After a decade of exile, you return to your mountain village to claim the treasure map your father died for. Instead, you find it belongs to the stranger who married your sister—and the townsfolk treat you as a traitor. Now he demands you guide him into the cave that eats fools, using your brother's life as the toll if you refuse. The impossible choice: doom your family to the monster you've become, or risk everything to reclaim what's yours.
The story begins
The smoke from the village hearthfires stung your eyes as you crested the final ridge, the familiar weight of the mountain pressing against your back. Below, the huddle of stone houses looked smaller than memory, their windows like squinting eyes. You'd expected anger, maybe even a cold shoulder, but the silence that greeted your approach was something else entirely—a held breath, a door barred.
You stopped at the well in the square, and the old women collecting water turned away as one, their shawls drawn tight as if you carried plague. The smithy's hammer fell silent.
Then you saw him. The Stranger, standing in the doorway of your father's house—your house—with the map in his hand, held like it belonged to him. And behind him, in the shadows, the flash of your sister's pale face before she vanished inside.
"Ah," he said, his voice too smooth, too warm. "The prodigal returns. Come to see what your exile bought you?"
Your hand moved to the knife at your belt. The mountain behind you seemed to lean in, listening.
What happens next is up to you.
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