It began on a warm summer night. Windows were thrown open, curtains swaying lazily in the soft breeze. Children laughed in the streets, their voices rising above the hum of crickets. Porch lights glowed like halos against the darkening sky. No one noticed the first shadowy cloud rolling in from the east. At first it seemed like dust, or smoke from distant fields. But then the buzzing started—low, insistent, and growing thicker by the second. People turned their heads, puzzled, then frightened, as the sound swelled until it swallowed the laughter entirely. The swarm had arrived, blotting out the stars.

These were no ordinary wasps. They moved as though guided by a single mind, spiraling through the streets with an unnatural coordination. Lanterns flickered and went out, drowned in the tide of wings. The air became suffocating, thick with their bodies. People swatted, screamed, stumbled over each other in blind panic. The wasps descended in sudden bursts, stabbing their stingers into exposed flesh. Unlike normal stings, these burned with a venom that seeped deep into the bloodstream. Victims collapsed where they stood, clutching their limbs, eyes glassy with shock. Yet the horror was not the venom itself—it was what followed after.

Each sting was a curse. The venom left a fiery welt, but embedded in that wound was something worse: a cluster of translucent eggs. At first, they looked like tiny pearls, clinging wetly to the skin, pulsing faintly as though alive. People clawed at them, tried scraping them off with fingernails or knives, but the moment they did, the venom surged. Arteries collapsed, breath vanished, and hearts stopped within minutes. Bodies hit the ground with dull thuds, their last gasps echoing in the chaos. The townsfolk quickly realized that fighting back, resisting the infestation, meant certain and immediate death.

Terror spread faster than the swarm itself. Parents shielded children, dragging them indoors, slamming shutters closed, but the wasps slipped through cracks and chimneys with ease. Those who tried water—scrubbing, drowning the eggs—only made the agony worse. The venom thickened, veins blackening beneath the skin, until screams turned to silence. Fear morphed into paralysis. The strongest, the bravest, stood helpless as the eggs clung to them, unshakable. Some prayed. Others begged. But no answer came. By midnight, the streets were a cacophony of cries and buzzing wings. By one in the morning, the cries had dwindled to choking sobs.

Those who left the eggs untouched fared no better. The venom lulled them into weakness, trembling bodies unable to flee. Some staggered to their beds, clutching loved ones, eyes wide with terror. Others slumped in chairs, too weary to move. The eggs remained, nestled on their arms, necks, faces—wherever the wasps had marked them. They pulsed faintly, as if feeding. And beneath the skin, a new torment began. Victims felt crawling sensations, as if worms slithered just below the surface. They whispered frantically of movement in their veins. But none dared touch the eggs, knowing that death would come instantly.

By dawn, the hatching began. The eggs split soundlessly, oozing pale fluid across clammy skin. Tiny larvae emerged, slick and writhing, their mouths already gnashing. They did not remain on the surface for long. Instead, they burrowed inward, slipping beneath flesh with unnatural ease. Victims writhed as the larvae forced their way inside, tunneling through muscle and organs. Screams tore through the silence of morning, only to be cut short by choked gurgles. Families collapsed together, their bodies twisting as life was consumed from within. The town’s heartbeat, once loud and vibrant, slowed into silence. And still, the wasps lingered.

The streets, once filled with laughter, were now silent graveyards. Doors swung open on broken hinges, curtains fluttered in empty homes, and the smell of decay began to seep into the air. Blood and bile stained wooden porches, trails of bodies collapsed where they had fled. The buzzing continued, omnipresent, weaving between buildings like a hymn of doom. No bird sang. No dog barked. The town was undone in a single night, its people turned into husks of what they had been. The swarm hung above, circling like a dark crown, guardians of a horror no one could resist.

A handful survived the night, or so they thought. They stumbled out at dawn, their movements weak, skin pale and clammy. Their eyes were hollow, but breath still lingered in their lungs. They whispered in disbelief, asking why they had been spared. But their reprieve was cruel. As they tried to help one another, convulsions ripped through them. Their bodies jerked violently, mouths frothing, eyes rolling back. With wet tearing sounds, larvae burst from their flesh—writhing, hungry things that gnawed their way free. The survivors collapsed lifeless, their final screams echoing in the empty streets, swallowed quickly by the buzzing.

The swarm did not depart immediately. It lingered, circling the town like vultures over carrion. They seemed to savor the silence, the ruin they had brought. Windows cracked beneath the pressure of their numbers, glass falling into the streets below. In the church at the town’s center, candles still flickered on the altar, but no one remained to kneel before them. The pews stood empty, splattered with streaks of blood and torn fabric. Outside, the bells hung motionless, yet the faint sound of tolling seemed to echo anyway, carried on the wings of the swarm—a requiem for the dead.

By midday, the swarm began to thin. They rose in spiraling columns, drifting higher into the sky, leaving behind only stragglers. Their departure was not hurried. It was deliberate, like soldiers withdrawing after a battle won. The silence they left behind was deafening. No footsteps echoed on the cobblestones. No voices called from doorways. Only the faint buzz of a few remaining wasps, drifting aimlessly through abandoned homes, searching for scraps of what little life remained. The town itself seemed to exhale, collapsing under the weight of absence. But the horror lingered, etched into every bloodstained wall and broken body.

Travelers came days later. A merchant caravan rolled down the dirt road, expecting to find rest in the bustling little town. Instead, they found silence. Wagons stopped at the edge of the square. Horses stamped nervously, ears twitching at the faint hum still lingering in the air. The merchants dismounted cautiously, calling out, but no answer came. Doors hung open. Tables were set with meals never eaten. Candles had burned to stubs. Then they saw the bodies. Piled in doorways, slumped against walls, faces frozen in expressions of agony. The merchants turned pale, some retching, others whispering prayers of protection.

When they saw the eggs, their terror deepened. Corpses were littered with translucent husks clinging to the skin—empty shells split down the middle. Some still glistened wetly, twitching faintly in the sunlight. The merchants dared not touch them. Flies swarmed over the remains, but even the flies seemed cautious, keeping their distance from the pale husks. Then they found the first hollowed body. Skin collapsed inward, ribs visible beneath paper-thin flesh, eyes sunken to nothing. It was as if something had devoured the insides, leaving only a fragile shell behind. The merchants fled, abandoning goods, vowing never to return again.

Word of the vanished town spread quickly. Other settlements whispered of the cursed place, where an entire community had been erased in one night. Some said it was divine punishment, others swore it was witchcraft. But those who traveled near reported strange sounds in the night—buzzing that seemed to echo across the hills, even when no insects could be seen. Farmers found their livestock trembling, refusing to graze near the road that led to the town. The soil itself seemed wrong there, blackened and brittle, as if poisoned. And always, the stories ended the same: no one returned alive.

Years passed, but the memory of the swarm never faded. The ruins of the town stood as a scar on the land. Roofs caved in, walls buckled, but the silence remained. Those foolish enough to trespass claimed to hear faint cries carried on the wind, the voices of the damned trapped forever in their final moments. Sometimes, they said, shadows moved in the windows, figures pacing back and forth. And always, faintest of all, came the buzzing. Never loud, never near—just enough to raise the hairs on the neck. Enough to remind any intruder that the swarm was waiting.

The legend grew darker with each telling. Parents warned children to hush their laughter at night, lest the swarm mistake it for the town’s final echoes. Travelers avoided the road entirely, choosing longer paths through wilderness rather than risk the cursed silence. Priests preached of pestilence and divine wrath, while scholars speculated about unnatural species born in hidden hives. Some whispered that the swarm had not left at all, that it slept beneath the town, waiting for the right season to rise again. The horror was not forgotten. It lingered, generation after generation, a warning written in blood and wings.

No one survived that summer night. The laughter, the warmth, the life—all of it erased. The swarm had taken more than flesh; it had stolen the spirit of the place, leaving only ruin. The town became a wound on the map, unmarked by cartographers, avoided by all who valued life. Yet sometimes, on the warmest nights, when the air is still and the crickets fall silent, a faint buzzing drifts on the wind. It carries with it the weight of memory—the warning of what once was, and what might come again. For the swarm is never truly gone.