Sienna fixed her eyes on the undead creature displayed on the screen and studied it with the same seriousness a scholar might use when examining a rare manuscript.
In her previous life, she had heard countless stories about zombies, skeletons, and ghosts.
They belonged to movies, novels, and late-night conversations, the sort of tales people enjoyed precisely because they were safely unreal. You could close the book, turn off the television, and return to a world where bones stayed in graves, and the dead remained silent.
But this was not a story.
This thing was real.
The skeletal crocodile prowled through the ruined hall as though it still possessed flesh and blood. Its long tail swept from side to side, striking the stone walls with a dry cracking sound and leaving pale scratches in the masonry. Every movement was unnervingly natural, like a musician continuing to play perfectly even after the strings had been stripped away.
What caught Sienna's attention most were its eyes.
