Chapter 159: Chapter 25: Growing Dread

The night's silence returned, filling the cemetery with an eerie calm that only served to heighten the tension in the air. The ground was littered with ash and fragments of what had once been the living dead, their forms now nothing more than dark, smudged remnants that clung to the damp soil. Despite their victory, a sense of dread lingered, this battle had been too easy, too unsettlingly organized for mere restless dead.

George, still catching his breath, surveyed the scene. He could see the exhaustion etched into his friends' faces, the thin lines of blood and ash streaking their skin, the pale worry hidden beneath their outward resolve. The silence was thick, the chill creeping into his bones, and he felt a strange prickling at the back of his neck, like eyes watching from the darkened edges of the cemetery.

"Everyone all right?" George asked, his voice barely cutting through the heavy quiet.