Fantasy

Home for the Holidys
Snow blanketed the winding road as Nora drove toward the old family estate, her hands tight on the wheel. She hadn’t been home in years, not since the screaming fights and slammed doors that marked her departure. But her mother’s voice on the phone—quivering, pleading—had cut through her resolve.
By V-Ink Stories11 months ago in Fiction
The Krampus Pact
Snow fell in soft, soundless flurries outside the Anderson family’s house, but inside, the air crackled with tension. Christmas Eve should have been joyous, but years of resentment had turned it into an annual battlefield. The family had gathered reluctantly—mother Janice, father Greg, their teenage daughter Holly, and her younger brother Max—but the holiday spirit was nowhere to be found.
By V-Ink Stories11 months ago in Fiction
Berganashio - Chapter 25. Top Story - December 2025.
Kunya awoke to the smell of breakfast that included chai and cinnamon flavored hot tea. "Good morning, Kunya!" The two merfarie princesses, Pori and Villi, greeted her. They sat comfortably around a small table. The morning sun was shining beautifully through the window panes. For a split second, the sun glinted off of the small bottle that hung around Pori's neck.
By Rowan Finley 11 months ago in Fiction
The Boy Who Lost His Soul. Content Warning.
THE SEER’S RETRIEVAL: Archive 2025 "What follows is a work of Speculative Truth. Born from the analog grain of 1985 and developed in the high-definition suite of 2025, this story is a Sci-Fi frequency shift a narrative map of one mother’s journey to reclaim a lineage that the 'Hard Reality' tried to delete.
By Vicki Lawana Trusselli 11 months ago in Fiction
From Beyond Our Sky What Is it
From Beyond Our Sky What Is It This image has been circulating online, and it immediately pulls you in. That long, cigar shaped object drifting silently through space doesn’t look like the comets we grew up seeing in books or documentaries. According to what’s being shared, it’s known as 3I or ATLAS, an interstellar object making a close pass by Earth, and scientists say it has already pushed them to rethink what they believed about comets in a very short space of time.
By ♿ V+ Marie381Uk 11 months ago in Fiction
Berganashio - Chapter 24
Queen Finyellë yelled. “Do not panic!” It was too late. After the avalanche of rocks had enclosed the fairy villagers, the caverns of Mem echoed with wails of their hysteria.
By Rowan Finley 11 months ago in Fiction
The House That Copies You
Far away from the busy city, hidden between silent mountains and thick trees, stood an abandoned mansion no one dared to visit after sunset. The locals never spoke about it openly. When they did, their voices dropped to whispers. They said the house was not empty. It watched. It listened. And most terrifying of all, it remembered people.
By Anas Khan11 months ago in Fiction
DECODING THE MAN FROM A NON-EXISTENT COUNTRY
On a summer day in Oia in 1954, at Haneda International Airport in Tokyo, Japan, passengers streamed through passport control. Everything seemed normal until a middle-aged, well-dressed man approached the immigration counter. Customs officers examined his thick passport, and suddenly, an eerie silence fell. The passport appeared valid, containing visa stamps from numerous countries, but there was one inconsistency. It was issued by a country called Taured, a nation that didn't exist on Earth.
By HieuDinh11 months ago in Fiction
When the Day Met the Night
In the beginning, before Earth’s creatures invaded space, there were only the celestial bodies, orbiting around each other. The moons lovingly orbited their planets, the planets orbited the sun, and the sun orbited nothing because the sun was the ruler of the Milky Way. The Earth’s young moon caught glimpses of the sun as she endlessly circled her planet. She smiled at the sun, and they always smiled back. As the months wore on, they grew closer and closer, until one day, the moon stood directly in front of the sun. They were breathtaking up close. Their golden hair flowed freely down to their waist. Sunspots dotted their sharp, angular face and they radiated a heat strong enough to scorch the Earth, but gentle enough to warm a weary traveler. And the moon felt drab and inadequate in their presence.
By Morey Guntz11 months ago in Fiction
The Key Between Stranger Realms – Day Thirteen
Day Thirteen began with silence—the kind that presses against your ears until you’re forced to listen to your own thoughts. Aren stood at the edge of the rift, the strange key resting heavily in his palm. It pulsed faintly, warm and alive, as if it could sense the nearness of another realm. Thirteen days had passed since he first found it buried beneath the ruins of the old watchtower. Thirteen days of running, hiding, crossing borders that were never meant to be crossed. And today, something felt different. The air shimmered unnaturally, bending light into fractured reflections. Beyond the rift lay a world Aren had not yet dared to enter—a realm whispered about only in fragments of forbidden texts. A realm where time unraveled and memories walked freely. “Elara warned me,” Aren muttered under his breath. Elara—the scholar with eyes too old for her face—had told him that the thirteenth crossing always demanded a price. Not blood. Not gold. Something worse. Truth. As Aren stepped forward, the ground beneath him dissolved into silver mist. The sensation was neither falling nor flying, but something in between—like being pulled through a thought someone else was having. When he landed, the world was quiet. Trees with glass-like leaves towered above him, their branches chiming softly as if stirred by invisible hands. The sky was neither day nor night, but a deep violet hue streaked with slow-moving stars. This realm felt aware of him, watching with patient curiosity. Then he saw them. Figures stood between the trees—dozens of them. All familiar. All impossible. His father, exactly as Aren remembered him the day he disappeared. The friend he had betrayed. The woman he loved and left behind to save himself. Each face carried an expression frozen between pain and understanding. “This realm feeds on memory,” a voice echoed. Aren turned sharply. A woman stepped forward, her form shifting like smoke caught in moonlight. Her eyes glowed the same soft gold as the key. “You carry the Key Between Stranger Realms,” she said. “But you do not yet understand its burden.” Aren clenched the key. “I didn’t ask for this.” “No one ever does,” she replied calmly. “But you crossed thirteen thresholds. That makes you a bearer.” The figures began to move, circling him slowly. “What do you want from me?” Aren asked. The woman raised a hand, and the world responded. The air thickened. The memories drew closer. “Choose,” she said. “To move forward, you must surrender one truth you’ve hidden—even from yourself.” Aren’s chest tightened. He knew which truth the realm wanted. The night the first gate opened, when the village burned—he had not failed to save them. He had chosen not to. The weight of it crushed him as the memory rose unbidden. The screams. The fear. The moment he turned away because survival felt easier than courage. “I was afraid,” Aren whispered. “And I let them die.” The realm trembled. The figures faded, dissolving into light. The woman nodded, her expression neither kind nor cruel. “Truth acknowledged,” she said. “The realm accepts your offering.” The key flared brilliantly, searing heat rushing through Aren’s arm. Symbols carved themselves deeper into its surface—new paths unlocked, new doors revealed. But something else changed too. The burden felt heavier now—not because of guilt, but because of clarity. As the rift reopened behind him, the woman spoke one last time. “Day Thirteen marks the end of ignorance. Every realm ahead will know who you truly are.” Aren stepped back through the rift, heart pounding. He was still alive. Still moving forward. But now the realms would not test his strength. They would test his soul. And the key—silent in his hand—waited for Day Fourteen.
By Zahid Hussain11 months ago in Fiction
Milk and cookies . Content Warning.
The thing about Christmas Eve is that it always smells the same. No matter where you are—apartment, house, shelter, hospital—the air carries that faint mixture of pine, sugar, and old heat. Even places that haven’t seen a tree in years seem to remember the scent. Like muscle memory. Like guilt. I noticed it the moment I stepped into the living room. The tree was lit. That was already suspicious . I was certain I’d unplugged it before going to bed. The outlet sat behind the armchair, and I remembered bending down, fingers brushing dust and needles, tugging the cord loose. I remembered it clearly because I’d cursed under my breath when the lights flickered . Now they glowed steadily. Soft. Warm. Almost gentle. The room itself hadn’t changed much. Same old couch with the burn mark on the armrest from years ago. Same coffee table scarred by rings and scratches. The fireplace was lit low, embers whispering instead of roaring. Stockings still hung from the mantel—three of them, though there hadn’t been three people in this house for a long time. And on the table sat the plate. Cookies. Chocolate chip. Slightly overdone, just the way my mother used to make them. A glass of milk beside them, condensation running down the side and pooling onto the wood. I hadn’t made those. I stood there longer than I should have, coat still on, keys clenched in my hand. The rational part of my brain tried to fill the silence with explanations. Muscle memory. Sleepwalking. Stress. Neighbors playing a prank that somehow involved entering my locked house, baking cookies, and lighting a fire. The rational part was losing badly. I took one step forward, then another, listening to the floorboards complain under my weight. The sound felt too loud, like the house was holding its breath and I’d broken the rules by moving. That’s when I saw him. An intruder. At first, it was just red. A shape beyond the edge of the tree, partially obscured by branches and tinsel. Too solid to be a shadow, too wrong to be decoration. I froze again, heart pounding, every nerve screaming at me to back away, to run, to do anything except keep looking. But I looked. He stood between the tree and the fireplace, close enough that the heat licked at the fur trim of his suit. The red fabric was darkened in places, stiff and uneven, as if soaked and dried more than once. A thick black belt cinched his waist, the buckle scratched and dull. His boots were planted wide, heavy, leaving marks in the rug. In his left hand, he held a sack. Not the cheerful, bulging kind from mall photos and storybooks, but a coarse burlap thing, knotted at the top and dragging slightly on the floor. The bottom was stained darker than the rest, the fabric clumped and stiff as if something inside had leaked and then cooled. In his right hand— I swallowed hard. An axe. Not decorative. Not antique. A real tool, the kind you’d buy at a hardware store and forget in the shed for years. The blade caught the firelight when he shifted his grip, reflecting it in a dull, wet sheen. I never saw his face. The hood of his coat hung forward, casting everything above his beard into shadow. I could make out the lower half—gray-white hair matted and uneven, lips hidden, jaw set—but nothing more. It was like my eyes slid away from that part of him, refusing to fill in the details. He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Didn’t even breathe, as far as I could tell. We stood there, separated by a few yards of rug and memory, and in that silence something awful settled into place inside me. This wasn’t a home invasion. This was an appointment. My mouth felt dry. “This is not real,” I whispered to myself, because it was the only sentence that came to mind. The figure shifted his weight. The axe head dipped slightly, then steadied. The fire popped. Somewhere in the house, a pipe knocked, sharp and sudden, and I flinched so hard my keys clattered to the floor. The sound echoed in the room, impossibly loud, and when it faded I realized the figure was closer. Not by much. A step, maybe. Enough. I backed up until my shoulders brushed the doorframe. My heart hammered so hard I thought it might give me away, like prey betraying itself in tall grass. “What do you want?” I asked. He tilted his head. Just enough to suggest curiosity. His boot nudged something near the tree, and I saw it then: a small box, half-hidden behind wrapped presents. It was old, edges frayed, the kind of cardboard you don’t see anymore. Something about it felt familiar in a way that made my stomach turn. I knew that box. I hadn’t seen it in decades. “You’re not Santa,” I said, the words trembling out of me. The figure took another step forward. I smelled iron then, sharp and unmistakable, cutting through pine and sugar like a blade. The sack dragged again, leaving a faint dark smear on the rug. Memory crashed into me all at once. The year my father lost his job. The year the heat went out for a week. The year my mother cried in the kitchen because she didn’t know how to explain to two kids why Christmas wasn’t coming. I remembered the knock at the door that night. The man in the red coat. Not jolly. Not smiling. Just tired. He’d smelled like cold air and cigarettes. He’d handed my mother a box—this box—and told her it was “community outreach.” A donation. Anonymous. Inside were toys. Warm clothes. Food. Enough to make it through. Enough to believe again. My mother had hugged him. Thanked him. Called him an angel. He’d looked past her, over her shoulder, and straight at me. Even then, I hadn’t seen his face. “What’s in the sack?” I whispered. The axe shifted. The figure reached into his coat with his now free hand and withdrew something small. He held it out, palm up. A folded piece of paper. I recognized my own handwriting immediately. “For Santa,” it read, the letters shaky and uneven. A child’s hand. My chest tightened. “I was seven,” I said, voice breaking. “I didn’t know.” The figure let the paper fall. It drifted to the floor, landing near the cookies. Behind him, the fire flared. Images crowded my mind—things I’d buried and labeled as mistakes, misunderstandings, accidents. The neighbor who disappeared. The rumors. The house down the block that burned after Christmas. The gifts that always came, no matter how bad things got. “I thought you were helping,” I said. “I thought—” The sack twitched. Something inside it shifted, heavy and solid. He took one final step forward, close enough now that I could see the stitching in his gloves, the cracks in the leather of his belt, the way the fur trim was matted with something darker than soot. I backed into the door, fumbling for the handle, tears blurring my vision. “I don’t want anything anymore,” I said. “Please. I don’t want anything.” For the first time, he moved quickly. The axe came up—not in a swing, but a warning, the blade stopping inches from my chest. Close enough that I felt the cold of it through my coat. He leaned in. Still no face. Just darkness beneath the hood, swallowing the firelight whole. Then he lowered the axe. Slowly. Carefully. He turned away from me and placed the sack down beside the tree. From it, he removed one last gift and set it gently on the table, next to the milk and cookies. A small, neatly wrapped box. My name on the tag. He straightened, adjusted the sack over his shoulder, and walked toward the fireplace. The fire dimmed as he approached, shrinking back like a thing that knew better. And then he was gone. No smoke. No flash. Just absence. I didn’t move for a long time. Eventually, the tree lights flickered and went out. The fire died. The house went cold. In the morning, the plate was empty. The milk glass was dry. And the box on the table contained exactly what I’d asked for, all those years ago. Enough to last the winter. Nothing more. Nothing less. I unplugged the tree and threw the cookies away. I don’t celebrate Christmas anymore. But every year, on Christmas Eve, I lock my doors, turn off my lights, and make very sure I don’t want anything at all. Because some gifts are still being delivered. And some Santas never stop keeping lists.
By E. hasan11 months ago in Fiction
The Cinder’s Weight
The hearth has stopped its singing.white-ribbed and glowing with a soft, pulsing ache. I am watching the last flame— a tiny, blue-tongued ghost licking the underside of a charred knot. It is fragile, a translucent ribbon fraying against the weight of the coming dark. There is a specific silence that lives here For hours, it was a roar of gold and defiance, consuming the dry cedar of our history, the splinters of every word we ever threw into the heat to keep the room alive. But the wood is spent now. The logs have collapsed into a skeletal geography,
By Awa Nyassi11 months ago in Fiction