The Blood King: Slaughtaverty Voices is a short horror novella.

Set in and around the legend of Abhartach — the so-called Blood King of Slaughtaverty, County Londonderry — the work recounts a cycle of ritual violence, burial, return, and narration. The story is told through conflicting voices that do not resolve into a single truth.

The novella does not offer explanation, redemption, or moral distance. Violence is not symbolic and not contained by myth. It is procedural, spoken, repeated. What is remembered is unstable; what is buried does not stay buried.

Written as a work of contemporary horror, The Blood King treats folklore not as inheritance but as pressure — a form that persists because it has never been finished with.

Released October 2025 as part of my ongoing Fiction series.

“The Blood King: Slaughtaverty Voices” — Available now as a Ritual Digital Artefact — downloadable exclusively via my Ko-fi page ➜