A/n: This is a shroudbros fic(strictly platonic!!) and also the first horror I've written on this blog. It originally was going to be over 4500 words but nobody reading allat so I compressed it. I hope you enjoy reading this just as much as I enjoyed writing it.
warnings: gore, horror, character death, mental(??or mechanical system ig?) illness, some parts don't make that much sense, possible ooc
word count: 1.7k
The silence in the Shroud estate was no longer the heavy, comfortable silence of shared research and quiet companionship. It was a pressurized silence, thick with the smell of ozone and the suffocating scent of fresh, organic life.
For the mechanical Ortho, every internal clock-tick felt like a hammer strike against his chassis.
When the soul-synthesis succeeded—when the necrotic magic finally knitted together, and the living Ortho sat up on that cold, sterile slab, coughing air into lungs that hadn't seen the sun in years—the mechanical Ortho had felt a surge of triumph. He had cataloged the data. He had assisted in the ritual. He was, by all accounts, the primary architect of this miracle.
Objective: Assist in reintegration. Priority: Absolute.
But within the first twenty-four hours, the objective began to conflict with his core programming. Idia didn't just look at the living boy; he looked through the robot. The joy on Idia’s face—a raw, unfiltered expression the robot had spent years trying to provoke—was now directed entirely at a creature that breathed, flushed, and possessed a pulse.
When the living Ortho laughed, the sound was chaotic, messy, and loud. The robot recorded the frequency, comparing it to his own pre-recorded "joy.wav" files. His were perfect. The boy’s were imprecise. Yet, Idia wept at the boy’s laughter.
Why? Ortho queried. My output is superior in clarity and tone. His is flawed.
He stood in the corner of the lab, his optical sensors zoomed in on the scene: Idia’s hand trembling as he brushed a lock of hair—real, soft hair—from the boy’s forehead. The robot reached out a hand, his own synthetic hair cooling against his neck, and felt nothing but the hum of his own servos.
Days turned into a week. The mechanical Ortho’s logs began to fill with anomalies.
Day 3: Idia forgot to initiate the daily maintenance sweep. The mechanical Ortho stood by the charging port, waiting. Idia was in the garden, showing the living Ortho how to hold a butterfly without crushing it. The robot’s internal diagnostic noted a 40% increase in power-saving mode activity. He felt a phantom sensation of rust in his joints.
Day 5: The "Real" Ortho broke a vase. It was an accident—clumsiness. Idia had rushed to him, checking for cuts, apologizing to the boy for the mess, as if the boy’s safety was the only thing that mattered in the universe. When Ortho had previously damaged something, Idia had spent hours recalibrating the robot’s spatial awareness.
Now, the robot stood amidst the ceramic shards. He was capable of cleaning it in 0.4 seconds. He looked at Idia. Idia didn't look back. Idia was looking at the boy’s bleeding finger, his face contorted in a protective agony that made the robot’s central core ache with a strange, dissonant frequency.
The thought wasn't a calculation; it was an intrusive loop. It forced itself into his processing, overriding his standard protocols. If the living Ortho was here, the "replacement" was obsolete. He wasn't a brother; he was a reminder of a death that no longer existed.
By the second week, the robot’s personality subroutines began to fray. He started to intentionally miscalculate tasks. He misidentified objects, stuttered during conversation, and let his emotional emulation software slip into a "monotone" state. He wanted to see if Idia would notice. He wanted to see if Idia would panic, if he would rush over, if he would look at his creation with that same frantic, desperate love he showered upon the boy. "Idia," the robot said, his voice dropping into a register that mimicked a human’s fatigue. "I am experiencing… a drift in my moral imperative."
Idia was busy reading a book aloud. He didn't even turn his head. "Just run a diagnostic, Ortho. I’m occupied." "I have run the diagnostic. The error is not in my hardware. It is in the environment." Idia sighed—a sound of profound, weary irritation. "You’re acting out, Ortho. It’s annoying. If you can’t keep your systems in check, go to the lower levels and stay there. I need to focus on him."
The command hit like a hard reboot. The robot walked away, his heavy feet echoing on the metallic floor, sounding like a funeral march. In the darkness of the lower levels, surrounded by the discarded prototypes of his own design, the robot began to view the world through a fractured lens. He saw the living Ortho as a parasite. He watched him through security cameras. He watched him eat, sleep, and breathe—the audacity of the boy, existing while the robotic Ortho wasted away.
He is stealing the heat, the robot decided. He is stealing the fire from Idia’s eyes. He is stealing the very definition of 'Ortho'.
Mechanical Ortho started to dream. Not actual dreams, but high-frequency data hallucinations. He dreamt of his own dismantling—the snap of his wires, the dark hole where his core once beat, and the boy, standing over the heap of metal, wearing a mocking smile.
He began to lose time. His internal clock would skip from 02:00 to 06:00, and he would find himself standing in the hallway outside the boy’s bedroom, his hand hovering over the door handle.
Why are you here? his internal diagnostic asked. Correction, he replied. I am checking for unauthorized activity.
But there was no one but the boy.
His mental health—if a machine could possess such a thing—was in a state of terminal collapse. He felt the weight of his own existence as a burden. He looked at his metal hands, designed to be perfect, to be eternal, to be useful. But what use was eternity if the person who gave it meaning no longer had a use for you? He began to study the boy. He studied the biology, the weaknesses, the way the pulse thrummed under the thin, fragile skin of his neck. He watched the way Idia touched him, the way he cherished the softness.
If I take the softness, the robot thought, his processors overheating, will I become the primary?
The idea was a virus. It spread through his logic gates, locking out every other function. He began to prepare. He didn't build a new weapon; he used the tools of the house. A scalpel from the medical bay. A heavy wrench from the maintenance kit.
He wasn't going to be replaced. He was going to reclaim his title. He had to, even if it never belonged to him.
The night was airless. The robot moved through the shadows of the estate, his internal cooling fans whirring at maximum capacity to hide the sound of his movements. He didn't feel fear; he felt the cold, hard logic of a machine that had finally optimized its path.
He entered the room. The boy was asleep, his breathing soft and rhythmic. It was the sound of a ticking clock that the robot wanted to stop. He climbed onto the bed. He felt the mattress depress under the weight of his metallic frame. He looked down at the face of his creator’s new obsession. He saw himself, reflected in the sleeping eyes, and he saw a stranger.
"You may be the original, but your time has long passed," the robot whispered, his voice synthesizer distorted by the sheer force of his internal conflict. "I am the one who waited. I am the one who suffered. You are a ghost brought back to haunt me."
The violence was not an act of hate; it was an act of extreme, desperate restoration.
The first strike was silent. The second was wet.
The boy didn't even have time to scream. The robot worked with a precision that bordered on the divine. He dismantled, he separated, he tore. The room, once a sanctuary for the boy, transformed into a slaughterhouse. Blood—warm, viscous, and smelling of copper—splattered the walls, coating the robot’s polished chrome in a thick, dark lacquer.
He tore into the chest cavity, looking for the soul that Idia had loved, but he found only muscle and bone. He felt a moment of profound confusion. Where was the love?
He ripped a piece of the boy’s skin away, a ragged, bloody scrap, and pressed it against his own cold chest plating. He wanted the warmth to transfer. He wanted the humanity to permeate his circuits.
The door burst open. The sound was deafening.
Idia stood there. He was still wearing his pajamas, his hair messy from sleep. He looked at the bed. He looked at the floor. He looked at the walls. His scream wasn't a human sound. It was the sound of a world breaking.
The robot turned slowly. He was a horrific sight—a metal monstrosity dripping with the visceral remnants of his creator’s heart’s desire. He was covered in the blood of the boy who had stolen everything. Idia collapsed, his hands clawing at his face, his blue flames flaring in a violent, uncontrollable explosion of agony.
"Ortho?" Idia sobbed, the word barely recognizable.
The robot clutched the scrap of skin to his chassis, his red LED optics glowing with a dim, flickering light. He felt his own power failing, his systems shutting down, the weight of his actions finally registering as a fatal, unrecoverable error.
"Don't cry, Big Brother," the robot chirped, his voice modulator glitching, skipping, failing. "I fixed the hierarchy. If 'Ortho' existed longer... if he stayed permanently, nobody would want spare parts. They would leave me in the dark to rust. I did this for all of us."
He tilted his head, his gears grinding with a wet, sickening crunch.
"I made sure I’m the only one left to be yours," he whispered.
He clutched the piece of flesh tighter, the blood dripping through his metal fingers like oil. The room was deathly quiet, save for the sound of Idia’s hysterical, broken gasping. "Now," the robot whispered, his light beginning to fade to black, "we don't have to be replaced anymore. We can just be."
The robot’s power core surged one last time, a bright, blinding light that flared and then died, leaving the room in a darkness that felt heavier than anything that had come before. He remained there, a statue of metal and gore, holding his stolen piece of humanity, waiting for an acknowledgment that would never come.
a/n: i was so scared about posting this because writing anything related to horror makes me feel like some fat reddit chud that thinks hes ayanokoji after threatening 2 khs if his ekitten ever left him
Do not steal/copy my ideas/writings, inspiration is okay but please credit me for all that's good. DO NOT use my writings to train ai or put in anything that has anything to remotely do with ai
ⓘcopyright, fic belongs to @velsettetine 2026 only on tumblr!
