fiction

After months crossing a lethal desert, a desperate traveller arrives at a mysterious ancient colossus and begins the perilous climb to claim the legendary Bloodstone held in its grasp.

On his deathbed, legendary dwarven warrior Grangal is haunted by the one quest he fled from — a crumbling castle staircase where a Lich's nightmare curse brought him to his knees in guilt and shame.

Jared visits a brusque supernatural functionary who will arrange any act of revenge for a fee — and impulsively commits to something far worse than he intended before he can take it back.

A mysterious website offers vague prophecies about your future — and Morris discovers that knowing what's coming is entirely useless when you have no way to change it.

A man wakes every morning from the same recurring vision of apocalyptic destruction wrought by vast, incomprehensible beings — and instead of fearing it, he feels chosen.

Frankie the fly accidentally ends up on a plane and finally achieves their lifelong dream of soaring high above the city — right up until a rolled-up newspaper intervenes.

On her first day as a dungeon cleaner, goblin Azravel gets an earful from her veteran colleague Grengel about the particular misery of cleaning up after elemental spirits.

Yasmin tends a beloved garden with one unsettling corner she has never been able to cultivate — a permanently shadowed patch of shifting shapes she has quietly learned to leave alone.

A time-stopping thief slips between the ticks of a frozen party, helping themselves to valuables and mischief before stepping back through a tear in time — never to see the chaos they leave behind.

A legendary house in an ancient city has swallowed every visitor who dared enter — and now a plucky young traveller, spurred on by her peers and an unrequited love, pushes open the door.

In a world where everyone gets a once-a-decade undo of any past action, one recipient agonises over how to spend their CTRL+Z day — and ends up paralysed by the infinite weight of consequence.

A self-declared atheist spends a night on the couch of a friend's 'murder house', musing on how we confront the dark history of the places we inhabit — and wakes utterly untroubled.

David Bowie and H.G. Wells take a faster-than-light joyride through space in a steam-powered ship, trading quips and setting a course for Mars.

Walking home through a rain-soaked alley, a person becomes aware of unseen footsteps perfectly matching their own — and must decide whether to flee or face whatever is there.

A far-future museum guide leads a crowd through the baffling mysteries of early 21st-century technology, culminating in the most horrifying revelation of all: people had to talk to each other.

Friedre wages an escalating battle of wills against a door that refuses to stay shut, resorting to increasingly drastic measures to defeat her wooden adversary.

The townsfolk of a coastal village have long ignored the strange nightly walks of cantankerous Ol' Perwiddle — until one bold young thief follows him to the beach and witnesses something she cannot explain.

Darkness speaks in first person, tracing its ancient relationship with humanity — from the comfort of the womb to the final mystery of death.

A professional body-swap operator rents their consciousness to a rich teenager for a night out, then must navigate 24 hours inside an unfamiliar body while hoping the customer returns theirs on time.

A secret service chief reinstates ghosts as agents, only to discover their first mission has an unexpected obstacle.

A soul-finder with a preternatural sixth sense describes their nightly work tracking down panicked, newly-dead souls and guiding them to the next stage of the afterlife.

A battle-hardened army camps on the eve of their assault on a great walled city, drinking and gambling as their officers contemplate the uncertain fate awaiting them at dawn.

Moments after a fatal car accident, a man finds himself in darkness where a quietly confident woman in impossible black approaches to guide him — with patient answers — to whatever comes next.

A narrator casually recounts life with their homemade 'meat puppet' — an eerie physical clone they mostly use for company at bars and dancing — while cheerfully sidestepping any ethical questions.

An anonymous painting appears in a hip gallery, and while the owner sees only a publicity coup, her friend is filled with creeping dread at the disturbing forms emerging from its impossible colours.

A regular client visits Jerry Kolynski — psychic slug and therapist — for a 20-minute session of transcendent visions, only to be judged for it by a stranger on the street.

Cthulhu receives a deeply unsettling vision — not of apocalyptic triumph, but of a plan that was never going to work — and is forced to confront an existential mid-aeons career crisis.

A journalist treks across two continents to interview Alfonso, a 3,437-year-old tortoise and the oldest known creature alive — only to find he has very little to say for himself.