Dark Fantasy. Science Fiction. Horror. Stories and setting by Sander VanWilligen.
A courtly knight descends into a derelict corporate sub-basement, chasing the oboe melody that has comforted him since childhood. He discovers the song is a looping hold-queue lure, and every brave note he hums feeds an ancient machine starving to extend its signal to the world above.
A one-armed dream-mancer hires a blunt-spoken mercenary to breach a sealed tower whose leaking gas forces a village to relive the deaths of long-dead sorcerers.
In a demon-haunted hotel where ancient pacts govern the behavior of monstrous long-term residents, a meticulous concierge must manage a single catastrophic night: an off-schedule revenant, a lobby of insurance demons, and a vanished pact book.
A self-styled demon of distinction attempts to con his way through a hellish corporate bureaucracy to steal someone's afterlife, only to find that CARCANA MC's labyrinthine onboarding process has other plans, and a long memory.
A lone warrior haunted by prophecy threads an ancient forest, a treacherous fen, and a ruin thick with old names, hunting an enemy warlord while fate closes around him with each step.
A princess ant leads a splinter colony away from their juice-addicted home to build something better, only to watch her own ideals crumble as the same addictive Ant Juice she once banned slowly consumes her colony.
Four college friends sneak onto an Iowa State dairy farm on Halloween to kill a cow as a thrill-seeking primalism stunt, but their arrogance soon meets a reckoning they can't hack their way out of.
On Christmas Eve, a young girl named Jenny chases her dying hearth fire through a secret tunnel behind the fireplace, discovering a hidden world where all the fires of every household possess names, voices, and stories of their own.
A philosophically-minded magic mouse on a lunar city follows a haunting melody he alone can hear, venturing beyond the dome into the airless moonscape, only to find more than the music at his journey's end.
A radio operator at a lonely listening post records voice memos to his friend Angie the day he intercepts an alien signal. Consumed by paranoia and a desperate need to be first to share it, he spirals toward a violent confrontation - unaware the message itself may be the weapon.
A father determined to toughen up his young son pressures the reluctant boy into provoking a sleeping turkey at a petting zoo, setting off a confrontation that forces the dad to confront his own assumptions about courage, childhood, and being a good father.
A plain-spoken Montana man, the sole composed survivor of a catastrophic plane crash, recounts his harrowing night to investigators - a night that tested the limits of his legendary unflappability, and an ocean haunted by; something.
A Chosen One of the galactic empire composes a philosophical letter to comfort a grief-stricken survivor after their beloved home planet is annihilated without warning.
A young man chosen for an annual sacrifice confronts the god-like AI that governs his city - only to find himself drawn into a conversation that challenges everything he believes about emotion, logic, and the meaning of life.
On a snowy Christmas Eve, a small-town man is summoned to a remote lodge and discovers something ancient and malevolent has been unleashed.
A runaway girl seeks shelter for the night with a strange, buzzing man in a dark forest - but her gracious host may be something far more dangerous than he appears.
Three grave-robbers, descend into the ancient catacombs beneath Deadman's Pile, hunting a legendary frozen tohmb said to hold the remains of a holy servant of Sang, The Scratcher.
A weary necromancer hauling a chained monster and a corpse is ambushed by bridge marauders, and his interrupted spell accidentally raises the lake's dead; now he must decide, should he unleash his chained creation to survive?
A bookish new recruit and a violence-loving veteran track a deserter through a plague-blighted wasteland, until they encounter a blighted monster that could end both their lives.
Descending into an underground cavern under siege by wax golems and a maddened mancer called The Crawling Silk, the knight must break through an occupied city to reach the creature controlling the army.
Driven above the clouds by rising poison mist, the knight and his Lady climb colossal living trees - and descend into the diseased heart of a dying one, where something is wrong with the knight's hands.
Sheltering from a storm inside a traveling carnival, the knight and his companions discover the circus is a trap - its ringmaster a skin-stitched shapeshifter with no intention of letting them leave.
The Lady's stepson is now a warlord on a fortified island. The knight must face him in a final duel - shieldless, bleeding, and carrying a choice about whether he wants to survive it.
A reckless young man begs the knight to train him for a duel in five days, dangling a false lead on the Lady's stepson - but his opponent turns out to be someone the knight already knows.
Fleeing assassins along the Road of Graves, the knight and his Lady shelter with a dying woman whose small kindnesses lead to a grim funeral - and a necromancer who won't let the dead rest.
Deep in a gorge beneath Middlemoss, the knight discovers a factory where ghosts are captured, stripped of will, and bottled for sale - and the specter of the Lady's dead daughter is waiting.
Locked inside a haunted inn after a guest is murdered, the knight must solve a string of killings among strangers - while an invisible force picks them off one by one.
With his Lady dying from venom on a dark moor, the knight surrenders his sword to a crone who promises a cure - then must track down the walking hut that stole them both.
Searching for the Lady's stepson, the knight enters a windowless guild house whose labyrinth of crawlspaces, revolving walls, and rat-swarms is designed to strip intruders of their sanity.
Cursed with worsening nightmares that bleed into waking life, the knight seeks a cure at a manor on the yellow heath - where the healer and the trap are the same person.
Separated from his Lady in an ancient forest that swallowed the Road of Graves, the knight must pass a sovereign tree's test of loyalty and fight through its predators to find her again.
Hunted through a soul-filled mine by an enemy he cannot look at directly, the knight must fulfill a mancer's bargain and find a relic that can bring the dead back to life.
After assassinating a poisoner in a rain-drowned mountain keep, the knight must escape through the city's sewers with a noblewoman and a mercenary, past sentient flotsam and a maddened Silk Giant.
The knight arrives in Hornwater to find his Lady has voluntarily chosen burial at a sinister priory - and must break his oath to the Road to dig her free from a coffin she asked for.
The knight's body, cracked from too many resurrections, begins to fail - his senses burning away. To survive, he must descend beneath the Road of Graves and claim a sense that isn't his own.
A resurrected knight descends into the tomb of an ancient creature to retrieve a strange payment, only to find the catacombs alive with mechanical apes, bioluminescent jellyfish, and a sleeping mancer who doesn't stay asleep.
Caught in a hallucinatory winter storm on a demon king's burial plain, the knight shelters in a cave where his Lady's grief and guilt finally surface - and a daughter's ghost demands to be seen.
The Lady agrees to paint her own portrait in a goddess's temple in exchange for news of her stepson - not realizing the painting is draining her soul, and the knight must defy a god to save her.
Three travelers share stories around a blue-flamed hearth in a cobweb-choked hotel - tales of a mercenary's forbidden love, a dying man's haunted forest, and a widow's revenge on a thing wearing her husband's face.
When monks abduct the Blue Lady into their oil-black tower, the knight and a mercenary infiltrate through wine-soaked catacombs and blind monks to reach her before the Lidless does.
In a labyrinth of green-glowing ice beneath the mountains, the knight hunts a preserved creature that won't stop breathing - and the Lady finds journal pages bearing a familiar crest.
Crossing a dust-choked wasteland with a band of hardened survivors, the knight faces a twelve-day march haunted by a monstrous dragonfly that hunts by night and sings through the hills.
A figure from the knight's past reappears in Hornwater with a familiar voice and a rebuilt face - but the man who trained him may not be a man at all, and the Lady's stepson is finally within reach.
A bound soldier ventures alone through a monster-haunted forest and a crumbling undead estate to retrieve a coveted Silver Ring for his master - risking death, madness, and permanent cursing, and a final choice between loyalty and self.
A Border Agency guide and a foreign explorer cross paths with a wandering philosopher in the mountain town of Aster-Szem, just as a tense political parade through the streets erupts in violence.
Hearn and Ostok break into an abandoned grain processing facility at night, hoping to find evidence of the conspirators, and instead find themselves trapped as fire spreads through the old wooden floors.
A volatile foreign diplomat barges into Odden's office with accusations and threats of mobilization, while Odden tries to keep the region from sliding any closer to open war.