The Ferryman Returns Them Changed
By @Dino1208
In the perpetually fog-choked Vesswater valley, Cadoc Ryne is the grim Ferryman, burdened with an unholy task. He pulls the recently drowned from the treacherous Vess, a river that flows upstream on nights best forgotten, and returns them to their grieving families. His unique ability to call souls back comes at a terrifying cost: the Vess always claims a piece, substituting something alien and grotesque. Families, desperate in their grief, pay his escalating price, willfully ignoring the unsettling changes in their 'returned' loved ones. Cadoc, a man haunted by silent duty, keeps a locked shed housing the river's true abominations - the things too monstrous even for the desperate. Now, whispers of a growing blight, a malevolent mimicry, threaten to drown the entire valley in the very horrors he's unleashed, forcing Cadoc to confront the compounding debt he's exacted.
21
Bones of the Shroud-Elk
By @john1208
The Yul-Gorek was the guardian of the permafrost, a majestic beast with antlers of petrified ironwood that kept the lethal blizzards at bay. When Torvak, the village's ruthless timber baron, slaughters the beast to sell its legendary antlers to lowland elites, the winter descends with unnatural, howling fury. But the true horror is the Splinter-Blight. Those who shared in the profit or ate the meat find their joints stiffening. Wooden splinters push painfully from beneath their fingernails. Soon, their own ribs branch out, piercing their flesh to root them to the floorboards as living, conscious trees of agony. As the lethal blizzard worsens, desperate families begin chopping up their mutated, screaming relatives for firewood to survive the cold. The horrifying twist? Inhaling the smoke of the burning guilty spreads the curse to the innocent. Varnok, an exiled ice-cutter immune to the blight, realizes the terrifying truth. To break the cycle and save the uninfected children, he must extinguish every hearth in the settlement. Can he force the guilty to freeze in the pitch-black dark, or will the village burn itself into a forest of ash and bone?
2
Stitching the Orolang
By @john1208
For centuries, the six-eyed Orolang wandered the jagged peaks of the Phugyel Spine, eating the sins of the villagers and breathing out a protective mist that hid them from the ancient terrors below. But Elder Jigmed coveted the beast's immortal, golden fleece to trade with lowland merchants. The night he flayed the Orolang alive, the mist turned to razor-ash. Now, the beast’s spirit haunts the terraces, gifting the guilty with horrific, terminal manifestations of their greed: the butcher is suffocated by endlessly growing meat in his own lungs, and the elder weeps heavy coins that tear through his flesh. Tsongen, a despised loom-worker, discovers the terrifying truth: the curse cannot be prayed away. The Orolang must be made whole again. To stop the karmic rot from consuming his innocent younger sister, Tsongen must become a gruesome surgeon, hunting down the cursed elders to harvest their mutated bodies and weave a new vessel for the flayed god. But as the reconstructed beast grows hungrier, will Tsongen lose his own humanity in the process?
2
The Cenotaph Banquet
By @john1208
Inspector Yashar Tolun is infamous in the precinct for sleeping through his shifts and solving complex cases with minimal effort. But his chronic lethargy shatters when he wakes up inexplicably suspended in a massive nest of human hair, silverware, and hollowed bones, woven into the grand chandelier of Ulaveri's Table - the city’s most exclusive restaurant. Below him lie the grotesque remains of the city's elite. They are victims of a horrifying karmic plague: their necks snapped backward, violently regurgitating their own liquefied organs as compacted pellets. Chef Ulaveri had secretly captured and served the sacred Cenotaph-Owl to his patrons for an astronomical profit, and now the beast's spirit is collecting its toll. To break the curse before it consumes the diners' innocent families, Yashar teams up with Olaris, a melancholic scullery maid who survived the massacre. Accompanied by a soot-feathered owlet, they navigate the supernaturally sealed restaurant. But as Yashar investigates the gruesome aftermath, and Olaris recounts her desperate evasion of the chef in the dark cellars, the truth begins to blur. If Olaris's escape and the owl's slaughter are actually the exact same event, who is Yashar falling in love with?
1
The Flayed Mastiff's Shroud
By @john1208
The Qarlik Spires are protected by the Zhal-Mastiffs, giant hounds that guide freezing souls to the afterlife. But when Patriarch Oghul slaughters and skins the eldest hound to fashion a coat of peerless warmth, a horrific curse descends upon the Yashgar Cliff-Manor. Oghul's bloodline is afflicted by the 'Hollow Frost' - an unnatural, agonizing hypothermia that turns their living flesh to black ice, driving the guilty to violently flay the servants just to steal their warmth. Nimka, the Patriarch's quiet and intensely stubborn daughter, desperately investigates the manor's forbidden archives to break the curse. Under the guise of a timid girl trying to save her family, she exhibits a cold, calculating brilliance, subtly isolating her cruel relatives so they face the hound's wrath one by one. But as Nimka pieces together the esoteric ritual binding the flayed beast, a terrifying revelation surfaces. She is not just an innocent descendant trying to survive; she is the reincarnation of the hound's original, murdered master. Will Nimka complete the icy extermination she engineered lifetimes ago, or will the flayed beast turn its insatiable hunger upon her?
1
The Flayed Dynasty
By @john1208
Mireni thought marrying into the ultra-wealthy Zevris family would finally grant her the security she craved in the freezing metropolis of Zhegoria. But her new home, the monolithic Kravak Tower, is hiding a grisly secret. To save his dying, frost-afflicted granddaughter, the Zevris patriarch secretly butchered the luxury building’s sacred Tundesh hound, turning its mystical pelt into a life-saving coat. Now, an invisible, skinless entity stalks the penthouse floors. The curse is simple: it demands its skin back, and it is slowly flaying the Zevris bloodline alive to get it. As her in-laws begin to lose their minds and their flesh in agonizing, rabid fits, Mireni refuses to be collateral damage. Instead of fleeing the locked-down smart-building, she sees an opportunity. With cold precision, she begins to quietly corral her abusive in-laws into the spirit's path. Can she perfectly orchestrate the massacre to pay the hound's blood-debt without losing her own skin?
1
The Chanda Requiem: Nursing the Damned
By @john1208
For centuries, the six-armed Chanda-Beast slept in the center of Piyol, absorbing the traumas and dark urges of the villagers to protect them from the psychic, carnivorous forests of Othkar. But when Patriarch Jurok slaughters the gentle creature to sell its crystallized brain to a mainland poet, the beast's vengeful spirit returns with a horrifying twist. The curse doesn't just punish Jurok's bloodline - it transforms their bodies into living, fleshy containment vessels for all the unconsumed nightmares of the village. As Jurok and his family physically mutate into agonizing amalgams of the town's darkest sins, they beg for the sweet release of death. But Kavrin, the outcast gravedigger, discovers a terrifying truth: if the guilty die, their bodies will rupture, and a shockwave of concentrated madness will annihilate the entire valley. Forced to become the tortuous caretaker of the monsters who once tormented him, Kavrin must force-feed and heal the begging patriarch while preparing to hunt down the poet to reconstruct the beast. Can Kavrin reclaim the stolen brain before the mutating elites finally figure out how to commit suicide?
1
The Ossuary Harvest: Butchering the Immortal Elites
By @john1208
For centuries, the colossal Ossuary-Crane consumed the dead of Ghol, ensuring peaceful transitions and preventing the chaotic Marrow-Blight. But Margrave Zallur, terrified of aging, ordered the beast shot down to weave its soul-plumage into cloaks for his family. The Crane’s vengeful spirit responded with the Curse of Boundless Vitality: the elites were stripped of death entirely. Now, they suffer in endless agony as their bodies violently over-heal, mutating into sprawling, cancerous flesh-cathedrals. But the elites’ greed knows no bounds. Realizing their severed, regenerating meat holds miracle-healing properties, they have converted their manor into an industrialized abattoir, voluntarily butchering themselves daily to sell their cursed flesh to the outside world. Drevik, the Crane’s last surviving warden, watches in horror as karmic retribution is weaponized into a lucrative pharmaceutical empire. With the outside world clamoring for the miracle cure - and unknowingly ingesting the Crane’s horrific curse - Drevik must infiltrate the slaughter-wards. Can he gather the scattered plumage and grant the mutated aristocrats the permanent death they are desperately trying to monetize, or will the spreading rot consume the continent?
1
Chords of the Glass-Throated Crane
By @john1208
In the obsidian terraces of Khol-Zhan, the Glass-Throated Lyre-Crane was revered not as a god, but as a vital acoustic instrument. Its haunting, subsonic songs pacified the colossal tectonic worms slumbering beneath the magma vents. But when Baron Morvath butchers the sacred bird to craft a crystalline chandelier from its vocal cords, the earth begins to violently splinter. The curse of the Crane does not kill the guilty immediately. Instead, Morvath and his cronies are afflicted with the Tremor-Plague. Jagged glass vocal cords erupt through their human throats, compelling them to emit agonizing, melodic screams that mimic the dead bird. Thura, a deaf ash-digger who navigates the world purely through vibrations, feels the tectonic worms rising to consume the innocent villagers. She discovers a horrifying truth: the scattered screams of the cursed nobles are acoustically out of tune. To pacify the deep earth, Thura cannot wait for them to die. She must drag them to the volcanic vents, break their ribs, and stretch their mutating necks to achieve the perfect harmonic resonance. Will she lose her own humanity as she physically tunes her oppressors into screaming, living instruments?
1
Hatching the Mire-Stork's Curse
By @john1208
The stilt-village of Ghol-Doro survived the caustic mudflats for centuries by worshipping the Nang-Tuk, a giant, golden-crested mire-stork that filters the toxic waters. But when the village patriarch slaughters the final matriarch stork to cure his heir's fatal rot, he unleashes a horrifying karmic plague. The stork’s spirit returns, demanding its stolen unborn brood be returned. Now, the guilty family members are violently gestating spectral fledglings, their bodies warping into living, agonizing nests. Mokhwa, a lowly mud-diver and undertaker, is tasked by the terrified elites with finding a cure. She quickly realizes there is no breaking the curse through prayers or medicine. The only way to stop the plague from consuming the innocent low-caste villagers is to safely 'deliver' the spirit's monstrous offspring. To save her home, Mokhwa must meticulously orchestrate the gruesome deaths of the corrupt elites, feeding them to the very curse they provoked. Can she finish the grim harvest before the spectral rot claims her own blood?
1
The Hollow-Bone Hex
By @john1208
The rain at the merchant's funeral is freezing, but it is the corpse's unnatural posture that chills Khaydruk. As a world-weary feng shui master, he knows corrupted earth-energy when he sees it, but the merchant’s neck - snapped a full one-hundred-and-eighty degrees backward - screams of an intelligent, cold-blooded grudge. The isolated mountain village of Qeng-Dhar is under siege. Elder Kharom recently slaughtered the peak’s sacred Yurlun Owl, selling its crystalline plumage to wealthy lowlanders. Yet Kharom is no greedy tyrant; he used the silver to buy grain for a community ravaged by a three-year famine. Now, the owl’s calculating spirit has returned to collect its toll. The curse is methodical: anyone who consumed the purchased food feels their bones painfully hollowing out like a bird's, their skin rupturing with sharp golden feathers as their heads slowly twist backward to face the mountain they betrayed. Armed with only his compass, his biting sarcasm, and a hopelessly chatty incense-peddler named Pobur, Khaydruk must navigate shifting, hostile earth-lines to break the hex. But as Kharom’s desperate, sympathetic motives are revealed, Khaydruk faces a cynical choice: how do you exorcise a curse when the monster's vengeance is entirely justified?
0
The Silt-Terrapin's Ledger
By @john1208
The Sunken Terraces of Narmad relied on the ancient Pearl-Silt Terrapin to filter the toxic, abyssal mud. But when Patriarch Bhaimin butchers the sacred beast to carve its iridescent shell into a pleasure barge, the terrapin's spirit exacts a terrifying toll. A creeping calcification infects anyone who profited from the slaughter, growing a crushing, agonizing internal shell that slowly paralyzes them. The twist? The curse strictly tracks the flow of the blood money. To stall their petrification, the guilty elites begin aggressively forcing their wealth onto the town's impoverished outcasts, weaponizing 'charity' to pass the curse. Vashni, a cynic who refused the initial hush-money, watches his fellow slum-dwellers eagerly accept the tainted gold, only to begin hardening into living statues days later. As the infected elites grow so unnaturally heavy that their weight threatens to snap the stilt-village into the toxic swamp, Vashni must track down the scattered pieces of the pleasure barge to appease the spirit. Can he reassemble the shattered carapace before the desperate elites force their deadly fortune onto him?
0