Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

The jewelry store had collapsed inward like a throat swallowed by fire.

Glass glittered across the sidewalk like scattered diamonds. A single gold necklace still hung from a bent mannequin arm, swaying in the dry wind.

Ryder nearly passed it by.

He didn't believe in symbols anymore.

Not after Lia.

But Lara stopped him.

"There's something here," she said.

She wasn't looking at the ruined storefront. She was looking at the ash-covered rubble across the street—the kind that hides bodies beneath memories.

They'd come to scavenge the district—old shops, pawn vaults, bombed-out luxury boutiques. Word was that a cure capsule had been stored in a safety deposit box before the outbreak.

It turned out to be a rumor.

No cure. No tech.

Just dust and shadows.

Until Ryder saw it.

Half-buried in the rubble of a collapsed bridal shop, glinting in a shaft of sun:

A ring.

He knelt, pried away the bricks, and pulled it free.

It was delicate. Silver. A single black sapphire in the center, shaped like a teardrop frozen mid-fall.

And inside, engraved in tiny script:

"Forever, even if."

He stared at it for a long time.

Tess approached behind him. "Someone died trying to save that."

"No," he said. "Someone died with it."

Lara crouched down. "There's more."

They unearthed a hand. Then a forearm. Then a partial ribcage.

The body had been curled inward, clutching a velvet box.

Inside was the other ring. Its pair.

They held a silent moment for her.

Whoever she was.

She had not fled.

Had not screamed.

Had not run.

She had stayed.

Wrapped herself around the box.

Two rings.

One vow.

And the crumbled ruins of a promise kept even when the world didn't.

That night, Ryder sat alone by the fire, rolling the ring between his fingers.

He remembered his own wedding.

The cake Lia hated. The song she danced to barefoot. The way her eyes had sparkled under twinkle lights.

He never recovered her ring.

Only her hair tie.

But this one… this ring… it felt like a message from the void.

A reminder.

Love didn't always end in screams.

Sometimes, it ended in silence. In choosing to hold something precious, even as the sky fell.

At sunrise, he left the ring where he found it—on the edge of the rubble, atop a folded handkerchief stitched with the initials "A & M."

But he took the other ring. The one from the box.

And wore it around his neck.

Not as a replacement.

Not as guilt.

But as a tether to something still sacred.

Because even in a world ruled by rot and ruin…

Some things still shimmer in the ash.

Some vows don't need witnesses.

Only love.

And the rubble it leaves behind.