Dark fantasy thrives on moral ambiguity, cursed bargains, and the terrible prices of power. These 72 dark fantasy prompts explore the genre’s darkest corners, ranging from necromantic rituals that devour faith to prophecies that seal their doom.
Each prompt is designed as a springboard, not a straightjacket. So, it’s you who brings the character, setting, and stakes.
You’ll find cursed objects that transform their wielders, kingdoms rotting under ancient curses, haunted locations where the dead refuse silence, and monsters that feed on human emotion.
The prompts are divided into 8 different categories. All the prompts are unique, fresh, and they don’t have any overlap on themes both within and across the categories.
Keep reading to pick the prompt/s that appeals to your dark side the most.
Table of Contents
👑Cursed Object & Transformations
- A dagger bound to ancient souls whispers secrets to its wielder, slowly driving them toward madness.
- A ring can resurrect the dead. Each use erases one of the wearer’s most precious memories.
- A crown grants its wearer command over others while feeding on their ambition, corrupting every desire.
- Cursed armor ensures victory in battle. With each fight, the wearer’s humanity slips further away.
- A black tome reveals forbidden knowledge by replacing pieces of the reader’s soul with ancient secrets.
- A talisman transfers wounds from one person to another. The healer must then share the cumulative suffering of everyone who was “helped.”
- A shield protects its bearer perfectly and raises the dead from each battle, creating an ever-growing army of the wielder’s victims.
- A bell summons the spirits of lost loved ones. Ring it too often, and the ringer’s own soul becomes trapped in the realm of the dead.
- A mirror reveals the secrets of anyone the user focuses on, slowly transforming the viewer to resemble what they hate most about others.
- A healer’s staff cures any ailment at the cost of the healer’s capacity for joy.
💀Necromancy & The Undead
- A spell temporarily resurrects a loved one. With each summoning, they decay further until they become unrecognizable.
- A ritual opens communication with the dead. The spirits grow possessive with each conversation, eventually trying to trap the living among them.
- A necromantic ritual raises an entire army from the dead. The soldiers return with hatred for whoever sent them to their deaths.
- Ancient runes resurrect the long-dead. Each use binds the caster closer to the realm of death until they can’t return.
- A lonely man discovers that he can see and speak with ghosts. The dead slowly drain the warmth and life from the living.
- A healer prevents death by binding souls to their dying bodies. Those “saved” lose all the capacity for happiness.
- A stolen necromancer’s spellbook works perfectly. Every spell cast leaves the caster with vivid memories of the original necromancer’s crimes.
- Spirits of dead soldiers can be summoned to fight again. When the battle ends, they demand living warriors to join them.
🕯️Dark Magic & Forbidden Rituals
- A blood magic ritual grants immense power while permanently tattooing the caster’s greatest regrets onto their skin for all to see.
- A spell scroll grants any wish. The cost is an act of cruelty equal to the wish’s magnitude.
- A magical well grants prophetic visions. But every drink makes it harder to distinguish reality from hallucination.
- Eternal candles reveal hidden truths in their smoke. Each truth learned extinguishes some of the viewer’s faith or hope.
- A spellbook made from preserved flowers grants power over life and growth. The side effect is that every spell ages the caster by years.
- Runes summon ancient gods to answer questions. Each god answered steals the summoner’s ability to speak one type of truth.
- Talismans written with enchanted ink make the writer’s words come true but make it impossible for them to ever lie again.
- A naming ritual gives you power over anyone whose true name you speak, making your fate bound to theirs.
🏰Dark Kingdoms & Cursed Lands
- A kingdom is cursed so that all who oppose the crown breathe poisoned air. Rebellion becomes a slow death sentence.
- In a royal court under curse, every lie spoken manifests as physical poison in the castle, slowly killing everyone inside.
- In a cursed palace, all food and drink compel those who consume it to speak only their darkest thoughts.
- A city suffers under music that no one can resist following. It leads citizens to their doom in the ruins.
- An army fights under a curse that makes their weapons reflect their greatest regrets during battle, turning even the bravest into cowards.
- A kingdom’s river runs with the blood of broken oaths. Anyone who breaks a promise within the realm gets dragged into its depths.
- Crops grow supernaturally fast and feed entire villages. They slowly poison the soil and the souls of those who eat them.
- In one kingdom, dust itself remembers the past, whispering prophecies and secrets to anyone who listens long enough to go mad.
- A crumbling kingdom experiences a strange phenomenon: each sunset erases the memories of those who harbor hatred, forcing them to relive their grudges anew each day.
🏚️Haunted Locations & Gothic Settings
- Voices of the regretful dead lure travelers deeper into the forest, causing them to forget where they were going.
- You enter a ruined gallery with worn-out paintings of dead people hanging on the wall. The dead come out alive from the painting right at the stroke of the midnight and reveals the darkest secret of the ones who view them.
- A mansion where light illuminates painful memories instead of physical space.
- A manor where music plays from empty rooms. Anyone who listens too long becomes trapped in the memory the song describes.
- The family portraits age and decay to reflect the sins and sorrows of the family, showing their true nature.
- Lullabies passed down through generations to summon the ghosts of dead family members when sung.
- Archives where historical records change based on who reads them, showing personalized versions of the truth.
🐉Monsters & Dark Creatures
- Flying creatures feed on human memories, leaving their victims alive yet hollow.
- Shadow wolves can only be seen in moonlight. They feed on their victims’ courage, turning brave warriors into cowards.
- A serpent grants wishes in exchange for the wisher’s innocence. Each wish makes them more cynical and crueler.
- Wraiths steal the names of their victims. Everyone forgets the person that ever existed.
- Bears made of winter wind and frost can smell grief. They hunt those who mourn.
- Demons feed on pride and ambition, growing stronger as their victims achieve success.
- A sea creature senses guilt and drags those who carry heavy consciences into the depths.
- Living shadows devour anything beautiful, forcing artists and creators to hide their work or watch it consumed.
- Dragons feed on fear and grow larger, the more terrified their victims become.
- Banshees’ wails predict death. Listening to them makes the prophecy more likely to come true.
🔮Prophecies & Dark Destinies
- A tapestry shows anyone’s future. The act of looking at it makes that future inevitable.
- Mirrors show alternate versions of the viewer’s life. Look too long, and those realities bleed into the current one.
- Omens appear as shifting dust patterns, accurate in every prediction. They always predict tragedy that cannot be prevented.
- A prophecy sung by the bones of dead kings tells the future of the kingdom. It fulfills itself through those who hear it.
- Ancient stories contain true prophecies. Reading them aloud makes the reader a character in the next tale.
- A scroll predicts exactly how peace can be achieved. The cost is always mass bloodshed.
- Glyphs show multiple possible futures. Each vision burns away one of those possibilities, narrowing fate.
- A seer gains prophetic visions by sacrificing their physical sight. Each vision also erodes their sanity.
- Omens carved in bones always come true. Speaking them aloud curses the speaker to experience them firsthand.
- A legend predicts eternal darkness. Every attempt to prevent it brings it one step closer to reality.
🩸Dark Pacts & Moral Corruption
- A contract signed in blood grants wealth and success. The signer slowly loses their ability to feel genuine happiness.
- Enchanted coins make the spender wealthier with each purchase. Everyone they meet distrusts them more.
- A pact grants the ability to keep any secret perfectly. Each secret kept erodes the keeper’s sense of honor.
- Tears collected in vials grant magical power when consumed. Each use makes it harder to feel genuine emotion.
- A throne grants absolute authority. To keep their power, the ruler must commit one act of cruelty each day.
- A road guarantees safe passage. At each crossroads, travelers must abandon one person they love.
- A jester’s mask makes everyone laugh at the wearer’s jokes. The wearer slowly loses the ability to distinguish humor from tragedy.
- A binding oath makes the swearer impossibly convincing when they speak—and compels them to keep every promise they make, no matter how casual.
- A pact of silence grants the ability to hear others’ thoughts. Speaking aloud ever again means instant death.
What is Dark Fantasy – The Genre Explained
Dark fantasy, a fantasy subgenre, blends traditional fantasy elements with horror, creating stories characterized by grim atmospheres, moral ambiguity, and supernatural dread.
Unlike high fantasy which often features clear heroes and villains, dark fantasy thrives in the shadows between good and evil.
The Crux of Dark Fantasy
The genre combines fantasy worldbuilding with horror elements, featuring supernatural threats such as demons, undead creatures, and cursed beings.
It incorporates gothic and macabre aesthetics while exploring psychological depth and existential themes. Dark fantasy presents morally complex situations where characters face impossible choices with no clear right answers.
Typical Character Types
Dark fantasy protagonists are rarely pure heroes.
Common character archetypes include anti-heroes with flawed motivations, cursed warriors bearing dark afflictions, necromancers and practitioners of forbidden magic, fallen heroes seeking redemption, and corrupted royalty struggling with power.
These characters often battle inner demons as much as external threats, making them deeply relatable yet unpredictable. Our prompts show those characters and the struggles that will help you to write a dark fantasy fiction.
Major Themes in Dark Fantasy Fiction
The genre explores death, decay, and mortality as central concerns. Power corruption forms a recurring motif, showing how magic and authority can twist even noble intentions.
Moral ambiguity blurs the lines between good and evil, forcing readers to question traditional heroic narratives.
Other prevalent themes include sacrifice and loss of humanity, forbidden knowledge and its terrible consequences, madness and psychological horror, isolation and despair, and the constant tension between redemption and damnation.
Key Principles of Writing Dark Fantasy Fiction
The dark fantasy writing prompts in this post will be a springboard for you to craft a story that you want.
However, sticking with these design principles of dark fantasy fiction will help you in crafting a story that stands true to the spirit of dark fantasy.
Grim Atmosphere & Tone
The most compelling dark fantasy stories begin with a foreboding tone by using opening words that evoke the dark imagery of shadows, decay, death and blood. Create an oppressive or claustrophobic feeling that makes the setting feel inescapable.
The key is to integrate horror with your fantasy worldbuilding that maintains the authenticity of this genre.
Moral Complexity
Dark fantasy doesn’t have the theme of pure heroes vs. villains. It thrives on moral ambiguity.
So, presenting impossible choices where no answer is clearly right and showing the characters with flawed motivations who must navigate the ethical gray areas are the core of displaying the moral complexity.
This is the hardest of dark fantasy fiction writing. Get this right, and you’ve a story that will resonate with the hardcore dark fantasy readers.
Stakes & Consequences
In dark fantasy, magic always comes at a terrible cost. And those costs are massive personal sacrifices such as loss of soul, humanity, memories, and loved ones.
Showing irreversible consequences that create genuine tension and making failures either world-ending or personally devastating make dark fantasy fiction more intense and gripping.
Character Depth
As stated before, the characters in dark fantasy are rarely as clear as black and white. You can have the elements of a villain in a hero and so as the vice-versa.
And the best way to do it is by feature anti-heroes or cursed protagonists rather than traditional heroes. Give characters dark pasts or inner demons they must confront.
Show both internal and external conflicts so that the battle within often proves more compelling than physical threats.
Supernatural Elements
Dark fantasy is soulless if there are no horror-adjacent creatures like demons, undead, and wraiths surrounding the main characters.
And to make it even more intense, use corrupting or forbidden magic systems where power extraction demands sacrifice.
Include cursed objects with dark powers that tempt wielders and blend supernatural threats with psychological horror for deeper impact.
Internal & External Conflicts
The beauty of dark fantasy fiction is that it presents no-win situations by forcing difficult choices to the characters. The threats are not only external but also internal.
So let the struggle come to the fore by making the internal fight in the characters as much important as the fight against the external monsters.
Make the conflicts emotionally resonant to the readers by connecting them with the characters’ fears, insecurities, and hidden desires.
Avoid Too Much of Gore
True dark fantasy explores psychological and moral darkness, not just gore and death. Gore and death are the outcome of the struggle. They’re not the building blocks of the story.
Also avoid stereotypical chosen one narratives unless you’re subverting them.
And the worst sin of dark fantasy is to make magic consequence-free. This undermines the genre’s core tension and brings down the story.
Ensure your “dark” elements serve the story rather than existing for shock value alone.
3 Dark Fantasy Books That You Must Read
The First Law Trilogy by Joe Abercrombie
This is dark fantasy at its most character-driven. Abercrombie takes three fantasy characters, which are the noble barbarian, the dashing swordsman, the wise wizard, and shows you what those people would actually be like.
Spoiler: they’re all damaged, selfish, and morally compromised. No one wins cleanly. No one stays heroic. The magic has costs, the victories feel hollow, and you’ll love these bastards anyway. This is the best book that captures the moral decay and internal conflict of the characters.
This book will teach you that “dark” doesn’t mean edgy. It means exposing the primal side of the human nature.
The Black Company by Glen Cook
The story is told from the perspective of the company physician/chronicler of a mercenary group working for the evil empire.
He is not fighting against it, he is working for it. The prose is lean, military, and unsentimental. Characters die without fanfare. Moral ambiguity isn’t a theme, it’s the air they breathe. Glen Cook invented grimdark before it had a name.
The story will show you how to make readers care about people doing terrible things for practical reasons. You’ll love this anti-hero, who is actually not a villain. A master piece!
The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
A standalone novel that’s part dark fantasy, part cosmic horror, part “what the hell did I just read.”
A group of orphans raised by a god-like Father who taught each of them a different catalog of forbidden knowledge. He’s gone missing. They’re going to find him. Nothing about this book works in theory, everything works in practice. It’s strange, violent, and unforgettable.
It’ll remind you that dark fantasy doesn’t need to be medieval. It just needs to make the reader feel unsafe.
Difference Between Dark Fantasy and Horror
Nobody on the web has explained the difference between dark fantasy and horror in a way that can be understandable.
So, here it is.
The Core Difference:
Horror asks: What scares you?
Dark Fantasy asks: What would you sacrifice? What price would you pay?
Horror wants to frighten you.
Dark Fantasy wants to unsettle you with moral complexity.
If you want to dig deeper into the differences, then read on.
The Goal
- Horror: The primary goal is fear. Dread. Revulsion. Making you check under the bed. The emotion IS the point.
- Dark Fantasy: The goal is exploring difficult truths about power, corruption, and human nature through a fantastical lens. The darkness serves the story, not the other way around.
The Threat
- Horror: The threat is often unknowable, incomprehensible, or unstoppable. Think Lovecraft’s cosmic entities or the creature in Alien. You can’t understand it, you can only survive it (maybe).
- Dark Fantasy: The threat is understandable and often it’s the consequences of choices. A cursed sword, a corrupt kingdom, a necromancer’s ambition. The danger has rules, even if they’re terrible.
Character Agency
- Horror: Characters are usually victims. They’re trapped, doomed, scrambling to survive. The horror happens to them.
- Dark Fantasy: Characters make bad choices and live with the consequences. They have agency. They pick up the cursed sword knowing it’s cursed because they need the power.
Tone
- Horror: Sustained dread building to terror. The atmosphere is claustrophobic, oppressive.
- Dark Fantasy: Grim, morally gray, brutal but not necessarily scary. Can have moments of beauty, hope, dark humor, even triumph (at a cost).
The Monster/Threat
- Horror: The monster is meant to stay mysterious. Explanation diminishes fear. The shark in Jaws is scariest when you DON’T see it.
- Dark Fantasy: We often understand the monster. Dragons, demons, undead armies have origins, motivations, weaknesses. They’re part of the world’s logic.
The Ending
- Horror: Often ends in death, madness, or pyrrhic survival. The point was the fear you experienced.
- Dark Fantasy: Can end in victory but at a massive cost. The hero wins but loses their humanity. Peace is achieved through blood. Endings are complicated, not comforting.
The perfect examples that illuminates the distinction between horror and dark fantasy are The Shining and and The Dark Tower by Stephen King.
Stephen King’s “The Shining” is Horror
Goal: Terrify you with Jack’s descent into madness and the Overlook Hotel’s malevolence.
Stephen King’s “The Dark Tower” is Dark Fantasy
Goal: Explore Roland’s obsessive quest and what he’s willing to sacrifice. It’s grim and violent, but not trying to scare you.
However, dark fantasy can have horrific moments. The crux is that horror is the element of dark fantasy and it doesn’t drive the story.
Also, the intent differs. Horror wants to scare you. Dark fantasy wants to make you question what you’d do in the situation.
While writing, keep the following checklist handy. It will help you to keep on track and it’ll answer you if you’re writing horror or dark fantasy.
You’re writing horror if you are –
→ Focusing on dread, fear, and the unknown
→ Making readers feel unsafe
→ Making the monster/threat to remain mysterious
→ Making the characters as victims trying to survive
You’re writing dark fantasy if you are –
→ Focusing on choice, consequence, moral complexity
→ Making readers question their own ethics
→ Ensuring that magic or threat has rules and costs
→ Making characters as agents making difficult decisions
Also, many writers, especially beginners, try to merge dark fantasy with dystopian fiction.
It’s a big mistake. Writing dystopian fiction is about depicting broken societal systems, not supernatural costs.
Romance in Dark Fantasy
Romance in dark fantasy isn’t like your fantasy romance. Happy endings are rare, and at times, non-existent and it’s usually secondary to the the larger plot.
In dark fantasy, romance costs everything and love can as easily corrupt as it can redeem.
If you want to integrate romance (though I wouldn’t recommend unless you’re an expert writer), then the following types of romances work best in dark fantasy –
The Doomed Romance
They love each other, but circumstances, curses, or fate ensures it ends in tragedy.
Example: Glokta and Ardee in Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law. He’s a torturer, she’s damaged goods. They understand each other, but happiness isn’t in the cards.
The Toxic Romance
They love each other, but it brings out the worst in both. Obsessive, possessive, destructive.
Example: Jorg and his various entanglements in The Broken Empire. Love doesn’t make him better—it’s just another tool or weakness.
The Sacrificial Romance
One lover sacrifices morality, humanity, and soul to save or protect the other.
Example: Prompt#2 in the first category. It’s about the ring that resurrects the dead but erases memories. That’s romance driving dark choices.
The Unexpected Tenderness
Brutal characters showing genuine care for one person in a world of cruelty. Not redeeming, just… human.
Example: The relationship between some characters in The Black Company. Mercenaries who kill for money but still fall in love, even knowing how it makes them vulnerable.
The Political Romance
Love entangled with power, duty, and terrible choices. Personal feelings vs. survival.
Example: Pretty much every relationship in A Song of Ice and Fire. Love is leverage, and marriage is warfare.
Wrapping it Up!
There you have it. A list of 72 dark fantasy writing prompts that will help you write a short story or novel. These prompts have the conflicts, rot, and moral ambiguity that are unique to this fantasy genre.
You also got a deep dive into the the dark fantasy genre and the things to keep in mind to maintain the ethos of the genre while writing it.
The best dark fantasy doesn’t just frighten, it questions what we’d sacrifice for love, power, or survival. Pick a prompt and let your creativity discover your answer.