From the shadows, something stirred.

  A grotesque figure twisted unnaturally as it stepped into the dim light, its form stretched too thin, as if its body had been pieced together wrong. Frostbitten skin clung to sinewy muscle, cracked and peeling to reveal dark, pulsing veins beneath. Its limbs were long, unnatural—joints snapping sharply with every movement, like a marionette being yanked by unseen strings.

  Its face was worse. Hollow, sunken sockets gleamed with a sickly, icy glow, void of reason or recognition. Then its mouth—jagged, uneven—unhinged with a sickening crack, revealing rows of serrated teeth, shifting and multiplying as if they had a life of their own.

  Long, clawed fingers twitched, curling as though already grasping for flesh. A suffocating cold clung to its presence, distorting the air with an eerie frost, ice creeping along the ground where it stood. Yet despite its gaunt appearance, its movements were anything but weak—predatory, deliberate, fast.

  Then—its head jerked, snapping toward them with unnatural speed.

  It had seen them.

  And it was already moving.

  Al grabbed a flimsy tree branch—barely more than a twig—and pointed it at the approaching figure.

  The reaction was immediate.

  The thing jerked to a stop, its movement stuttering, limbs twitching unnaturally. The tip of the branch pressed against its forehead, yet it refused to move past it, its clawed fingers stretching desperately, its mouth opening and closing in a grotesque, mindless motion—like it was trying to bite, trying to devour, but the branch held it back.

  Then the stench hit.

  Rot. Damp, frozen decay. It clawed at Al’s throat, thick and suffocating, a rancid mix of something long dead and something that should have never been alive in the first place. His stomach lurched, and he instinctively covered his nose with his sleeve, eyes watering.

  Then—the full horror of it.

  Its frostbitten skin was stretched too tight over brittle bones, cracked and blackened in places, as if frost and rot had waged war across its flesh. Its joints popped with each erratic twitch, bending at angles that no living thing should be able to. And its eyes—if they could even be called that—were hollow pits, empty yet somehow brimming with a sickly, unnatural glow.

  Al tightened his grip on the branch.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “…Great,” he muttered, voice muffled behind his sleeve. “Just what I needed today.”

  Al wasn’t a hero.

  Nor was he particularly patient.

  So when a rotting, half-decomposed, corpse stumbled into his precious farm, his first instinct was to complain.

  "Mister, you smell."

  Yeah no kidding. He smells rotten flesh, and not that he judging the man's look but he clearly a dead body walking around with rotten flesh.

  And it smells. Did i mention that already?

  It stared at him, or at least, Al thought it did. Hard to tell when one eye socket was empty, and the other had something suspiciously glowing wedged inside.

  Ybon flapped his wings and screamed. “UNWELCOME! UNWELCOME!”

  Al pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, seriously.”

  The thing continued forward, its remaining eye locked onto the greenhouse, which stood in stark contrast to the frozen wasteland outside. Snow buried the rest of the farm, but Al’s greenhouse, his life’s work, was still warm, still thriving, still untouched by winter.

  Al’s gaze flicked to the faint, pulsing text crawling across the creature’s sickly, frostbitten skin. Ancient magic? Some disease? Or just really bad hygiene?

  …Didn’t matter.

  What did matter was that it had stepped too close to his potatoes.

  Al swat the hand that keep reaching him. The thing wobbled, then—plop. But it didn't stopping it in its tracks.

  An arm fell off.

  Al blinked. “Huh.”

  The thing didn’t care.

  It just kept reaching him forward.

  Al pushed the stick harder.

  Plop.

  A finger fell off.

  Ybon cackled. “Limb soup! Limb soup!”

  Al gagged. “Gods, I hate you sometimes.”

  The thing stumbled again, its remaining hand reaching for the greenhouse. The moment it crossed the threshold, Al felt it.

  His magic—his carefully maintained greenhouse magic—was being sucked away.

  The damn thing was stealing it.

  Al’s eye twitched.

  “You rotten bastard.”

  The thing did not understand insults.

  But that didn’t stop Al from yelling at it anyway. “You come into my farm, you steal my magic, and you dare step near my potatoes?”

  The thing took another step.

  Al had had enough.

  "Alright, that’s it."

  Raising a hand, he conjured a controlled burst of flame, enough to engulf the walking corpse.

  Instantly, the rotting thing twitched.

  Then, from behind him—

  "NO, WAIT—!!"

  The cursed kid, who Al had completely forgotten about, shouted too late.

  The fire hit.

  For half a second, everything seemed fine.

  Then—

  It SCREAMED.

  The air shuddered.

  The once-sluggish corpse suddenly moved at unnatural speed, its limbs snapping back into place like a marionette yanked by a violent puppeteer.

  Al took a step back. “…Oh.”

  THEN IT CHARGED.

  “WHAT THE HELL?!”

  The cursed kid scrambled to his feet. “I SAID FIRE MAKES IT GROW STRONGER!!”

  “YOU SAID IT TOO LATE, YOU DAMN BRAT!!”

  Al dove sideways, narrowly dodging the attack.

  Al screamed.

  Yvon screamed louder.

  The greenhouse erupted into chaos.

  Al was flailing with the flimsy stick, dodging flying limbs and burning, rabid corpses, while the cursed kid was yelling instructions he should have given earlier.

  Meanwhile, the eret he originally attacked had gone stronger, destroying everything in its path.

  Including his potatoes.

  Al watched in horror as his precious crops were trampled under rotting feet.

  His beautiful, thriving, ever-good potatoes.

  A piece of the greenhouse collapsed.

  The cursed kid ducked. “Uhh, Mister?”

  Al slowly turned, flames burning in his eyes.

  “…I’m going to kill something.”