Let the Dead Walk First
1040 Words
They forgot to close the grave.
Not literally. The warehouse was reduced to ash, and the state staged a funeral white casket, national flags, grieving photoshopped mourners. The screens paraded my death as a victory. A purification. The last seed of rebellion destroyed.
But they buried a ghost, not a corpse.
And ghosts dig themselves out.
---
I spent 421 days underground. Not metaphorically. I mean underground. In a forgotten bunker beneath Sector D’s ruins, where the resistance once stored stolen weapons and faded blueprints. It became my tomb. And then, my crucible.
Aris—the woman who found me—never asked who I was.
Maybe she knew. Maybe she didn’t care. All that mattered was survival. She taught me how to breathe again, how to stitch wounds without screaming, how to digest food when your insides feel like melted wax.
“You’re not healed,” she’d say. “You’re adapting.”
There’s a difference between healing and becoming something else.
I didn’t want to become a hero.
I wanted to become history’s revenge.
---
The Journal
By Month 3, I could hold a pen again.
Every name I remembered went into the leather-bound war journal Aris gave me. The pages smelled like dust and ink and death.
LORNE VEXEN. Senator. Broker of anti-resistance laws. Smiles like a saint, eats like a king, signs orders like a butcher.
GENERAL HALE HADREK. Overseer of Internal Cleansing Division. Signed my father’s arrest. Approved my execution.
CARDINAL VEN LUTHIER. Theocratic mouthpiece. Blessed my death. “A holy fire,” he called it.
EZEKIEL CRANE. Brother. Traitor. Judas.
Four names to start. Many more to follow.
This journal was not for record-keeping. It was my scripture.
My commandments.
My reasons.
---
First Blood
A year and two weeks after my execution, I walked out of the underground in a dead woman’s skin.
I had no fingerprints. No official identity. I was, legally, ash.
That was my weapon.
The first name I returned to was the easiest one: Senator Vexen.
Not because he was the weakest. But because he was the loudest.
Every Tuesday, he held a gala at the Marrow Club—a den of gold and secrets carved under the capital like a decadent cancer. No cameras. No guards inside. Just music, masks, and deals carved in velvet.
I went in through the servant tunnels. Dressed like a waitress. Moved like a shadow. Smelled like blood perfume.
The hardest part?
Not slicing his throat the moment I saw him.
Vexen was surrounded by girls. Young. Frightened. Bought.
He drank a wine older than most of them.
And when he touched them, he smiled like he was feeding the poor.
---
I watched him for one hour.
Mapped the exits. Counted his guards. Memorized his voice.
Then I poisoned the wine.
Not to kill him. No. Death would be mercy.
I laced it with mirraxin-4, a chemical used during the rebellion. Illegal. Banned. Causes hallucinations, paranoia, tremors. But mostly—it makes your sins talk back to you.
He lasted seventeen minutes before he started screaming.
“RAUL VELASCO IS HERE!” he shrieked, eyes bulging, veins webbing out like blue roots. “He’s in the floor! HE’S IN MY EYES!”
The gala descended into chaos. Champagne flutes shattered. Guests fled. And Vexen clawed at his own skin—begging someone to “burn the voices out.”
I waited in the crowd. Mask on. Gloves tight.
Then I slipped the blade between his ribs. Just once. Just enough to make him bleed and remember me.
As he collapsed, twitching and choking on nothing, I leaned down and whispered:
“This isn’t justice. It’s my memory correcting itself.”
---
The Broadcast
Two days later, a video surfaced.
An anonymous channel. Pixelated voice. Static distortions.
It showed a masked woman holding a bullet.
“This is not a warning. This is a return.”
The camera panned down. The bullet had a name scratched into it.
Lorne Vexen.
The voice spoke again.
“One bullet per villain. One chapter per death. This is not revenge. This is restitution.”
The channel name?
@VelascoLives
---
The Storm That Followed
The government called it terrorism.
The tabloids called it a conspiracy.
Some called it a miracle.
No one could explain how a senator died screaming about a man executed three years ago. No one could identify the woman in the mask.
But in the alleys, on the walls, in the slums and the steeples, they knew.
They whispered the name like a prayer laced with gasoline.
Cassandra.
---
The City Reacts
The state tightened its grip. Curfews returned. Drones in the sky. Military parades parading nothing but fear. Cameras watching the air breathe.
The Church held public blessings. Called the killer a demon reborn.
But it didn’t matter.
Because the people remembered Raul Velasco. And now they remembered his daughter.
I didn’t need an army.
I needed to be the myth that made villains lose sleep.
---
Ezekiel’s Message
Four nights after Vexen’s death, I found a red envelope under the door of Aris’s bunker.
No signature.
Inside?
A photo of me—taken from the gala. My mask. My blade.
And on the back, a note.
“You shouldn’t have come back.”
Ezekiel.
The first time I felt fear since the fire.
Not because he knew I was alive.
But because it meant he was watching me again.
---
The Plan Evolves
One kill wasn’t enough.
I had to dismantle them.
Expose the holy rot behind the collars.
Break the teeth behind the smiling faces.
So I started building something new. A network of shadows. The forgotten. The wronged. The burned like me.
Whispers of rebellion. No flags. No speeches.
Only names.
Only bullets.
---
And Me?
I’m not a symbol.
I’m not a phoenix.
I’m not your f*****g hero.
I’m the ghost they forgot to bury properly. The body that rose from flame, not to forgive, but to collect.
This city thinks it’s untouchable.
But I know every artery in Velmora’s body. And I’m going to cut them one vein at a time.
The best way to kill a villain?
You learn what made them strong.
Then you make it scream.
- Writer
