Hourglass Skull Novels & Stories

How could I stop my mind from constantly wondering who the hell that male was in the trunk that night? I stare at the large grim reaper on his back, there is an hourglass in his hands instead of the usual scythe. Time was more a weapon than that was and they wanted their enemies to know when their time was up. Something like that. There are rumors of them carving an hourglass into the flesh of their enemies and I want to believe its just a myth.

Its skull was grotesquely oversized. A massive tumor bulged from its forehead, swollen with pus. Smaller growths clustered around it in uneven lumps, like something diseased and alive at the same time. Its eyes had been pushed out of their sockets by the swelling. What used to be a delivery guy barely looked human anymore. "Raarh! Raarh!" It opened its mouth wide and clawed at the barrier, pounding again and again. Each strike sent a tremor through the shield. It felt like the blows were landing right against Hayley's skull.

He had finally cleared the jam in his minigun, the heavy metallic clack of the bolt sliding home offering a small comfort in the dark. They reached the end of the corridor. It opened into a vast, circular chamber. The room was shaped like a funnel, sloping downward toward a central pit. The walls were lined with thousands of small, hexagonal alcoves. "What are those?" Haley asked, shining her flashlight beam up the walls. Jack squinted. Inside each alcove was a skull. Human skulls. Elongated skulls. Skulls with horns. A taxonomy of genetic failures. "The waste bin," Jack said grimly. "Failed experiments."

Axel heaves. Inside, the creature is twisted unnaturally, bones cracked and rearranged to make it fit. A human — or what is left of him — curled into himself like a broken doll. His limbs have been snapped backwards, folded tight against his torso, elbows pushed under the ribcage. The skull is caved in on one side, the jaw partially unhinged, revealing teeth clenched around his own tongue. He has clearly been dead for years — lots of years — his skin stretched tight over bone like old parchment, dark brown and leathery.

The glass was fogged with condensation, but Aurora could see the shapes ,small, fetal, but it looked wrong to her. Lila whistled, the sound sharp and brittle. “oh geez this is the vault your mom sealed after the ’04 leak.”she.Aurora walked forward,with her boots making a tapping sound as she walked on the metal bar floor. At the center of the chamber stood a single cradle; it wasn't for a baby, but for a brain. A human brain preserved in nutrient gel, joined together with gold filaments that pulsed like veins. It was larger than it should be, swollen with memory and code. It beats slowly but it was alive right above it a surface bloomed, casting blue light across Aurora’s face.ELYSIUM v.9.,E

That's when the ceiling exploded. Stone and debris rained down as something massive crashed through from above. The impact threw me backward. I hit a shelf hard, books cascading over me. Through the dust and chaos, I saw it. The Class B that House Red had supposedly neutralized three years ago. It was vaguely humanoid but wrong in every detail that mattered. Ten feet tall, with limbs that bent at too many joints. Its skin looked like cracked porcelain, pale and gleaming. Where its eyes should have been were empty sockets that glowed with sickly green light. And its arms ended not in hands but in blades, long and curved like scythes.

And in the center—an altar. A skull rested on it. Massive. Cracked. Crowned with dull gold. Not wolf. Not human. Something stranger. Kael stepped forward, eyes narrowing. “That’s not a wolf.” Ezra walked closer, his breath catching in his chest. The skull had a shape that didn’t belong in this world—sharp, long, unnaturally curved. Wrong in a way that made his stomach twist. Below it, a flame burned. It didn’t float. It sat. Low. Blue. Quiet. But when Ezra stepped closer, it flickered in time with his pulse.

, she complained, anger clear on her face. "Calm, my lady. You need to chill about this, this could be the breakthrough we need. We can fix this, we could make something better out of this", I offered, took her hands, and brought her in, going straight for the dead specimen. I crouched down, picked up its head, and started my little examination of it. Their eyes were too green, a lot of wrinkles around the spine area, enlarged and greenish veins around the brain areas, enlarged teeth, and dried-up lips.

Suspended from the ceiling by heavy chains were dozens of massive glass cylinders, most of them shattered, their thick, preservation fluid long since drained into the grates. But three of the cylinders were still whole. Inside the greenish glass, huge, malformed silhouettes were shifting. They weren't like the failed ones from the riverbanks—these were larger, their bodies heavily reinforced with thick, unpolished plates of black glass that had grown into their muscle tissue like tumors. They had no faces, but as Kael stepped into the chamber, the light from his chest core reflected off the glass, and the things inside began to slam their massive, crystalline fists against their enclosures.

"Tell me whose skull is hiding under that flesh." The elder wolf slips into the dark chamber, using a specialized blue-light stone to scan the sleeping female’s facial features. He presses his claws against her cheekbones, her jawline, and her nasal cartilage before stepping back out into the hall. "The entire skeletal frame has been systematically shaved down, Alpha. The orbital sockets were widened with silver-scalpels, and the jaw structure was completely remolded roughly three winter cycles ago. It is a masterpiece of dark flesh-shaping." "Who is she?" Shawn demands, his hand dropping to the hilt of his blade.