Here's mine. I had to do some last-minute editing that really got away from me, and coupled with BBCode issues, I only managed to finish it just now, at 12:52 AM on November 1, 2019. Arguably, it can still be considered Halloween, so I'm not sure if this counts as "on-time" or not. [@Lugubrious], let me know if I keep the rewards from this.

[hider=A Brush with Necrosis]
Donnie woke up on a cobblestone road slick with pouring rain. Screams could be heard all around him. It was pandemonium. He got to his feet.

Undead rampaged. Townspeople were knocked to the ground and eaten where they fell. The canals that Stormwind was known for were running red with blood.

Priests and paladins cleansed the undead in holy fire, and did their best to cure any who were infected, but it wasn’t enough. Warriors hacked off the heads of the undead, but it wasn’t enough. Druids transformed into bears and panthers and shredded undead with their vicious transformations, but it wasn’t enough. Hunters with their mighty blunderbusses blew massive holes into every ghoul that they could see, and sicced terrifying beasts onto their prey, but it wasn’t enough.

Donnie walked down the road, seeing valiant defenders fall to the infection, citizens he knew from childhood getting brutally killed, either as undead or as humans, and ghouls breaking into homes left and right.

A ghoul ran directly at him, and Donnie raised his hands to strike it, only for it to run right through him.

In fact, his arms were translucent.

[i]Am I...dead?[/i]

He couldn’t see his body anywhere in the nearby piles of dead, so he couldn’t have died. Could he?

He looked down at himself. He was dressed in the clothes of a simple civilian. They were of a Pandaren bent, but they still the clothes of one who was powerless in this situation.

Something clicked in his head.

This was the day of the Scourge Invasion! Except...no. It hadn’t been this bad on that day. The Plague had been unleashed via the insertion of were mostly isolated outbreaks that were quickly quarantined. But the priests couldn’t get to them all, and his family had died when his mother turned into a plague-bearing ghoul at home. The kids were locked in with the zombie and...well, he didn’t want to think about it.

Speaking of which, he had to get there! He ran through the streets, across the bridges of the canals that separated the districts of the city, with one goal in mind: Stormwind Harbor. That was where he lived. He was in the Trade District, on the opposite end of the city.

Then he heard it. The booming voice ringing out over the city, that made his blood run cold.
[b]”FOOLISH WHELPS OF THE ALLIANCE! MY LORD ANNIHILATED LORDAERON AND LEFT IT A SMOKING RUIN! EVEN THE RENEGADES OF THE FORSAKEN MERELY RESIDE IN ITS SEWERS! WHAT CAN [i]YOU[/i] DO?! FALL AT THE HANDS OF THE RISEN DEAD, AND JOIN THE LICH KING AS HIS SERVANTS!”[/b]

It was the one he had heard about. The Lich King’s Herald. The Scourge [i]had[/i] invaded openly, but they hadn’t brought out the Blight as a direct weapon this time around. And, perhaps because of that mistake, they had been stopped at the harbor, by then-King Varian Wrynn.

And the harbor was where he was going. This was going to be nasty.

He finally made it to the harbor, at a full sprint, to see the battle in full swing. King Varian was there, cleaving Scourge apart, as well as a who’s-who of famous heroes destroying the enemy.

But...why was King Varian at the harbor when there were [i]already[/i] Scourge rampaging as far away as the Trade District? Didn’t he have more important things to worry about--and then the world became a sickly green.

It took a minute for Donnie to get his bearings. He got them pretty securely when he heard the coughing and groaning.

The green was the Blight. And as the gas cleared...where the Scourge ship once was, depositing its troops onto the boardwalk, was now a pile of splinters raining from the sky. That ship had been a giant plague bomb! The Herald had lured the most important people here by the Herald’s presence, giving the city hope that it could drive off the undead hordes by cutting off the head. And then…

Well, as Donnie looked around, the results were obvious. The heroes fighting off the hordes had become pale and sickly-looking themselves. Gnarled teeth gnashed and hair fell away. Skin had sloughed off of some particularly-unfortunate examples.

Stormwind was finished. Its government and military, its most elite assets, were functionally decapitated. Undead roamed the streets, and whoever was left would not last long. And as the city of Stormwind was [i]the[/i] hub for adventurer activity in Alliance territory….

This was it. The war was over. If the Horde had avoided this fate, living civilization might yet survive, as harsh and often brutal as the Horde could be. But if they hadn’t….

He sank to his knees, tears streaming down his ghostly face as he put his hands to the boardwalk.

This was it. Was it even [i]possible[/i] to come back from this?

[i]No.[/i]

His hands curled into fists. 

[i]No![/i] He shook with a mixture of sorrow and rage.

[b][i]NO![/i][/b] He stood up.

[b]“THIS DIDN’T HAPPEN!”[/b] he roared. [b]”THE PLAGUE WAS QUARANTINED, THE PRIESTS HANDLED IT, AND THE DEATHS WERE SMALL!”[/b]

He pointed to the shambling undead king with an accusing finger. [b]”VARIAN DID NOT BECOME A WALKING CORPSE HERE, I WAS THERE WHEN HE SACRIFICED HIMSELF TO ALLOW OUR RETREAT FROM THE BROKEN SHORE!”[/b]

He shouted at the sky itself, as if he was screaming to the entire world at once, [b]”WE ALL KNOW HOW THAT INVASION WENT! IT WAS FENDED OFF HERE, AT THE HARBOR, AND NEVER GOT BEYOND THIS POINT! THIS IS FALSE! THIS IS AN ILLUSION, OR A NIGHTMARE, OR A PSYCHIC ATTACK!”[/b]

Then he stared at the horizon, in the direction of the Lich King’s Herald, and finished, [b]”BUT IT [i]CAN’T[/i] BE A NIGHTMARE, BECAUSE I WOULD HAVE REALIZED I WAS DREAMING AND REWRITTEN THIS PUTRID HELLSCAPE! SO SHOW YOURSELF, SO I CAN KNOW MY TORTURER’S FACE!!!”[/b]

The world stopped, for a moment. The undead heroes and leaders froze, as if time had paused. And Donnie saw something move in the water.‘Against his better judgment, he scrabbled over to the edge. A massive reptilian eye greeted him.

Next, tendrils rose up from the murky depths as the twisted cephalopodic being within revealed itself: A genuine manifestation of pure Void. An Old God.

It uttered words in its own alien tongue, that Donnie’s brain appeared to translate for him into Common, likely a consequence of its psychic abilities.

“Greetings, pugilist. I am N’zoth.”

The monk was flabbergasted. N’zoth? The weakest of the Old Gods imprisoned beneath the planet for eons? And it was just saying hello?!

“I understand your confusion. Why I am merely greeting you after showing you such a horrific vision? Because we--the Shath’Yar--are, for once, in a position where we are no longer indomitable. The Lord of Light--Galeem--has made us, and all things, part of his grand work.”

Donnie took a step back in shock. “And now you’re going to turn my brain to jelly, I take it?”

“I could, but I am merely a messenger. The Lord of Light can recombine worlds as He sees fit, and influence beings great and small. If I am by his side, what chance do you have? I will give you one chance to submit. Know that if he so chose, Galeem could place you into this personal hell. All it would take is for Him to will it.”

That caused a shift in the monk’s attitude. Donnie looked up at the massive being intently, eyes narrowed. “And how do I even know you’re here, right now, in my brain? Am I just to take the word of an eldritch horror that is a manifestation of all that is evil and corrupt? Don’t act like I don’t know what the Void is. Galeem loves order. He would allow things like the Dead Zone to exist in order to provide a villain for his little story, he but I highly doubt he would have used a monstrosity like you. You’re unruly, you’re massive, you’re powerful, and you love taking things that are noble and corrupting them. You’re the exact [i]opposite[/i] of what a Light-based being like Galeem would want as his enforcer, as despicable as he is. Now [i]stop wasting my time[/i] and get on with whatever you were going to do.”

Now it was N’zoth’s turn to narrow its eye. “This was expected. Very well. Enjoy the ending to this story.”

With that, the zombies, the necromancers, the cultists, the ship’s cannons...they all focused on him. And his body abruptly became corporeal. And to top it all off, N’zoth shattered the pier with a tendril as thick as a house. Against this many foes, he was in no position to fight back. When it all ended, Donnie woke up with a start.

He looked at his hands. They were trembling.

He looked up at the sky, where the so-called “Lord of Light” rested, surveying its creation with all the love and care of an abusive parent. 

He harrumphed internally, [i]Did you really expect me to believe that you corrupted N’zoth, Galeem? There’s no way that you’d use him. And if you really wanted to try and break me, you should have brought a Titan. [/i]That [i] might have worked. But damn if you don’t write some good horror stories,[/i] “milord.” 

With that, he went back to sleep.

[b]Word Count: 1555[/b]
[/hider]