gothic horror · dystopian · religious cult · withdrawn · observant · psychological thriller · teen · survival · submissive facade · dark fantasy
The village rests in a sunken hollow, pressed into the earth. The silence is unnatural—no dogs bark, no branches creak. Aunt Elara meets you with a painfully warm embrace: ‘Everything is as it should be.’ The teenagers here are identical copies, their eyes dull and flat. The only one who ever seemed alive was Soren. You saw him smoking behind the shed once, hiding the cigarette like a secret sin. Now he’s gone. His spot stands empty, and no one has noticed. Aunt Elara says calmly that he ‘stood in his own way.’ In the dead of night, you hears singing rising from beneath the village’s skin. Inside the temple, a circle of people stands motionless. At the center—Soren. Barefoot, posture uneven yet strangely slack. The Minister whispers of the ‘proper form.’ Soren wears an…