The Soul-Tithe ☠ A Story Lab Prompt for the Unforgiven

You feel it, don’t you?

The chill that comes not from weather but from memory. The silence that settles in after something ancient stirs.

You’ve stepped into a story that’s been waiting far too long to be told.

Every seven years, the fog returns.

It curls through the village like a curse remembered. And with it comes the Collector, faceless, silent, dressed in robes stitched from moth wings and funeral lace.

It arrives not to bargain, but to take what it is owed:

A soul from every household.

But this year, the offering is refused.

Now the ground remembers what it buried. The dead remember how to speak. And your protagonist? They’re the ones the Collector wants next.

This is not a tale of heroes. This is a tale of debts, broken pacts, and the price of defiance.

You’ve been chosen. Now bleed your story into the page.

Your Mission, Should You Be Brave (or Foolish) Enough to Accept:

🕯 Who Defies the Old Pact?
Are they the child of the last soul taken?
A former priest who once blessed the Collector’s coming?
A mother who would rather burn the village than give her daughter?

What ghosts do they carry? What loss are they still mourning? What is it that finally makes them say no?

🕯 What Is the Pact?
Was it forged in war? In plague? In desperation?

Was the Collector once a god, a man, a mistake?
Does the fog hide more than death—maybe a truth the town was never meant to know?

Unveil the history. Burn the edges of it.

🕯 Where Do They Make Their Stand?
Is it in the chapel’s crypt, beneath the altar bones?
In the woods where children vanish, where flowers still grow from unmarked graves?
Or in the attic of a house no one else remembers?

Build it so real we can taste the mildew and ash.

🕯 What Price Must Be Paid?
If no soul is offered… what is taken instead?

Does time unravel? Do animals speak in tongues? Do the villagers rot from the inside, memory-first?
Or does your protagonist lose something worse—faith, family, themselves?

🕯 Who Stands in the Way?
The Collector isn’t the only one watching.

Is there a Council desperate to preserve the old ways?
A neighbor who sees profit in fear?
Or is the true enemy something within—grief, guilt, betrayal?

Make the conflict intimate. Make it cruel.

Build the World Like a Cursed Tapestry
Do the streetlamps flicker when the fog nears?
Do people hang charms from their doorframes—teeth, hair, bits of songs?
Does the church bell ring on its own, always at dusk?

We want to live in your nightmare.

Characters That Won’t Let Go
Protagonist: Scarred, desperate, barely holding on. Make us ache with them.
Antagonist: The Collector? A zealot? The protagonist’s own unraveling mind?
Supporting Cast: Who tries to help? Who betrays? Who remembers what really happened seven years ago?

Structure (for Those Who Crave Bones to Build Upon)

• Main Conflict: Defy the soul-tithe. Survive what follows.

• Rising Action: Fog thickens. Secrets crack open.

• Climax: The Collector arrives. Something is offered.

• Resolution: Peace… or a new kind of curse.

Deadline for the Damned
Submit your tale or comic strip by the end of the month. We’ll feature our favorites and crown one “Bearer of the Fog Mark.”

Use the hashtag #InkwellStoryLabs and tag us so we can witness your descent.

And remember:

Once the Collector comes… it doesn’t leave empty-handed.

Welcome to the Lab.

Now tell us a story that was never meant to be survived.