Horror, science fiction, fantasy, and the occasional story that refuses to choose. https://stories.naert.net/ 2026-11-14T13:30:48+01:00 Karsten Naert https://stories.naert.net/my-name-is-eve/ 2026-11-14T01:42:15+01:00 2026-11-14T01:42:15+01:00

Alice and Bob are among humanity's first explorers beyond the solar system. Then a message arrives from ahead, and they discover they may not be the first after all.

https://stories.naert.net/three-bits/ 2026-11-12T15:25:11+01:00 2026-11-12T16:46:17+01:00

Three aliens land beside the research reactor at Mol and ask to borrow it for three weeks. In exchange, they offer answers to three yes-or-no questions. The Prime Minister of Belgium assembles the country’s deepest thinkers to decide what to ask.

https://stories.naert.net/chronicles-of-the-eternal-shadow/ 2026-11-11T12:42:22+01:00 2026-11-11T23:54:48+01:00

For a thousand years Eldoria has known peace. Now seven riders come to Willowbrook for an orphaned farm boy with a dragon-shaped birthmark, a wizard arrives with a prophecy and no explanations, and far in the north the Great Wall of Eternity begins to crack while the snowflakes grow larger. The complete saga in one volume: nine books and a prequel of epic fantasy, for readers who want the prophecy, the fellowship and the Dark Lord, and are prepared to take the mountains as read.

https://stories.naert.net/galactus-xii/ 2026-11-10T00:58:15+01:00 2026-11-14T13:30:48+01:00

Thirteen galactic days after Pope Galactus XI dies, the cardinals seal themselves inside a conclave that expels the supporters of losing candidates. Its ancient counting Engine watches their devotions and reads their ballots.

https://stories.naert.net/something-lurks-in-the-forest/ 2026-11-09T22:29:51+01:00 2026-11-09T22:29:51+01:00

Ellis Reed lives alone at the edge of Bellwether Forest, where he works as a ranger. When an escaped murderer is believed to be hiding nearby, Ellis's knowledge of the woods makes him useful to the police. Then another body is found, and being useful becomes an obsession.

https://stories.naert.net/meet-the-maker/ 2026-11-09T17:09:05+01:00 2026-11-14T13:30:48+01:00

With their world overrun by the Netherworld, Caedmon and the Green Wizard pass through a dying wizard's portal to petition the Eternal Maker of Space and Time. They find fast metal carts, powerless magic, a great many stairs, and an unimpressive man in slippers.

https://stories.naert.net/the-millionth-morning/ 2026-10-03T09:53:21+02:00 2026-10-03T11:03:55+02:00

A man who perceives almost no emotion wakes on his millionth day in a green urban sanctuary. Almost all of humanity has entered a transcendent collective; he has remained physical. Over breakfast, Arishem arrives for his thousandth visit, with an invitation whose answer everyone around him seems to know already.

https://stories.naert.net/welcome-to-the-loop/ 2026-10-03T09:53:21+02:00 2026-11-09T17:09:05+01:00

A driver nods off at the wheel, swerves onto an exit ramp, and enters the Loop: a business park where every ramp, every direction and every escape route leads back to the same welcome sign.

https://stories.naert.net/the-smallest-counterexample/ 2026-09-25T13:20:08+02:00 2026-09-25T13:20:08+02:00

In 2085, the last mathematician is working on an argument whose flaw he has hidden from himself for eleven days. Then a team of cosmologists asks him to look at the Great Wall of galaxies, where a pattern in the new survey has survived six months of attempts to explain it away. Their AI has advised them not to tell him what they think it resembles.