Heze Village was a small farming settlement on the northern outskirts of the Suikoku Kingdom.
The land was flat and dry, the soil stubborn but workable. The villagers survived on millet and soybeans, coaxing life from the earth with cracked hands and bent backs. Their houses were self-built from timber and packed mud, walls uneven and roofs patched with straw.
Inside those small structures, entire bloodlines lived together.
Grandparents. Parents. Sons and daughters-in-law. Children stacked beside one another at night like firewood.
In some homes, twenty people breathed the same stale air.
Men worked the fields from dawn until the sky bled red.
Women kept the household—cooking thin porridge, mending worn clothing, tending children, carrying water, feeding livestock.
Sons were prized.
Daughters were burdens waiting to be married away.
Marriage came early. Fifteen to nineteen was ideal. Engagements happened younger still. A girl who reached twenty unmarried was whispered about as if something were wrong with her.
People aged quickly here.
Hard labor and poor diets carved lines into faces before their time. By thirty, peasants were already considered middle-aged. Few lived beyond sixty.
Life was short.
Harsh.
Predictable.
And utterly unaware that something ancient was about to fall from the sky.
*****************************
Liú Tiānyuè did not remember the exact moment she died.
She remembered hunger.
She remembered blood.
She remembered waking in a world already ending.
Three hundred years had passed since then.
Three hundred years of rot and ruin.
Of cities collapsing.
Of civilizations rebuilding and falling again.
Time eroded her humanity, grinding it into dust. As a zombie, she should have remembered nothing.
Yet fragments remained.
A small hand reaching out.
A woman's voice sharp with disgust.
The cold weight of betrayal.
She remembered being five years old.
Abandoned.
She could not recall her mother's face.
But she remembered the feeling of standing alone.
She remembered the fiancé.
The best friend.
The locked bedroom door.
She could not remember their names.
But she remembered the fury.
The humiliation.
The desire for revenge that never came.
When the world ended and she rose again—
That hatred found fertile soil.
Unlike the mindless corpses that wandered aimlessly, Liú Tiānyuè awakened aware.
Aware of her strength.
Aware of her thoughts.
Aware that the hunger did not control her.
She controlled it.
She slaughtered humans not because instinct demanded it.
But because she wanted to.
Their screams did not disturb her.
Their pleas did not move her.
If anything, their fear felt… justified.
As centuries passed, other zombies bent beneath her will.
She became their Queen.
The Zombie Queen.
Cities fell before her armies of the undead.
Survivors whispered her name like a curse.
And through it all—
She remained alone.
Power did not warm.
Blood did not comfort.
Victory did not fill the hollow space where something human had once lived.
*****************************
The sky tore open without warning.
It happened on a battlefield of ash.
Her undead horde was dismantling the last fortified human stronghold of that era. Smoke choked the heavens. Fire devoured crumbling towers.
Liú Tiānyuè stood atop a ruined wall, black robes fluttering in a wind thick with death.
Lightning split the sky—
But not from storm clouds.
Reality itself fractured.
A jagged white rift carved across the heavens, pulsing with power older than rot, older than plague, older than her.
Her crimson eyes narrowed.
The pull locked onto her.
Not her army.
Not the fleeing humans.
Her.
The Zombie Queen did not fear death.
She had conquered it.
But this—
This was something else.
Space twisted violently.
The ground shattered beneath her feet.
Her connection to her undead legion flickered.
For the first time in three centuries—
She felt something close to instability.
The rift swallowed her whole.
*****************************
Darkness.
Weightlessness.
Silence.
Then—
Breath.
Air forced into lungs that should not need it.
Liú Tiānyuè's eyes snapped open.
She inhaled sharply.
Her chest rose.
Fell.
Rose again.
A heartbeat thundered in her ears.
Alive.
She sat up abruptly—and the world tilted.
A wooden ceiling.
Mud walls.
Smoke.
Dust.
Weakness.
Her body felt… soft.
Warm.
Alive.
Her fingers curled instinctively—
And she froze.
Her nails had lengthened.
Darkened.
Black as polished obsidian.
Sharp enough to carve stone.
They retracted slowly at her command, shortening back into the shape of normal human nails.
Her lips parted slightly.
Her teeth ached.
With a thought, her canines elongated into curved, lethal fangs.
She ran her tongue across them thoughtfully.
Still there.
Still hers.
A slow smile spread across her face.
She was not fully human.
She was not fully zombie.
She was something in between.
Her skin was warm. Her heart beat steadily.
But beneath the fragile flesh, her power coiled like a sleeping beast.
She extended her senses outward.
There.
Faint.
But present.
The undead.
Far away in another world—
Yet she could still feel them.
A dim thread connecting her to her former realm.
Weakened by distance.
Not severed.
Interesting.
Very interesting.
*****************************
Then the foreign memories came.
Not forced.
Not violent.
They slid into place like pieces of a puzzle.
A young woman.
Newly married.
Second wife.
A poor household.
Seven children not her own.
A crippled husband.
Liú Tiānyuè absorbed it all with cold efficiency.
This body had a name.
Liú Tiānyuè.
How amusing.
Even the heavens feared renaming her.
She swung her legs over the bed.
The body trembled slightly.
Weak.
Malnourished.
Human fragility irritated her.
She stood anyway.
The wooden floor creaked.
Outside the door—
Voices.
Children.
Arguing in hushed tones.
"Give it to the youngest first."
"I'm not hungry…"
A lie.
Coughing followed.
Thin.
Dry.
Starvation.
Liú Tiānyuè tilted her head.
Her senses sharpened.
She could hear their heartbeats.
Rapid.
Underfed.
She could smell iron deficiency in their blood.
Weak bones.
Slowed growth.
Her lips curled faintly.
Pathetic creatures.
Easily broken.
Easily protected.
Her claws extended again unconsciously.
Long.
Curved.
Deadly.
She flexed her fingers.
The air seemed to recoil around her.
If she wished—
She could tear this entire village apart before sunset.
She could drink her fill.
Rule again.
Build an army from fresh corpses.
This world felt smaller than the one she left.
Softer.
More defenseless.
A playground.
Her fangs slid into place fully now.
Sharp enough to split flesh effortlessly.
Her reflection in a small bronze mirror showed crimson eyes flickering beneath otherwise human irises.
Yes.
She was still Queen.
Just… restrained.
For now.
Outside, a small child began coughing harder.
Then another voice—older, strained.
"Eat. I said eat."
The sound was not commanding.
It was desperate.
Liú Tiānyuè's claws slowly retracted.
Her teeth shortened.
The power coiled back beneath her skin.
She walked toward the door, movements unnaturally quiet.
If she destroyed this village now, it would be simple.
But simple was rarely interesting.
And something about the way those children tried to give food to one another instead of hoarding it—
It scratched at something buried deep within three centuries of rot.
Curiosity.
She rested her hand on the door.
Wood splintered slightly under the pressure of her strength.
This body was weak.
But she was not.
Let this world try to harm what now belonged to her.
Let anyone dare.
Zombies do not give second chances.
And Liú Tiānyuè—
Still very much their Queen—
Had just found something new to claim.