls. It dropped him, shuddering violently.

"Lettie!" he shouted, twisting. "Now! It's already growin' those damn arms back!"

Letecia didn't look up. In the flickering light she was nearly gone beneath the blood, her voice a cracked whisper of reverence and fury: "Almost… there…"

"What the hell do you mean almost?! It's behind me—"

The monster's hand burst from the shadows, built now from veins and branches, faces stretched and fused together into sinew. It clamped around him, crushing his ribs.

William coughed blood; the creature's breath rolled over him, smelling of graves.

"Do you feel it?" it rumbled. "The ground waitin' for you? How it longs for your bones? How sweet they'll crumble between my teeth?"

The creature lurched—and the world tore apart.

Metal screamed as the trailer split, the sound like the earth itself being ripped down the middle.

Wind howled through the rupture, dragging William into the storm—a black wall of rain and trees that glistened like rows of skulls slick with blood.

He hit the mud hard, rolled, coughed grit and blood, and pushed himself up. Everything moved. Roots shifted. Grass twisted. Branches swayed and whispered in a language older than breath—words no ear alive was meant to hear.

Shapes stirred in the dark beyond the trees. The dead, soaked and gleaming, stumbled forward like they'd just clawed their way out of graves still warm. Their faces glistened with swamp slime, and in each hollow eye socket flickered the coal-red light of the Lord of the South.

"Oh, that smell…" they whispered together—one voice poured from a dozen rotten mouths, a voice that burned like hot metal in the blood.

"The scent of your fear… you've always known you were mine. Even your pain smells sweet."

"Shut your rotten mouth, freak!" William spat, wiping blood from his chin. His claws slid free, long and black, catching flashes of lightning. Every breath stabbed at his ribs, but he stood up straight and bared his teeth.

"You want me—then come get me yourself! Stop sendin' your damn puppets!"

"I am in each of them," the voice hissed, everywhere at once. "In every leaf, every root. Even your blood beats in my name."

The trees split apart as the thing came forward—a towering silhouette woven from branches, corpse-flesh, and black fire. Rain hissed where it touched its skin. Beneath the surface of its flesh something breathed—hundreds of voices rising and falling together in choking laughter and weeping.

The ground boiled beneath William's boots, alive with writhing shapes struggling to claw free. He dug his claws into the wet earth and hurled himself forward.

A single, brutal motion—impact—then the tearing shriek of flesh. His claws ripped through the creature's belly, spraying shards of bone and half-melted skulls. Steam exploded from the wound, thick with the stench of sulfur and graves.

"Harder, little beast!" the voice bellowed, echoing from every trunk and stone. "Nothing tastes better than meat that fights back!"

The monster swung. The forest shuddered as its great limb came down. William rolled aside—earth split and heaved as a massive tendril of fused, human arms drove into the spot he'd just vacated. The fingers groped at the air, twitching, clawing for ghosts that weren't there.

Back in the shattered trailer, Letecia knelt within a blazing circle of ancient symbols. Blood didn't drip from her hands anymore—it streamed, a red river feeding the runes that pulsed with light the color of old bruises.

The air thickened, the floor buckled, and her voice came in ragged bursts, tangled with something primal that bent the walls.

"Jus' a lil' longer, cher… jus' a lil' more… hold on for me…" she gasped, her accent seeping through like swampwater through a wound.

Dark smoke poured from her mouth, forming shapes that weren't meant to be seen—words that made the air bleed and shudder.

But William couldn't hear her. The forest roared around him.

The dead were everywhere now. Crawling through branches. Slithering out of the bog. Dropping from trees like bloated fruit. Every time he tore one apart, they screamed with the same voice:

"All roads lead down, son of the dirt. All rivers carry blood to my mouth. You're only a meal that refuses to stay still."

William snarled, muscles corded with pain and fury. He moved again—low and fast. The air rang with impact, the wet crunch of bone, the sound of meat coming apart beneath claws sharp as razors. Each swing shattered something. Each heartbeat was a drumbeat of survival and madness.

The world blurred into red and black. The rain fell thicker, and in the flashes of lightning it looked as though the heavens themselves were bleeding out.

"Yes…" The voice was a purr now, slick and intimate. "Like that. Every strike feeds me. You fight like a beast… so let me grant you that mercy. Be my beast forever."

The monster straightened, splitting the forest's shadow with its colossal shape. From the cavity in its chest, a child's doll wriggled free, porcelain face cracked, glass eyes glowing. Its mouth opened—and in a whisper almost tender, it said:

"Run while your face is still your own…"

William stood knee‑deep in the mire, and the mud beneath him was alive. Hands—slimy, rotted, half‑formed—pushed upward, clawing at his boots, curling around his ankles like hungry things that refused to die.

He tore one free, ripping it from wrist to shoulder, bone and stringy meat snapping as he flung it aside. Another mouth—wet, tooth‑bare, and cold—latched onto his shoulder. There was a crunch, a flash of pain so sharp it almost blinded him, and blood spattered across the rain.

He didn't scream. He growled. Short, savage, the sound of something that only knew how to fight.

His eyes burned amber through the storm. He drew a ragged breath, and the wounds on his body began to knit under the skin, closing with a slick whisper of flesh meeting flesh. The dead thing before him hesitated—just long enough. William moved. A blur, a snarl, a strike. The claws split the creature's skull like wet clay, spraying chunks into the rain.

From the far edge of the clearing came laughter—rolling, low, ancient. A voice that seemed to speak from inside the earth itself.

"Ah… what wonder," it said, the words crawling through the mud. "Blood of the old ones—still warm, still defiant."

The nearest corpses took up the sound, each mouthing the same words in jerks, like broken marionettes.

"Did you think you could outrun what you are, child of the beast? It's been ages since I've tasted flesh like yours. It smells of thunder and sun—right before the dark swallows it whole."

William snarled, swinging. His claws cut through three bodies in a single motion—so fast they seemed to hum with light. The dead fell apart around him, but others came. Crawling. Scrambling. Dropping from the trees like diseased fruit. Each one he took apart seemed to birth two more from the soil. The air was filled with splitting bones and the stench of rot. Blood and black ooze mixed in rivers at his feet.

"Feel it," said the Lord's voice again, crawling from the branches, the dirt, the folds of his own shadow. "Their breath on yours. Their rot in your lungs. You are their kin—flesh that simply took longer to decay."

"Oh, will you shut the hell up?" William roared. He hurled a ragged sheet of iron torn from the trailer's wall. It slammed into a tree, bursting the bark in a spray of black smoke.

The laugh that followed was quiet—soft as silk dragged across skin.

Something seized him again—teeth this time, hundreds of tiny mouths in one gaping maw that clamped onto his side. Flesh tore. Shirt ripped. Pain flared white. He shoved his claws deep into the mass, ripped it apart, and flung what remained against a trunk. His blood hit the ground sizzling, burning holes in the grass.

Far behind him, near the shattered trailer, Letecia knelt within her circle. Her body trembled; her voice was breaking. The floor beneath her symbols glowed white‑hot, smoking where it touched her blood. But she didn't stop.

"Jes' a lil' more," she whispered, each word dragging air like glass through her throat. "Hold on, ya damn wildcat… hold on, cher, don't ya dare give in now…"

"Don't you die on me!" she screamed suddenly, her voice shattering the night. Energy pulsed outward—an invisible concussion that rang through the clearing. Chains of light snapped tight around the perimeter with a boom, sealing it off.

The Lord howled, a sound like storms chewing stones.

"Your witch pulls the threads," hissed a dozen mouths, "but she'll burn first. And when she falls, I'll take your heart in one breath."

"Come try it," William snarled.

Something inside him cracked, then caught fire. His eyes blazed like twin suns gone mad. His flesh stretched, rippled, split as new power shoved its way through. The claws lengthened again, gleaming like obsidian blades. He dove back into the mob, cutting through everything—flesh, air, shadow alike.

The dead screamed as one; it wasn't pain anymore but a kind of choir, all agony and worship.

Every blow shook the ground, like the forest itself was a drum made from bones. Each movement came with whispers, the Lord's voice sliding through his skull, coaxing, laughing, feeding off the carnage.

"Yes… yes… there it is," the Lord purred, almost tender. "The old pulse, the feral hymn. Hit harder. Bleed faster. Every strike sweeter than a child's heart…"

"Shut up!" William tore another corpse in two, the rain washing streaks of black across his face. "I'm not your meat. Not now… not ever!"

And in that breath, the sky above them cracked open—light without warmth, gray fire spilling like burning ash.

At the edge of the storm, Letecia raised both hands toward the heavens, her voice barely human anymore.

"William!" she cried, her accent thick as thunder over the bayou. "Ah see it! I see his root! One more breath, cher—and ah'm gonna rip that bastard's soul clean out!"

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.